I started the day off right! I got a decent amount of sleep last night, not great, but not horrible. I’ll take it as a win. But I started sketching as soon as I made it to the cabin. First up, a couple of crappy warmup sketches and a loomis head:

Looking at the sketches, I can tell I was tired when I started this morning. Those are really, really bad. LoL But that’s alright. It’s about waking up and warming up. After the one Loomis head, I decided to draw a few more, using a slideshow of faces to push me to get the angle for the head right:

This actually pushed me to visually measure and estimate better. I’m happy with where these ended up. And to finish off my studies in the AM, I drew a skull study, but it isn’t as symmetrical as I would like:

After my morning sketches, I recorded a video for CreateQuest, but scrapped it as I realized my script and thoughts weren’t very cohesive. I lost the point of the video about half-way through, so it’s going to take some reworking. Back to the drawing board!

I also edited some video that I filmed yesterday and got it scheduled on CreateQuest.

Finally, I went to work at the studio and knocked out a traditional tattoo design. My client experimented with a new numbing agent (as the chest is a particularly painful spot), which worked incredibly well for about an hour. Unfortunately, the hour was about half used up by the time the stencil was dry and I finished up a consult with a different client.

So some of the line work was done on a client in extreme pain — which caused him to move a good bit. It was challenging, but the final results are still decent:

I am not a traditional tattoo artist, so this was a bit outside of my comfort zone. The simplification required on this challenged my brain.

What was awesome?

Loomis head studies. Lots of ’em. And a lot of skulls.

Giving a client a tattoo he was happy with.

Having a very productive day of creation.

What needs work?

I need my clients to not rely on numbing medications. When they work, they don’t tend to work as well as advertised, and when they wear off from working…well…it makes the pain seem worse.

The end of my day was also very frustrating.

What did I learn?

TKTX is awesome…for a little bit. And I need a day to recover.

And don’t forget to check out CreateQuest – a project that I’m working on with Chris Beaven. It’s our mission to bring creatives together in an empowering community with a focus on improving the world, not just changing it.