Tattoos sometimes start life as tattoo sketches, in other words, pictures that start on paper and then become refined and redrawn till they become the actual design. Although there is thousands of existing designs for the client to choose from many tattooists will work from a drawing supplied by the client or from one done themselves.
First thing to do is to get the general idea of what you want the tattoo to say or show, decide on a theme and work out the size and whereabouts on your body you want it. The body location is important for many reasons, including how the picture may change in appearance once on the skin. Will the design be affected by muscles and the body’s natural movement, will it be partly or fully obscured by clothing and will it be regretted later in life.
Tattoo Sketches
When you get to the design itself you have to think how complicated it will be in terms of content and colour. The more complicated the tattoo the more time and money that will be needed to complete the project. The tattoo sketches can obviously be redrawn or thrown away - something you can’t do of course once the tattoo is completed.
The other advantage of drawing like this is that the designs can be original or can be drawn with combinations of other designs. The tattoo sketches can take existing designs and get them combined in any way the wearer wishes. This way you can experiment with how words or phrases will look in a variety of combinations. This method means that things can be copied and interoperated for the tattoo. The basic design can be a standard picture and then something can be added on or changed. Maybe you can take a basic picture and then add some words on top. Its of course possible that with all the refinement and experimentation you may come up with something different to what you originally thought. Or you could even start with a small idea of where you are heading and make decisions to flesh out the design as you go.
You can work alone on the drawing before going to the tattooists or if the tattooist has the time you can work together from earlier on in the procedure. This is of course useful if you lack the artistic skills to get the work done. The tattooist and yourself will need to come to an agreement as to what the final design will look like as decisions need to be made on detail, colour and size.
I always suggest that before having a tattoo you look in to it and make sure you end up with the right design and in the right place, though if you go through the tattoo sketch process you will have probably done all the needed thinking.
Franchesca
