THIRD ONE (click on pic for larger view)

Here's the play by play of my latest practice tattoo (on a piece of fatback). This is a traditional Japanese dragon. I printed out the flash and I am now ready to get started. Don't do it this way on human flesh...I don't think it's sterile. Don't do this at all unless you are a pro.

Applying the deodorant used to pull the transfer out of the paper onto the fatback.

Finding the right spot for ol' Porky's tat.

Applying the soap to get the transfer to bleed through.

Pressing it in to get a clean transfer..I hope...

Here is the transfer...can't wait to get my REAL transfer paper.

Getting rolling on the liner.

The basic outline is down.

Now on to the shader.

Carefully shading the face.

All the main body is basically done as well as the heavier shading of the head, legs, dorsal fin thing and some of the bends in the body.

Getting started on the scales.

After a break. In the zone. Lots of scales.

Finally! The scales are lined in...

Notice the sizes of the scales change as well as the amount of shading in the scales to create depth.

I decided to add red to the tongue and dorsal fin thing and yellow to the eyes and fangs for a dramatic pop.

Ok! Here he is! I would consider putting this one on my body...I'm Loving this!!

PS: You might notice a spot or two on each tat that has a weird shading. That's a weak spot in the skin and I couldn't get the color out of it when I cleaned it. Here it's a line over the rear left foot.

MY SECOND GO

Ok, I picked out my design and printed it. Then I put a piece of tracing paper down and put a piece of carbon paper over that. Then put the design over both of them and taped all of them together. I traced over the bird with a ball point pen.

This is what you get.

Here's the carbon transfer, cut out and ready to go.

Here's the victim!

Here I'm applying clear deodorant to hold the transfer.

This didn't work... I will need to get the proper thermal transfer paper to do this right...

Here's the skin with the transfer. I ended throwing out the carbon transfer and just taking the original design and using that as the transfer. This is in no way sterile and I would NEVER do a transfer on a human like this.

Here's the used template and the carbon copy in the back.

Here I'm applying a thin layer of petroleum jelly to the surface of the skin.

Laugh all you want at my ink cap. I didn't have any, but it's only pig skin. You can see here I have black ink and some petroleum jelly. The petroleum jelly helps with clean punctures into the flesh. The ink needs to be loaded into the tip of the machine by dipping periodically.

Just working on the shading and thickening some of the lining.

Here I'm going over some of the lining with a shader to make a little heavier line, which looks like shadows.

Here I started shading on the tail and body.

Here I'm shading the wings.

Here the body is basically done, and the heavy shadows on the wings.

You can notice here that the left wing looks farther away now because of the shading.

My Second Piece

Here's the finished bird. I put a quarter in there to show the size. I'm happy with this one. I went a little heavy on the shading, but again, that's why this ain't on human flesh yet.

MY FIRST PRACTICE PIECE

Here's my first practice piece. It's on a piece of fatback (pork skin). It's a butterfly.

I'm working on the black right here. I already did the lining and I'm shading in the black on the wings and body.

Here's a shot of it in black. I learned ALOT doing this one (because it was the first one I've done).

One mistake I made was my depth of the needle penetration. I was going too deep here and this would have caused some poor girl some serious pain. ...but that's why it's on pig skin and not a person...

Here's the finished product. ...not bad for the first one but if someone tattooed this on my wife I would be MAD!!! HaHa! This piece was done free hand for the most part because I didn't know how to do a transfer. I did cut out the outline of the butterfly and hold it on the skin and trace around it with the liner.