Abstract Paintings as Tattoo Designs

Abstract Painting 1

Abstract Painting 2

Abstract Painting 3

Abstract Painting 5

After deciding to switch the styles of my work, I thought that turning abstract expressionism paintings into tattoo designs would be the most difficult. Despite being small in size (A4), figuring out which marks to use for each mark produced on the painting was quite tricky. I stuck with quite traditional ways of shading in tattoo design, such as dotwork, linework, greyscale and crosshatch. For each of the colours in the painting, I assigned a different style. However, these would often vary depending on what effect this colour had on the painting. For example, a colour which was primarily in the background, I would represent with a grey wash as it was easy to cover a large surface with, whereas if I had done that with dotwork, it would have taken an unnecessary amount of time, and the other textures would have less of an impact as they would be harder to see.