Tattoo Design 'Jereni' for Rocks van de Rots

So the last week I spend was.. yeah.. bit of a struggle to be honest. Designer wise. I got to admit, I never created a tattoo design before (yeah okay, this one from 2013, but that one never got done). But years have passed for this second try. Experimental producer Rocks van de Rots asked me for a tattoo design.

I learned a whole lot on the typographic side, but also digitalizing is getting more and more easy for me. I know designing tattoo's isn't that big of a problem with this kind of knowledge. But nonetheless, I have a bunch of respect for Rocky for trusting me in this design process. It will be on his chest forever. And I have the honour to design it.

Getting into sketching

Because the tattoo is an ode to Rocks' little niece Jereni, I could choose a couple of symbols to add from the references he send me. I chose the heart and the infinity sign as it shows the 'infinite love' Rocks' has for his niece.

From the start on, I aimed for a rounded, friendly handwriting. I've tried to keep some of my style in the design, but I had to let go of a whole lot of things.. Most graffiti linework just doesn't work with tattooing, especially this emotional type.

The digitalizing process

After feedbacking with Rocks, we came up with the sketch that had the most potential; In the picture above it is in the down left corner. We chose this one because of the thin lines, together with the flow of the whole piece.

I scanned the whole thing and put it into Photoshop. As the original sketch was on linepaper, I had to clean up the lines first. After that, we had some points to focus on: the R looked like a C, and we added the Infinity symbol which I've copied from another sketch. Check out the finished product below:

Click for a bigger resolution!

Soon I'll be meeting with Rocks van de Rots for a second tattoo design. Stay tuned!

Seckie