This exercise is designing a tattoo for a male friend based on the word “Mum”. This design also needs to be suitable as a greeting card for Mothering Sunday.
As directed I am researching the history and conventions of tattoos and body art in terms of the past and other cultures (as well as looking at present day).
Here is a Tattoo Artist at work taken from the BBC web page on an article about regulations during the pandemic:-
Research is mainly from these two books:-
Reference:-
Brown, T, ((2018), Tattoos, An Illustrated History, Amberley Publishing, Stroud.
Garlick, G.D., ( 2014), Tattoo Meanings and Tattoo Design Symbolism, Printed in Great Britain by Amazon.
My summary is here:-
A New Zealand man, possibly Maori – from an engraving by W. Hodges (1777). as depicted in Tina Brown’s book.
The rose can have many meanings eg gratitude or devotion. This rose is completed by tattooist Cally Jo, a travelling tattooist from Southhampton
Personally I have a preference for the black tattoos I observe and in researching this project it has provided a much better understanding and awareness of tattoos.
The design above is by Claire Bartlett of New Wave Tattoo, London. Claire has worked in Sheffield, Essex (where she has her private studio) and now London. She likes black & tribal work, also etching in black and grey. You can sense her love of lines and dots in the Celtic work shown.
Perhaps I can depict a heart for the Mother’s Day brief by following the swirl effects from some of these researched Tattoos. It can hold both feminine & masculine elements for the Mother/son relationship.
Drawing hearts is a starting point . A vertical and horizontal line helps in establishing some symmetry in each side of the heart and then in elaborating with swirls and curls. I see if I can “distort” the image as in other exercises. The hearts are almost like sea horses doing a dance together.:-
Now looking at the design on the right, it is possible to make out an S for son, so the next thought is to try and turn the right half of the heart around to form an M for mum as the tattoo is to be based on this word:-
So this is going to be the tattoo, a heart with the lettering S and M in a Celtic or Fleur-de-lis fashion. The tattoo will be plain black to give a masculine balance to the feminine heart:
This is the result. I like the tribal aspect to it and the round dot could point towards an only son or first born. You could had further dots if it were for a second son etc.
To transform it into a card it can be photocopied onto pink paper, coloured and decorated with small flowers in felt tip and then a few highlights added to the lettering on the computer. The S & M can now stand for Special Mum. :-
The format is a square card. The front piece here could have read “To a Special Mum on Mothering Sunday” however I feel additional words would take away from the simplicity of the design so it is just To a Special Mum and the client could give the card to his mum on Mothering Sunday or as a birthday card depending on the caption that would written inside the card.
I found it quite difficult to transform the black tattoo into a more feminine image for a card and the tattoo outline needed to be stream-lined so the flowers could more easily flow around the outer part of the lines. I am still unsure how satisfied I am with the final outcome, ie whether to add some decoration around the wording . Adding the green dot somehow seems to help in the completion of the composition.
Generally the card is not too over-flowery so it would be appropriately received by a mother from her son. As well as being for a loving kind mum it also represents the strong, resourceful, warrior, protective characteristics too.
And then I revisit this exercise again the next day and decide to streamline the design for the card even further on the computer, removing the M for mother so the flowers flow down the right hand side of the heart. The S for special remains and the overall transformation from tattoo to card feels much more satisfactory.
As it would appear as a card:-
Adelaide Art 