here's the original picture that i took in and my artist, monica pasillas @ tower tattoo used. now, when i got this picture of our good friend the internet, the artist had it listed as a winter flowering heather. now, if you search for heather flower you'll find a lot of pictures taken further away. i knew this was a real individual and different picture of the heather flower. it's really opened up, and zoomed in, as well as being a very high contrast photo. so, it's difficult to find similar pictures, let alone find a way to use this to expand the tattoo. i pretty much consider this, as well as my tattoo, to sort of be an abstract of the flower.
here's the tattoo when it was initially finished, january 18, 2008.
and, here's the tattoo earlier this afternoon, before i went in
so, just short of one year, i took in some more photos, monica searched for photos, and we came up with some design that incorporates the leaves along with much smaller flower buds.
here it is with the flash on
flash off
closer view of the top branches with out the flash
midway through the tattoo, we took a brief break and i was looking at the work. turn out monica decided she would go over the edges of the original. this actually turned out very well because it helped it all feel a little fresh and all one tattoo, not just stuff added to another. she also went into some of the original black shading and darkened it a little to enhance the contrast. i'm pretty happy with it right now. the smaller buds and branches, along with the different colors really help it pop. if i do anything with it after it heals, i might go a shade or two darker with the green.
