Here at our next session, Greg finished outlining the body scales and created darker lines where he had had to work quickly before. And, he also starts the color.
The face of the dragon emerges, almost in the center of my back. I've left all color decisions up to Greg, although we chat about everything. At every stage I relied on his wealth of experience and his artistic aesthetic. Confidence and trust are, I think, a big part of the tattooist/client relationship, although it's not often discussed.
A Few Words on Color
The darker colors last longer (blue, green, or purple as opposed to red or yellow) and so we both gravitate to these colors. It's important to understand that all tattoos fade. The length of time that a tattoo remains vibrant depends on the initial quality of the tattoo, how well it's treated during the healing process, and how much or little sunlight it receives in its lifetime.Like the outline photo, this was taken right after being tattooed. Some of the red in the dragon's face is thus small beads of blood (you can see these in the yellow areas) and the whole colored area is a little darker than it will finally appear due to the redness of swelling. Greg is blending the colors, one over the other, shading the whiskers of the face gradually from red to yellow, the face itself form dark blue to light blue, and even from blue to yellow in the eyebrows. It was in this session that I discovered that the spine, with little muscle directly over it, can be a sensitive spot.
