Under skin is where I hide...

Hmmm...how do I go about explaining this? Not the kind of thing I usually go in for is it? I was asked for the Eye of Providence done as some kind of creatures eye looking like it's peering out from under the skin - this is going to be adapted into a tattoo at some undefined point in the future. I suppose some people have art put under their skin and some people have the opposite happen.

This drawing started life as an octopus eye and then changed to a dragon (of sorts) after battling with tentacles and losing miserably. I don't think this animal would have talons like that though and they aren't really big enough to belong to it either so I'm going to assume that some other unfortunate thing has got itself trapped under there with it. So the all seeing eye is blue, has scales and captures unsuspecting smaller reptiles to keep under human skin. Someone better let the Masons know...

Why have paper when you can have skin?

Now available on your flesh...Here's something I'm quite excited about today. One of my drawings, etched onto skin forever as a tattoo. Not my own I hasten to add! 

I'm genuinely honoured, such skill has gone into recreating it and I think it works quite nicely (even if I do say so myself). I'm told it was a tattooist called Marcos Ribeiro at Black Garden Tattoo, Covent Garden. So thank you Marcos, you've really done a fabulous job. I feel immortal (well I've gained at least a decade). 

The request was a Nightingale and I decided that because they're quite a plain looking bird, I'd give it a bit of a steampunk vibe. So it became a clockwork toy version with the significant initials "EPN" added to the key to wind it. 

That last picture is a bit dodgy but shows the general size and positioning of the tattoo. I guess it sort of wraps around the arm a bit. I haven't actually seen it in the flesh (yet).

Below is the original drawing, or something like it. I really think this Marcos guy has improved on what I started. A strange collaborative project in which the participants have never crossed paths...