(01-04-2014, 09:04 AM)Mike086 Wrote: Your colors are very saturated. That is causing the eye to not have a place to settle. The green behind the alter is drawing attention from the alter, but that maybe a good thing if you want the skull in the back to be a focus. I feel like the naked woman is your focus, so right now she is competing with the other elements. Switch to greyscale and fix up the values, then add in your color based on your focus.


Right now you have no real mid tones, it's a very dark image, and by dark I mean literally black. You can use "selective color" in photoshop to take the blacks up a few notches into a lighter value.

The slippers seem really out of place too, do some feet studies and paint the feet in, they really don't match with your other elements. OR you can add more silly elements like the slippers and make it more comic, maybe curlers in her hair?

My general read of the image is that a woman is dropping coins into a basin that are gradually getting bigger as they fall next to some skinny dude on a golden devil alter.

I'm not sure if that is your intention…

Good luck! I can stream a paint over on the week if you'd like me to really show you what I'm talking about.

(01-04-2014, 07:16 PM)monkeybread Wrote: Not knowing anything about tattoo art, my two cents is that tattoo design isn't about saturation foremost.
In fact I would suggest you would be better served doing tight line drawings instead for your folio. Tattooing is mostly about good design and neat line drawing isn't it? It's about design.

Don't bother doing 3D shading and colours digitally when your 2D design requires work. My recommendation is do your designs as black and white line drawings first. I think this is what gets stenciled on in the first instance anyway before any colouring right? You can always add colour afterwards.

(01-05-2014, 03:46 AM)Hypnagogic_Haze Wrote: Her left hand just kinda merges with her forearm. You should shave off a little on the inside of her wrist and also slim down her thumb a bit. I would draw her face as well. The thing covering her face looks odd. If you're just trying to avoid drawing her face then maybe cover it with some kind of mask. It would be more interesting than a cloth. Faces are what people look at first in any piece so you want the first focal point to be designed well.

And her hair looks like it needs to be brushed. I think you're using too many lines to describe the texture of her hair. Try to break the hair down into 3 or 4 larger shapes. I would definitely use a photo reference of a woman with the hair you're going for.