tribal kirituhi tattoo for the lower leg

Hi!

At the moment I'm working on a really nice project, a lower leg tattoo in a tribal mixed style. Some kirituhi koru shapes and other tribal patterns and some of my own style.
I think a symmetrical tattoo looks really great on the calf, here are the first images:
















The design is around 30 cm high and the circumference is 23 cm at the bottom and 30 cm at the widest part.

I'll get back to you with the next step.

Kind regards, Mark Storm

high resolution polynesian tribal tattoo designs

Hi There,

I finished a few designs that I showed you last week. The first one is the polynesian mask design. A symmetrical piece with a nice face and lizard in the design. Here's the high resolution image:














The second design is a really large shoulder and chest tattoo, it has many styles in it, some Kirituhi, polynesian and some "best-tatto-design" fantasy.
I took me quite some work to get this one uptimized. It was originally drawn on 2 pieces of A3 size paper (200g/m2).
I scan it on an A4 scanner, so I had to glue 4 pieces together into one and line it up perfectly.

Here's the high res design:


















Kind regards, Mark Storm
info@best-tatto-design.com
www.best-tatto-design.com

Tattoorism: Jeremy Shares a Derek Hess Tattoo

Although we're not a fan submission site, we'll occasionally post tattoos from fans with interesting work to share. It often helps us through the lean months when most ink is hibernating in the colder climates.

Jeremy recently e-mailed me, having found us via the blogroll of the awesome Needles and Sins site and felt, as he said, compelled to share this tattoo:


Jeremy explains:

"The piece is [based on work] by Derek Hess and it's called 'Flood Damage'.


I got it in April of '09 after 2008 was one of the worst years of my young life (I'm 25 now) to mark the fact that as much as I was flooded with bad things in '08, I was moving on. It was done by a..."Low" [who recently left] Lucky Draw Tattoos in Kennesaw, Georgia. I got it tattooed on the outer portion of my right thigh. The piece took just about 3 hours...I absolutely love it. Everytime...I get a chance to look at it, I remember that I'm not the same guy anymore and that I've moved on with my life."

We featured a tattoo based on the work of Derek Hess previously here on best-tatto-design.

Jeremy also apologized for the fact that the photo is in black and white, but there is color in the tattoo. His camera on his phone, however, would not shoot in color.

Thanks again to Jeremy for sharing his work with us here on best-tatto-design!

The Eagle and the Parrot

We here at best-tatto-design have been biding our time over the past week, a seven-day drought of posts to match the scarcity of ink visible in the Frozen Apple of a brittle New York winter.

So today I am posting work not spotted in the streets, but work on the legs of Pete, who meticulously crafted this lovely piece on my upper back last year.

I snapped this shot of an old-school parrot on his left leg late last summer:


And then, last week, on January 2, while peeking on the Year of the Tiger hullabaloo at Thicker than Water, where he is tattooing when not at New York Hardcore, I photographed this cool bald eagle on his right leg:


with this skull in the eagle's talons:


Both tattoos were crafted by old-school Brooklyn tattoo artist Steve Delgado.

I thank Pete for his outstanding work, and for sharing some of his tattoos with us here on best-tatto-design!

New tribal tattoo designs

Hi,

I haven't posted my sketches for some time, because of some health issues.
But I wanted to show you some nice tattoo designs in polynesian style and mixed tribal style.

The first design is a symmetrical tattoo piece for the upper shoulder. A polynesian mask image. I'm still working on the sketch, but here's a picture of the design till now.














The second one is quite a large design for the chest and upperarm. It almost completely wraps around the upper arm and shoulder. Then it runs to the chest and it also covers a small area on the back.
A few weeks ago I received a phone call from an Israelien tattoo shop, with the question if I could design a large piece in this mixed tribal style.
Here's a photo of the sketch. I kept part of the tattoo in symmetry, because otherwise it would loose its balance and get really messy.






When these tattoo images are finished, I'll post the high resolution images and show you what I will be working on in the upcoming weeks.

Kind regards, Mark Storm
info@best-tatto-design.com
www.best-tatto-design.com

Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright!

This is my fourth tattoo and the one I pondered the least.

If you've been reading, you know the premise: 2010 marks the Year of the Tiger in the Chinese Zodiac, and when I heard that Thicker Than Water Tattoo Studio, a new shop on the Lower East Side, was doing a special tiger-inking event for the new year, I grew interested.

When I saw the flash drawn for the event, I knew I wanted one. And, after talking with artist Shon Lindauer, he drew up a special one for me, and the rest was history. Because he wanted to put more time into it, we scheduled the session for Sunday, after the Saturday of the Tiger, and did it on the third, happy half-birthday to me.

So why a Tiger? Aside from the topical (thank heavens it wasn't year of the Rabbit), I can say I have connections to tigers.

My favorite baseball team is Detroit, and I spent four years at Occidental College in L.A., home of the Tigers. In that sense, since 1985, I have been part-Tiger.

But like most tattoos, meanings grow and new meanings emerge. I am a poet, and what writer is worth their salt if they heard the word tiger and didn't think of William Blake?

THE TYGER (from Songs Of Experience)

By William Blake

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

1794

And so I strode onto Avenue B with a sense of purpose, and a desire to go under the needle again. And the snow flurried but I did not feel the cold. I knew, soon enough, that I would feel the fire from the tattoo machine.

Even in my most positive frame of mind, I didn't dream that this great drawing


would become this much bigger and more colorful tattoo:


And one of the many things I love about it is, that at a slightly different angle, the perspective shifts significantly:


Lucky me, Shon worked with mechanical precision, and I was his first client that got to experience his new custom shader, built by Seth Ciferri.

The tattoo was done in under two and a half hours, and the reviews have been overwhelmingly positive. I love it.

Thanks to Shon Lindauer for his hard work on this awesome tattoo and the staff at Thicker than Water for welcoming me into their shop.

The Year o' the Tiger Has Begun...

Happy New Year from all of us here at best-tatto-design!

2009 was a banner year for us as we reached an even broader audience, racking up 317,000 hits, almost triple what we had seen here in 2008. We're looking forward to welcoming even more visitors in the coming year.

Yesterday, I paid a little visit to Thicker Than Water Tattoo Studio on the Lower East Side where, as I mentioned in the previous post, the good folks were inking tiger tattoos to celebrate the upcoming Year of the Tiger. At $50 a pop for these tiger specials, the artists had a steady stream of clients asking to get their tiger stripes for the upcoming year.

Despite frigid temperatures with single-digit wind chills, clients were still drifting in when I left later in the evening.

I did get to watch as Shon Lindauer worked on Jennifer, who added this cute little tiger to her collection of over thirty tattoos:


Jennifer was born in the Year of the Tiger, so it seemed appropriate to take advantage of this super deal that the artists at Thicker Than Water were offering.

It was also great to see Peter Caruso again, who tattoos at the shop three days a week. Pete appeared here on best-tatto-design and subsequently inked this piece on me last Spring. He even had his own set of flash for the January 2 promotion:


As I bundled up to brace myself against the cold, customers were drifting in from Avenue B and a young lady checked out the flash to decide on another tiger tattoo. With a few more hours to go, it looked like the artists were going to be busy.

As for me, many may be wondering if I joined the ranks of the tiger-tattooed. Check back tomorrow to see if I have anything new to share...

Happy New Year and thanks for continuing to visit us here on best-tatto-design.