So this was interesting… taken from an old comic strip by Bill Watterson, but obviously not his normal sketches of Calvin and Hobbes… we really pushed it to look ‘illustrated’ so to say, using sketchy outlines and crosshatching, and a bit of light shading to give it just a bit more depth…

In general, with traditional tattooing, sketch outlines like this are rarely done, back in the day, if a professional tattooist would simply say its done wrong, but with how far our medium has been pushed, a whole new world of art is being captured in the flesh, and if the style accentuates the piece, mood, feeling… and i think for this piece… it does just that…

It is actually a difficult style to tattoo… unlike paper; the flesh is not a great canvas for ‘sketching’ so to say… every line has to be deliberate vs. working on paper (where you can get away with some randomness…)… but all in all… a pretty cool and fun piece…

Even with the context of the image (i also attached the original comic strip below…)

(in the archive there is another example of the style done on a quarter sleeve gargoyle image…again, for the piece i really think it worked nicely…)