The finished tattoo. This is the third and final session for the samurai sword tattoo. On this session we finished the sword blade using Kuru Sumi grey shade ink and a sevel flat shading needle. The blood at the end of the blade was done using Eternal inks Bright red, slowly mixed with a bit of black to achieve shading and depth. We also finished the cherry tree witch is also a Japanese symbol the cheery tree was done with Eternal Sky Blue and a 7 flat shader. The completed piece took 36 hours.
The first session for the samurai sword tattoo. In this session as in most sessions for large pieces such as this only the line work was finished. The line work was done with Kuro Sumi lining ink. You will also notice that some of the lines are very faint. This was done so that when the shades and colors are added later the lines would not be noticeable. But to allow me to have enough line to give me reference for the shading. The faint lines sometimes referred to as blood-lining we achieved by using a 1 - 12 ratio Kuro sumi lining ink to rosewater solution. This was a fairly quick session taking only five hours.
THis is the second session The shaded spirals were done entirely with kuro sumi inks. The darkest black areas were done with the lining ink, and the remainder with kuro Sumi shading ink. The needle uses was an 11 round shader. THe blossom,s of flowers were done Intenze soft orange, Starbright white, highlights and intenze golden yellow mixed with the orange for the lighter areas on the petals. Intenze golden yellow was also used for sword pommel, and hand guard. The blue is starbright royal blue, mixed with various amounts of etenze snow white mixing ink to achieve the gradual shade from dark to light.
