So my sister's been bugging me for a tattoo design for well over a year now. My mom (the traitor!) told her the only way to get me to actually draw anything for her would be to bug me about it constantly. Sad but true, I don't know why, I just don't draw as much as I used to. Two or three nice pieces a year is about all I've been producing lately. What can I say, I'm a lazy bum. Part of the problem with this design was there was no design! She asked me to draw something that represented the two of us, a kind of sisterly tribute or something like that. Now I actually have to think about it and come up with a concept as well as put it to paper. I'm so put upon I tell you! (I'm kidding of course) She was leaning towards having a pair of my skeletons inked into her arm but I dissuaded her from that idea as it was a terrible one. They would look ridiculous without the crazy dark backgrounds bringing out the white of the bone and the red halos. It's just not something that can make the leap to body art. So that left me with coming up with a new idea and after putting it off for about six months I finally came up with the perfect solution. The zodiac! And as fate would have it, we're both animals (as my mother can attest to). She a Leo and I Aries, the lion and the ram. Perfect! You can imagine how this may not have worked out so well. Crab and bull, scorpion and a couple fish, bucket of water and a purple gorilla....you get the idea.
After studying some photos of lions and rams I made a quick little sketch which instead of being just a trial run of how well I'd grasped the flow of the animals turned into the main theme I went with. You can see that here. With that done I had to figure out how to finish it off and frame it in such a way it made a solid tattoo. The tattoo location usually has a large influence over the shape and overall design, unfortunately in this case it wasn't helping, she wants it on her forearm. A bizzare place for a woman to be sure but then, my sister isn't quite ah....conformist.
Anywho, I got to thinking about the zodiac and their stellar constellations which got me thinking about compasses mariners used to map the stars. What I was really thinking of was that giant contraption in Dark Crystal but a quick google later brought me here which was a good start. An astrolabe! It would make the perfect frame for the lion and ram. Digging further into my results brought me paydirt, the Prague Astrolabe Clock. Since the tattoo can only be so big I focused on the center dial on the top clock face, that would be my frame which I completed last night. It was done entirely on the computer using Fireworks and my graphics tablet. All that's left for me to do is color in one or two copies with colored pencil but in the meantime, here it is!