B #04: Razor Wire on Grapefruit 14/30

 A friend of mine is almost as excited to let me practice on him as I am. He wants an arm band of razor wire, so I was practicing it today. You can see in the first photo that I hadn't mastered how I wanted to shade it yet. The second picture shows what I settled on.

One thing I think is interesting is my needle choice. I used a 7 Flat for everything, thinking it would make the straight lines even straighter. Then, I noticed that I could not go for very long with the flat before needing to move my hand, which resulted in jagged lines. (You can have a line go continuously for much longer if you just slide along where you need to go.) But now I like the jagged look! I will think about it some more before making a decision. A worse downside of the flat needle for lining is that the 7 needles go in several times by the time you slide it anywhere parallel to its points, where a 3 liner would only repeat itself once if that. My concern is the 7 Flat essentially acting as a scalpel. Maybe I'll line with a round and shade with a flat. like normal people...

C #06: Rain Kanji on Grapefruit 13/30

I noticed that a lot of kanjis (sp?) aren't filled in with solid black, but have this cool color effect. I gave it this try, but realized that I outlined everything, rather than only where necessary. I am SO glad I am making these mistakes on fruit, rather than my willing and wonderful donors.

C #05: Girl on Girl Design on Grapefruit 12/30

I got the inspiration to do this one after going to the Utah Pride Festival yesterday. It was so much fun, and we all felt a great aura of love. Plus, randomly enough, my MTC companion ran into me. He's now out of the closet! I was blown away and very excited for him. It was especially lucky, since he lives in Maine now, that we should run into each other. I used to think that seeing old friends was an act of the holy ghost, and that after denying the holy ghost, things like this wouldn't happen anymore. Lol.

Oh, and the symbol was hennaed on tons of people there, so Abi and I thought it was sweet. Girl on girl.

C #04: Red Heart with Zig Zag on Grapefruit 11/30

I tried doing the very same thing as the gray-shaded heart (not minutes after finishing it), but ran into trouble as I was doing so. First off, the gray heart was with an 8-point round needle, and turned out pretty nice, considering the lines you can see from the bit. This red heart, I used a 7-point flat. The flat configuration really wasn't good for an organic shape (especially not one of this size). Plus, the color didn't work well on the grapefruit. So I tried putting some red with some black and got this. It's not horrible, but not even close to what I had envisioned.

Very good learning experience. Flats are good for larger areas. Don't use them on small, curvy areas. Yet at the same time, rounds are good for shading, so long as you dilute the ink so the strokes don't show up so much.

B #03: Shaded Heart with Shadow on Grapefruit 10/30

Yup, folks. I got my newest fruit. The grapefruit was going to be, hopefully, larger than the orange. I think it is, but it's not by much. As far as the color, it's definitely going to work out well as a lighter color.

Anyway, so this is practice for when Abi lets me fill in the heart outline she has on her back. She was thinking of getting it filled solid red, but I'm playing with other ideas. This was meant to be one of them... but I forgot to switch inks. That's why it's black, rather than red. For the next try, see the next post.

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Skinning the Orange

Well... That was unexpected. I guess I didn't realize just how shallow the needles actually go, compared to just how thick orange skin is! We were ready to see a hideous orange blog inside, but instead found a perfectly good piece of fruit. We would have eaten it for kicks... but figured that we didn't want the risk of ingesting orange communicable diseases. :)

A #04: Character for "Kind" on Orange 9/30

Again, it's simple. Good thing I let myself have room to do simple tattoos during this challenge.