Back to the back- with a tat!

I'm starting 2009 with a first. This is the first ever tattoo of something I've drawn.
That's the right leg of my buddy Darrell, freshly inked with a tattoo I designed for him this past summer. It's a tribute to our friend Dan Hess, and the ska shows that he and Michelle Chin used to put on at this indoor soccer place called the Corner Kick.

Originally, shows were held on the Corner Kick's indoor field, but majority of the shows were put on at the upstairs bar area. This meant that someone had to go downstairs to check that empty, darkened field and locker room every once in a while. Thus, Make-Out Patrol. Dan would take some of us down with flashlights to make the rounds to make sure no kids were screwing around or making babies.
Those shows at the Corner Kick were lots of fun. They were all ages, and you could see local bands goofing around and playing ska, reggae, punk, rockabilly, and rock. Sometimes there would be some sweet out of town bands coming through, but you knew there would always be Dan and Alex's band The Ratchet Boys playing, with Dan making all sorts of ridiculous jokes and throwing donuts at you.

Dan and Michelle and Rude In DC productions enabled an entire local music scene to exist. They put on these shows, ran dcska.com, made t shirts for bands- they brought the scene together by giving local bands a place to play and everyone a place to dance and have fun and get a Krispy Kreme in the face. Seeing that Michelle and Dan could make things like this happen on their own was definitely a big inspiration to me.
Dan passed away in 2007, he'll always be missed and never forgotten. Especially, now that Darrell's got a tribute to him emblazoned on his calf. That thing is not coming off in the shower. I went with him when he got the tattoo, there was blood.

Here's a link to a big image of the design.

She's got bangs! And she knows how to use them!

I fixed up and inked up this possible t-shirt design I was working on. It's a ska t-shirt design. I want it to say "i still like ska" on it, because I feel like that's something people want other people to know- that they still like ska.

I tried to draw this semi-90's rude couple, but I can't decide which hair style to go with. In topical Olympic style, here are the three that would get some sort of medal.

1. long hair with head band:
2. long bangs:
3. short bangs:
For some reason, most girls prefer the design with the short bangs. I can't decide yet so I might end up using multiple designs.

I tried out shading them with dots since I'd like to silk screen it myself and I can only do one color. It took me a while to figure out how to do this, but it's pretty simple:

Make a circle of color on a really small canvas and then go to Edit>Define Pattern. And you can make a pattern to use with the paint bucket tool. I would make little white circles over a black background, they weren't as harsh as black circles on white. Since I was working in 400 DPI, my dot canvas' were ranging from 11x11 pixels - 25x25 pixels- anything below 8 was looking like like gray.

Anyways, I'm worried all these details might be too small for my silk screening skills. I don't know. I might try to just do a print them on paper or something. Anyways, here are the other runner ups:

Step right up folks-I got glasses or no glasses, long bangs with no little side thingies, I even have ones where the guy is in a hoodie with or without sunglasses.
Man, all this gray is making me tired.


Shanghai(r) Knights & Robot Rights