We spent all day today working out designs for our full body henna tattoo. The living room has been converted into a make shift studio, our original studio being way to small to cope with the amount of photos, pics, books, scraps of paper etc etc. Not to mention the rolls of lining paper onto which our stand in model (my hubby) has lain patiently while we draw round every part of his body! Not that he looks remotely like our model, he just happens to be the same height and is the only available lifeform that looks remotely human and that will lie still for long enough to be useful!
Now huge chunks of said lining paper adorn the living room walls and Afshan and I have scribbled, blu tacked, sketched, stuck photos on, taken photos off, stood and admired, heavily criticised, and changed our minds so often that we are both feeling completely exhausted, yet still so excited by the idea of our first full body tattoo. Hubby has been updating the web site with some of our new pics and pics of our preparation www.qarbodyart.com.
We have planned and plotted on our (very dodgy) model shape. All the key pieces have been placed and we have written on roughly what we want where. We are both so loathe to plan too much however, as the joy of completing any artwork is in the freedom to 'go off on one'. When we have a cone in our hand and a rough idea of what is required we love to just let our imaginations run riot and let the design evolve. The only thing we need to have set up before we can start is the knotwork. We are planning a sizable piece of celtic knotwork around her naval which has been inspired by a beautiful piece we saw in 'The Book of Kells'. Planning any kind of knotwork is hard enough, but coning freehand onto a live model is a bit beyond our capabilities
Living with life sized tracings of your husbands body as living room wallpaper is not to be recommended. Especially when they are visible from the road. I am so excited about tomorrow. We found pattern transfer paper, traced the knotwork that Afshan and I created and this evening I will spend adorning a very patient hubby's back to make sure it works ok. Photographer confirmed timings for setting up his backdrops and lights. Confirmed time with model, gosh it's soooo exciting!!!!!! Cant wait to get started.