Chicano style tattooing

Chicano style that surrounded him, a form of tattooing developed amongst Hispanic prison gangs with imagery like "Smile Now, Cry Later" masks that told a story about the bearers. "I never went to jail so I had to do my own interpretations of the stories I would hear from these guys," says the black-and-gray artist. "With time, those images changed from a pretty girl with a sombrero to a beautiful carved statue of an angel, and the 2-D drawings began to transformed into full 3-D drawings of religious subjects. All this happened after I realized that there was more out there."

With a name like Lowrider, the emblem of street style in Chicano communities, and urban vibe is evident at Lopez's studios. "Sometimes it makes people scared and curious at the same time," says Lopez. "All we ask for is the chance to get to know us." What you'll find behind the shop's doors is something special, a unity and dedication that makes his crew the real thing. "Tattooing is our life," Lopez says. "We sacrifice everything to get everything. We all have given our lives to tattooing."

Lopez also has given his patience. He'd rather work with someone who has character-even if they haven't developed their artistic abilities yet and invest time in helping them grow as an artist. But that's not to say the shops are low on talent. Lowrider is home to some of the next big names in the industry, including artists Klown and Jun Cha. Not only are they talented, they're the guys who have put their all into the shop, stood by Lopez, picking him up when he has fallen and encouraged him when he wanted to quit. "I could not do it without my boys," he says. "They Say if you have a strong belief in something and work very hard at it, even if you die without accomplishing it, someone else will do it for you. They are the strength that will keep Lowrider Tattoo going forever.

Drawing a halfsleeve Samoan tattoo design

Hello,

I'm back again, with another half sleeve tattoo design in Samoan inspired style.
On Facebook I've had a lot of compliments and comments on my previous design, so I decided to create a series of these drawings in the same style.

Well here's a picture of the first basic lines I drew:

Pencil sketch of a Samoan tribal sleeve tattoo

I start with a circular shape at the top that follows the upper part of the shoulder and then drew a few tapering lines to add some motion. The spearheads are a common pattern in the Samoan style, symbolizing strength and power. There are many kinds of spear- or arrowheads, so I usually combine different ones in one design to keep it as intricate as possible.

Mostly I try to draw a few layers on top of eachother, running above- or through other patterns.

This gives a sense of depth and it makes the design flow.

Here's a second sketch, you can see I traced parts of the drawing with a black marker and fineliner:

Traced a few patterns of the Samoan tatoo

Normally I first draw the full design with a pencil and then start tracing it, but sometimes I get a little impatient and cannot wait to see how it turns out :)

This photo shows the upper part almost traced and finished:

Upper part of the Samoan tribal tattoo

After a lot of sketching, erasing, and redoing the lines, I finally finished this flash design and took some photos with my Canon EOS 400D:

Another picture shows a digital mock-up of a shoulder with the sleeve projected on it. It's not a 100% accurate, but gives you an idea on how it will look once it's tattooed:

I made a Youtube video of the total design process, so you can see a kind of time-lapse on how the design evolves. Please subscribe to my channel if you want to see my latest videos:

And last but not least, you can order this high resolution flash design right here!

Size: 34,5 x 26,5 cm (13,5 x 10,5 inches)

Price: 41,65 euro (57 USD)

After payment, you'll receive the high quality design + a stencil by e-mail.

Any questions? Just let me know!

Mark Storm

info@storm3d.com

Samoan inspired tattoo, shoulder sleeve design

Hi,

At the moment I'm working on a series of new designs for my galleries, to replace some 'old' tattoos.
I'm really inspired by the intricate Samoan patterns which have a lot of repetitive shapes and symbols and bold tattoos.

I started with a new tatoo, a halfsleeve tribal with some Samoan and Maori influences and shapes.

First I drew a basic layout of the tatoo to make it fit to the shoulder and upper arm.
Then I draw a few crossing lines, a bit tapered to give it a sense of depth.
On the left side of the tatou I added a koru fern, a national symbol of New-Zealand, aka "Aotearoa",  and created a line of spearheads. I traced it with a black marker and a steady hand ofcourse ;)

To get a sharp and crisp look, I use a lot of triangular shapes with a high contrast between the black and white patterns. The heavy black lines are drawn to divide the tattoo into smaller section, so it's not one "greyish" mass:

When the Samoan tattoo was finished, I made a few nice pictures with my Canon 400D DSLR, which has a nice depth of field, the blurry fades:

To show you the full design process, I made video that is some sort of time-lapes, where you can see it from pencil sketch to high resolution design:

This digital mock-up shows how the tattoo will look on your shoulder. It's not a 100% accurate, but gives you an idea:

The final design can be purchased from my blog, simply hit the 'buy now' button below and you'll be forwarded to the Paypal website. Use your creditcard or Paypal account for the payment and as soon as I receive it, I'll send you two high resolution images of this tattoo. 

The first is the full design with all patterns and black shapes. 

The second is a linedrawing, so your tattoo artist can transfer the tatoo onto your body.

Size: 25 x 30 cm (10 x 12 inches)
Price: 41,65 euro (57 USD)

Any questions? Just let me know!

Mark Storm

info@storm3d.com

Shouldercap tattoo in Samoan Maori patterns

Hi,

I have been quite busy the last few months with a lot of different projects, with little time to write posts on my blog.
But to show you some new projects I've been working on; here's a new tattoo for my shoulder galleries. It's a mixed design with Maori elements and Samoan pattern. The images below show the design process in different steps. First I make a basic outline for the shoulder as a template. Then I use my pencil to sketch some flowing koru shapes. Normally I do the whole piece with pencil first and start tracing it when I'm finished.
Today I was a bit impatient, and decided to trace parts of the tribal shapes. You see some Polynesian turtle patterns and Samoan spearheads and stylized fish.

Here you see half of the design traced with a black felt tip marker:

And a few pictures of the finished shoulder tattoo design

I also made a youtube movie of this Shoulder tattoo 156:

The tattoo is available for purchase on my website here.

Tomorrow I will be back with another design process!

Regards, Mark

Pencil sketch of a Mauri-style shoulder tatou

Hi,

I get a lot of requests for custom tattoo designs, unfortunately it's impossible to do them all, but here's a nice tatoo project I'm working on at the moment.

My customer asked me to do a tattoo sketch for the shoulder and up to the back/neck. He wanted to see some original eagle designs with claws and wings in a tribal style. The big central curve at consists of two tribal claws of the eagle and at the bottom of the tattoo I made some realistic feathers that would flow onto his biceps and upper arm.

Here's the first pencil sketch I did:

The feathers needed some adjustments to run on the biceps correctly. I also made them more abstract to go better with the overall design:

I'm waiting for my customers response, so I can finish the pencil drawing and start on the final high quality piece.

If you're interested in my designs, you can follow me on twitter, facebook or check out my channel at youtube, simply hit the buttons at the upper right of this page.

Any questions? Please send me a message!

Mark

Create a Maori knife design for CNCone cutting

Hi!

This time a different project, no tattoos, but a design for a knife. It's not a normal knife for cutting your meat, but more a kind of artistic/decorative design. The final piece will be cut by a friend, who is using CNCOne at work. He needs a special kind of file format, a .dxf file.

This means that I need to use Adobe Illustrator to export the linedrawing of the knife, so he can import it into CNCone, a CAD/CAM software program, used to instruct a carving machine to make objects from all kinds of metal, wood and plastics.

For more information on CNCone, you can visit a blog called CNCzone.com

Well, first I started of with a pencil sketch and scanned it. Placed the file in Adobe Illustrator and used the pen tool to trace the image. Here's a picture of the first knife I designed:

Then I used the 3d filter to add some depth:

The file was exported as a .dxf file so my friend could use it CNCone, but there was a problem with the design, especially the inner parts. 

The spindle that carves out the metal is round with a minimim diameter of 4 mm, so it can not carve all the sharp edges of the design. The outer shape was not a problem fortunately.

So I had to adjust the knife design, back to the drawing table....

I made another sketch, and used some other patterns inside the knife/blade. You can see that only half the patterns are drawn, it's simply a matter of mirroring the design and voilá!

Exported the linedrawing and to test the .dxf file I opened it in Rhinoceros 3D. 

To show you the full process from sketch to a ready-to-carve file I recorded a video:

When the final design is carved by a CNC machine, I will post some pictures or a small video.

Any questions? Just let me know.

Kind regards, Mark Storm

Shoulder tattoo design in Maori style

Hi,

Recently I created two new tattoo designs for my webshop. The first tattoo is a Kirituhi Maori style shoulder design. All my tattoos are hand-drawn on A3 paper with a B2 pencil. First I sketch the basic shape of the shoulder and upper arm and then add some koru (fern) curver that flow nicely through the design. Once I'm satisfied with the overall look, I start filling in the patterns between the korus with triangles, lines, spearheads and other repetitive shapes. Below are a few pictures of the tattoo design in progress

For my Youtube channel I created a special video, so you can see the total design from start to finish:

The final high resolution is available on my website, but can also be purchased here on my blog. Once I receive your payment, you will get 2 high quality .jpg files. The first one is the full design including gradients, the second is the linedrawing or stencil for your tattoo artist, so he can easily transfer the outlines of the design to your skin with thermal paper.

Shoulder tattoo 150

Size: 30 x 30 cm (12 x 12 inches)

Price: 41,65 euro (57 USD)

If you have a question regarding this tattoo or other designs, just let me know or visit www.storm3d.com for all high resolution tattoos.

Kind regards, Mark Storm
info@storm3d.com