This week's Thursday night #PortraitChallenge over on Twitter was to reinterpret a 1907 photograph of Maud Wagner circus performer and the first known female tattoo artist (you can read the Wikipedia article here).
Drawing people and getting likenesses is currently one of my favourite challenges but drawing heavily tattooed people adds an extra layer in that you have to do the added artwork without making it look like it is just drawings on top of drawings but is actually on the skin. I used Procreate and procrastinated for several hours just drawing Maud's face and skin before diving into the wonderful array of tattoos including lions, snakes, horses, butterflies and down on the arm what might be seahorses or some other creatures. The other challenge is the photograph is sepia so you had to imagine your own colour scheme which actually made it more interesting. All in all I think I took three hours on this and I did do a thread of progress pictures and a 30s time lapse if you want to see how it built up.
