I started off by researching into different styles of tattoos, I already have a lot of knowledge in this area as I have many tattoos of different styles myself so a lot of my work came from my own tattoos.
I started off my tattoo design by drawing up several different illustrations based on different styles of tattoo art, simple line drawing followed by pencil portraits and watercolour birds to represent my own mother.
I felt this was a good starting point yet I wanted to progress this further with the depiction of an angel to represent my mum as she lives in Australia she always says she is watching over me like an angel would do so I felt this would be a good image for a tattoo design, I started by drawing a profile of a woman looking like my mother holding flowers with angel wings this can be seen below:
Although I like this image I wanted a full bodied profile rather than just a side profile although I feel this does work well as a tattoo design with the thick outline I wanted to use more colour in this tattoo piece depicting a watercolour tattoo with vibrant colours much alike my own bird watercolour tattoo.
Next i began by drawing up another angel looking down as if from above as a more traditional approach to an angel as would be depicted in religious terms.
Feel this watercolour angel works well i tried and tested various different colours that can be seen in the gallery above of different coloured wings for the angel just to see what they would look like with a different tinted hue, I felt that the grey worked best adding to the main colour of the angel herself.
Finally adding the word “mum” below the angel I chose a cursive font to go with the elegant angel illustration as I felt this font worked the best giving the angel a more feminine feel. Below is my final result:
I like how this piece worked out, arching the text at the bottom to fit with the bottom curve of the illustration, I like this piece as a whole and as a watercolour tattoo I feel this would work very well as a tattoo, below I have attached an image of the illustration as it would be a tattoo on my own arm and feel this fits well with others I have of my own but would also work well as a bigger thigh piece too.
If I was to do this project again I would try different variations of budgies as this is my mum’s nickname the depiction of an angel is more used for terms of looking down once someone has passed away and this is not the case in my case, I have chosen the angel due to my mother saying she looks over me as being on the other side of the world she can see me from above.
Key Steps in Illustration 