I’ve been asked a few times now how we put Paul’s artwork onto the plates so I thought I’d share it with everyone.

As anyone who’s been Inked can tell you, the tattoo starts it’s life as a drawing by the tattoo artist, it’s just an outline really. The artist draws onto a transferable paper and it becomes a stencil that goes onto your skin in the desired area. The magic begins when the artist puts needle to skin and blends colours and shades all free hand directly onto your flesh.

Tattooing plates was obviously a bit different. We were given the artwork as a basic stencil, and as beautiful and intricate as Paul’s drawings are we had to digitally add the colours and shading with photoshop. Paul’s drawing came with instructions on the various techniques and styles of shading and the colurs typically used in tattooing.  Once we had perfected that with the tattooists approval, the digital images were ready to send onto the factory for production and then that’s a whole other story for another time.