I made this Bespoke Tattoo Design for a client on Upwork. He contacted me in order to complete a Buddha tattoo he has on his chest. Buddha is holding his hand up and the hand itself was left blank and he asked me to design a pattern similar to the hand of Hamsa to fill it in.
He asked me to make it super intricately detailed and he sent over a reference image to inspire me and to get a general idea about what he had in mind. I looked up similar images because I was asked to not make it too similar to the reference picture. I had a little look around and downloaded a few artworks I liked the most.
I was a bit worried at the beginning to not be able to create an original piece. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to come up with new motifs or a new combination of existing motifs and that I would just end up tracing someone else’s artwork.
Still, I had to start putting the artwork together because I didn’t want to let the client down and I was actually excited about designgin a tattoo which I have never done before. So I pulled up one of the downloaded images that had the nicest eye motif in the centre and reproduced it with slight modifications. Then I really started to worry about not being able to add something new and original to the concept. However, I kept looking at the other downloaded images, borrowed little shapes and motifs from them and was able to incorporate them in my design in different ways. As I went along, I was able to come up with new little motifs and patterns and before I noticed, I ended up with this artwork which I’m really happy with.
Since neither me nor my client are tattoo artists, we wouldn’t know how much detail is too much detail for the size of the tattoo, so I ended up having to rework it and simplify it. The new version still looks alright I think, but the original one remains my favourite, even though it cannot actually work in real life unfortunately.
art from scratch 