Crane Dagger

A dagger point made of the bodies of two Celtic cranes was a custom request today to fill the calf of a discerning individual from the Least Coast. I am always flattered by the clients who travel so far to add to their tattoo collections. It is a mix of many rendering styles, using line and shading and dots to give dimensionality and sharp detail. The heads and wings are very traditional and from an ancient manuscript, but to fit the shape of the leg a triskele is morphed to become the abstract commingled tails.

Two attenuated traditional Celtic cranes weave together to make the shape of a dagger point, a spiritual weapon that slices the mists of time to bring the past to life.

Sage Quarter Sleeve Celtic Knot Tattoo

Today's tattoo was a technical challenge that was quite exciting. We started with the idea of the client liking the Boy-Man-Sage knot, a triquetra with a central smaller triangle woven through it. But we wanted to make a quarter-sleeve, filling the top of the arm, and looping up at the top to cap the arm. He also liked the idea of a sculptural edge, not a straight line, so we put 5 more triquetras around the outside, looped them through the big triquetra, and to separate the design visually to give the most importance to the biggest element I used pointillist dots to emphasize it, and wicker-shaded the rest of the knots. A lot of complexity, and fitted precisely to his arm.

Sage Quarter Sleeve Celtic Knot Tattoo by Pat Fish

The pattern that inspired this quarter sleeve is:

Skeletal Gadsden

Gadsden Flag

One of my favorite political symbols is the Gadsden Flag, established in 1775 and bearing the motto "Don't Tread on Me." It was taken up by the Tea Party activists, but I had been putting stickers of it on my vehicles for many years before. In conversations with an excellent patriotic client I came up with the idea of rendering it in a skeletal form, and this tattoo is the result. We chose to encircle it with both the original text and "Nemo me impune lacessit" which is on the royal coat of arms of the Kingdom of Scotland and translates in the Scots language to: "Wha daur meddle wi me?"

Coiled Skeletal Gadsden Snake Tattoo by Pat Fish

Celtic Knotwork Backpiece Tattoo

The ability of Celtic knot work to weave dimensions and space, to confuse, to make a sculptural statement on skin, is endlessly fascinating to me. Today I finished up this back piece on a most ambitious client. The original pattern came from an illustration by the esteemed Welsh artist Jen Delyth whose work inspires me and whose designs I have often re-interpreted as tattoos. With some adaptations and a lot of time, it now becomes bold body armor.

Celtic Knotwork Back Piece by Pat Fish

To clarify today's tattoo just a bit more, this is a split photo that shows both a back view of the client, on the top, but also a front view, below. The project began some years ago with the heads of two Celtic zoomorphic creatures, a dragon and a lion. That gave him balance without symmetry, and after a year or so he began to yearn for a way to tie them together. Filling his back with the tangled bodies of the beasts was considered, and rejected, and we debated many options. Then my injury hiatus gave us a long time to yearn, and finally we settled on this solution and installed in over the last 3 months in 3 sessions. What a pleasure to see it completed today and to send it out into the tattoo appreciators in cyberspace.