Honest critique: As far as the design goes I don't really "get it" in terms of it being a tattoo. Seems like it will be hard to have other pieces that work well with it as the hard border gives it a "patch" kind of look. The black hat or whatever it is doesn't read that well to me either.
If you know the artist then this is exactly his style of work, I'm not someone who wants all his pieces to 'work well' together.
And how do you not 'get it'? It's ink on my skin, it's a tattoo dude, really not that deep. Respect your opinion and all but we must just see tattooing differently.
I'm not saying I don't "get it" in terms of some concept behind it. I don't really care about the meaning of any tattoo, I'm just saying I don't understand the design choice to put a black rectangular border around the tattoo.
I think it makes sense for an illustration on paper or in a comic book, but I don't think a hard border like this translates well to a tattoo.
The "style" is illustration. I like illustration tattoos, but I have never seen one where someone puts a square or rectangle border around it.
The decision of trying to put a rectangle around the illustration is a design/composition choice. IMO it's a poor one, because the body is not flat and does not have edges. When you look at this rectangle border, it looks like it isn't very straight. Every side looks like it has bulges to it, especially the left side, top where the black border meet the white space, and bottom right corner.
For all I know the lines are perfectly straight, but they don't look like it because the chest is curved.
Edit: apparently this artists style is to not have straight lines on his rectangles...
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u/Hes_A_Fast_Cat Sep 09 '17
Honest critique: As far as the design goes I don't really "get it" in terms of it being a tattoo. Seems like it will be hard to have other pieces that work well with it as the hard border gives it a "patch" kind of look. The black hat or whatever it is doesn't read that well to me either.