Holy Stencil King

I wanted to show the process in which Matt Black of Divine Canvas in London lays down his amazing dotwork tattoos, and I think what might strike tattoo artists or people who are heavily tattooed the most, is that he’s somehow able to lay a stencil for a big psychedelic wavework tattoo like this. I’d assume something like this had to be freehand, not planned in advance, if only because it’s practically impossible to draw something like this on flat paper and then stencil it so accurately onto a complex shape like this part of the body. Seriously, it’s quite hard for me to understand how he did this, and it almost makes me think I’m misinterpreting the photo and it’s not a stencil. But I’m quite sure it is.

Anyway, stage two is to lightly outline all the shapes in dotwork, as you can see above on the right. After that it’s a matter of filling in the waves, with all the secondary detail — a secondary set of ripples and fluctuations in dot density on top of original design, eventually leaving the customer with an incredible living, pulsating piece of art on their body.

(Both images can be zoomed to get a better view)