They would be a 60 year old retired F1 engineer looking to get an F1 sleeve. Or it would be Tom Morello, looking to get a sick portrait of Chris Cornell. Or an AI software engineer... Looking for a terminator theme backpiece of the war of the machines. I'd expect great conversation from all of them, and the subject matter would be such a pleasure to work on.

Ugh!! I missed this! Been so MIA working on a side project. Hope the call was energizing!!

Great start! Can't wait to see the rest of the progress! I never grey line. I don't have a strong reason for it, I just find my natural flow is to try and fully render a sizeable chunk and then restencil down the road. The one situation I find it pays off is where somewhere along we get a fresh idea for a new detail, or a small edit. By not having anything in the skin we leave room for inspiration to still enter after the first session.

Cool to hear you also take Sundays off. Every since I started dating my wife 4 years ago I made it a point to always have at least one day a week where I can be fully present with her with minimal excuses. It's been valuable to say the least! This last week week was good. Touched base on some bigger ongoing projects. Almost done my first leg sleeve! I think more of my bigger wins are more on the admin side. Very happy to make headway in moving on from my existing accountant to a new one. I've also made a new connection with a potential apprentice so that feels like an exciting thing to explore. Steve, do you have any kind of specific process for out of town clients that come in for set days and book accommodation? Also, what kind of steps do you take to maybe smooth the logistics for them? I almost feel it would be cool on the client side to receive a 1 page cheat sheet for best places to stay, eat, explore, what to pack, what to expect, etc.

@Steve Kretz Thank you for the feedback! I hear you on the luminescence. Depending on the angle this tattoo is looked it, it's either a little more or a little less obvious. Something I definitely want to finesse as the rest of the sleeve comes together. And speaking of that too, I'm hoping to create some darker elements towards the bottom to emphasize the glow around the hourglass from the other side.

@Steve Kretz oh 2 more things... I just started experimenting with adding a splash of straight white to my usual wash mixtures. Not enough to make it a true opaque but I do notice it slows me down. That said, I'm finding it helps me hit more accurate values and because I'm spending more time saturating the healed tones are more "buttery". It's been interesting to play with. I can see how true opaque would reallllly slow things down. And thanks for appreciating the importance of story. For me it's everything in my consults. I kinda don't care what idea they put on the table. First, I wanna hear what it is that they wanna express. I might help them expand their idea into something that speaks even louder or more eloquently than they thought possible. Time well spent.