Contextual Research: Jun Cha

At the moment my biggest influence in tattooing is Jun Cha. I love the concept behind is work, he works alot with sculpture and chicano style. I love traditional sculpture and tattooing, I think its important as an artist to find someone you can relate your work to and aspire to be like, to push your boundaries. 
Jun Cha's work is strictly black and grey, using his skill he manages to pull off some of the best sculpture inspired tattoos i've ever seen. He worked with another favourite artist of mine, Jose Lopez at Low Rider Tattoos, you can see the influence Jose has had on Jun Cha's work.
Jun Cha travels to get reference material he can use within his work, something I also want to do. 

Here's a link to a interview with Jun Cha:

http://www.ballerstatus.com/2010/06/17/introducing-jun-cha-la-artist-talks-the-come-up-mentors-rise-as-a-tattoo-artist/

Colour

Colour was a late introduction into tattooing, after centuries pigment was added to create colour within the tattoos. Colour was commonly found within Japanese cultures and American Traditional  as you look at the old styles you can see the limited pallet they had to deal with. As decades went by more colours/pigments were introduced allowing for a more varied approach to tattooing. Colour allowed the artists the experiment with colour, which adapted into new styles such like New Skool, Trash Polka and Realism. I have a handful of colour artists that inspire me, David Corden being the main one, realism is difficult to do within tattooing alone, especially to do it well, but he manages to apply colour to his work and still pull off the realism.

Black & Grey

Black and grey is one of the oldest forms of tattooing, black has always been the prominent colour within tattooing. Before different tones and colours were introduced artists, would usually stick with the solid black work. Due to the introduction of Grey washes (shades) tattoos became so much more artist, allowing for gradient, tone, and texture to be introduced into tattooing.  Black and grey are mostly recognised with prisoners, since being in prison artists would water down their ink to create shades, in place of colour. Through the decades artists have pushed the boundaries of black and grey, one of the best being Bob Tyrell, portrait specialist. 

Lancaster Sculpture

I visited Lancaster to gather some photographs of sculptures, photographs I could use as reference for my tattooing. I will pick a handful of these photographs which I will incorporate into a tattoo design/draw or paint.

Initial Idea

My initial idea is to show the connection that modern tattooing has with art. To do this I have decided to express Renaissance inspired sculpture into my work. Sculptures are great to work from, a still model you can take photographs of, which you can then use for reference in drawing designs within tattooing. I'm greatly inspired by black and grey tattoo artists, such like Jun Cha, Jose Lopez, Bob Tyrell and Matteo Pasqualin.

Lecture

We had a lecture at college, informing all the students that we’re edging closer and closer to our Final Major Project. Our Final Major Project is an accumulation of all the work we've been doing. I've been working with sculpture and tattoo art, therefore I will be integrating the two ideas, to show the connection that tattooing has with art.
We have to prepare a pitch and a proposal of our ideas. Where we would like our art to go and how we are going to achieve this. We've been told it is necessary to record as much information as possible to show the growth of our projects and how we will come to the conclusion of the project.  

YOU CAN VIEW MY PREVIOUS BLOG AT THIS LINK
Studying Fine Art And Other Media