Nick’s Ink: the design is delivered.

Facebook messaging between Nick Yarr and me, 14/01/17

Nick Yarr
Exchange safely accomplished – I’m digesting the design – it is very intricate. I can’t believe my arm is that size flattened out – deceiving! The next stage will be getting my tattoo artist on board, and getting the design scanned. Any input as to where to look re scanning will be gratefully recieved! Thanks again, Clive.

Clive Hicks-Jenkins
It’s an interesting perception, the size of the arm, as I thought it looked rather small when the ‘wrap’ was flattened out to make a pattern. I was a little worried that it had shrunk over time. However, when I taped it around my own arm it was a reasonable fit. Neither of us are what might be called beefy, and so I’m guessing in terms of skin surface, our arms are similar.

This will be the first tattoo of the Skin project, and so I’ve no idea what the response of an ‘ink artist’ will be. There are a lot out there now who are both designers and inkers, and some of the star practitioners may well consider inking only their own designs. However I guess it’s the nature of of tattooing to be often transferring a specific design or image that the client wants. For this design, we need first rate copying skills married to the sense of interpretation that’s bound to be a part of the process of making a good transference from pencil drawing to inked skin. It’ll take a lot of subtlety.

Nick Yarr
Any thoughts on the scanning and where to start? I like the shading and three dimensional effect it gives. I like the flow and intricacy of the design, though the blue is something I’m becoming accustomed to!

Clive Hicks-Jenkins
Hansel & Gretel was scanned by Saxon Digital Services in Norwich. I think they did a magnificent job, which then transferred to the printing of the book. You can see all the fine etched lines in the printed illustrations which I’d worried wouldn’t reproduce well. I couldn’t have been happier with the result.

Regarding the blue. Throughout the design process I took images and digitally removed the colour, so I could check out how everything would look without the blue. The blue translates to a smoky shadow and you get a good sense of what the design would look like if you elected to go that way. Personally I like the blue, but the choice is there for you to forego it. Or if my blue is a tad bright for you, it could be pulled back to a more muted one.

Nick Yarr
Thanks Clive. I like the monochrome  and the blue. I’ll give it some thought. I like the design very much. It’s what I was hoping for, but more extensive, if that’s the word, and extensive in a good way. Remind me of the reason for getting a digital translation. (This is a whole new world for a doctor – lol)

Clive Hicks-Jenkins
A detailed digital image might make it easier to download and show any ink artist what you you want to have put onto your arm. A good photograph or series of photographs might do initially, but at some point whoever you select will need to see a scale version or the original, given that it was designed to fit your arm.

Nick Yarr
I see – so I could also then translate the digital version onto paper so they had a full scale design to work with.

Clive Hicks-Jenkins
Exactly. Also, should you decide to go with a monochrome version, you can give the ink artist a scale image with the blue turned to tonal.

I recall in our original discussions, alone among all the participants you wanted something that was more pattern-like. More about mark-making. I remember being a bit daunted by your brief, because I’m essentially a narrative painter. But interestingly the past years have seen me working more frequently with patterns. They’ve always been there, in the flowery fields of the ‘saints’ paintings (Saints Kevin, Hervé and George) and in the rich diapering of textiles and backgrounds.

But now, in the Gawain series, they’re increasing foregrounded and given compositional weight to bear. In this gouache and pencil study for the print of The Green Knight’s Head Lives, the patterning of the horse’s caparison and the Knight’s tattoos, cover a good three quarters of the image, knitting it together and conveying the world in which the character lives.

So gradually I’ve became confident about what I could produce for you. (I am super aware that this is for life.) Had I been designing a tattoo for myself, it would have been the one I’ve made for you. I loved the idea of translating all the traditions of elaborate British historic embroidery and adornment into a tattoo. Your foliate design would serve just as well for the embroidery of an Elizabethan sleeve or doublet, as for a tattoo.

I want to take a tattoo tradition that’s been rather hijacked by tribal patterning, and make something elaborate and quintessentially British. Transposing what might once have been the embroidery of a sleeve, directly onto skin, feels rooted visually in the decorative traditions of these islands, while being married to the more subversive, modern expression of body modification. I love the idea of a reversal of what once was. The Elizabethan courtier wore his decorated splendour as an outer suit that could be peeled away to reveal the undecorated body. Now the dark suited business man can peel away his sober outer layer to reveal the foliate glories of his tattooed skin.

I think it’s drop dead sexy, this kind of male surrendering to beauty. Like a buck with a pearl earring. I don’t know how many people will get to see your tattoo, but I think it could be a gorgeous surprise, just poking out from under the cuff of a white shirt and skinny-smart three-piece suit. Hey ho Silver!!!

Nick Yarr
I agree that tattoos are sexy. Moreover this design is very different to the many tattoos I’ve seen, and that’s a very good thing! I think that finding an artist I’m happy to trust to do justice to your work will be the next challenge. I’ve a few in mind – so I’ll keep you posted! Thanks once more for the time and trouble you’ve taken. It is very much appreciated.

Clive Hicks-Jenkins
You might explain at some point that this a part of an ongoing art project. That might have an appeal for an ink artist who was interested in the profile generated by the project.

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Skin/Skôra: Painter Nicky Arscott writes about art and the prospect of a Mari Lwyd tattoo.

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I first came across Clive Hicks-Jenkins’ work a couple of years ago. I’d had this idea for a project that was going to involve the Mari Lwyd. While researching the tradition I came across Clive’s paintings and laughed out loud at the prospect of attempting anything quite as powerful, as meaningful or as beautiful as the images I saw in front of me.

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I met Clive at a talk he gave in Aberystwyth, and subsequently took part in the Artlog ‘Puppet Challenge’. (I made a mother and baby, attached to each other by a woollen umbilical cord.) When I saw Clive ‘recruiting’ for Skin / Skóra, I immediately thought YES! I tried to leave it a few days before getting in touch, so that I had time to consider seriously the implications of the project (I think I managed about 3 hours) and then I e-mailed Clive to see how he felt about designing a Mari Lwyd tattoo.

Understandably he had reservations. I think, in fact, he was quite puzzled. Why would I want a tattoo of his Mari, with all it represented within the paintings, and with all it meant to him? We arranged a meeting for two weeks later, and during those two weeks I tried to work out what the Mari, and indeed the tattoo, might represent to me, because I wasn’t entirely sure myself. I love the Mari Lwyd celebrations. We go up the road to Dinas Mawddwy and take annual turns to get drunk and dance. I love the Mari song; the voices of the singers get stuck in my head for days. My daughter Lisa is obsessed with the clackety horse’s skull: skulls are one of her passions. Here’s a painting of her with a cow’s skull.

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Besides enjoying the event itself, I also love horses. Here are ours: one large (Sid) and one small (Tinkerbelle).

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I asked myself whether a love of the Mari Lwyd could possibly warrant the sudden and inexplicable longing for a Clive Hicks Jenkins tattoo of it. The conviction wouldn’t go away, and I was concerned that if people asked me to explain myself… as they almost certainly would… I wouldn’t have a very eloquent answer. I don’t have any tattoos. I’ve never wanted any design long enough to have had one permanently inked onto my skin. How could I be sure of the permanence of this particular desire?

I spent a long time talking with Clive about his work. I feel privileged to have had some of his thought processes and personal history explained as we looked through images of paintings with his Jack Russell terrier sitting between us on the sofa. We discussed the bed sheets that often appear in the Mari series: how sheets aren’t just sheets, but intricately connected to life itself: birth; death; love. One thing Clive said that has really stuck with me is this concept of creating something concrete as a way of coming to terms with a terror that can’t be named. In order to even think about dealing with this abstract ‘nothingness’, we need something physical to hold on to. A conduit; an agent. And how for me that’s what the Mari Lwyd represents on many different levels.

I mulled this over for a while, and then I started noticing something. Here is a poem I wrote a long time ago, when I was about twenty, after reading the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca’s tragic play, Yerma:

YERMA’S GHOST

It was hysterical to wake in cicada-shrill dark

with my sheets ballooning up and down

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dead grape stench hanging without within

because she’d opened my shutters in the night again.

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Nena rubia she said let me tell you tall stories

how the sheets will always smell of apples

because I was not afraid to sleep with him.

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When I was fifteen she got sad because

that was the age she got married.

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Pobrecita mia. Now you will grow tetas let me see them.

She said they looked like little grapes anyway

and would not get me into trouble

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but what a drama when I woke up

with la abuela’s dried flower arrangement

sewn into my hair!

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She lied.

I was a virgin.

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One summer she said she could smell the baby in her gut.

My feet were wet with her wailing spitting puta puta puta.

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I slept in twisted bedsheets. On purpose

she made me dream apples falling from the ceiling fan.

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The hottest night I woke to her nailscrabbling the stony floor,

knickers off, a knitting needle in my bed.

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I was re-reading the poem and noticed the ‘twisted bedsheets’ and thought how, in a way, there’s something else of the Mari in there: a non-physical presence (in this case, a ghostly echo of the barren heroine in Lorca’s play) given a name. So I started looking at other things I’d written, and realised that these ‘presences’ surface in a lot of my work (including, weirdly, a poem with a strange, chain-smoking, horse-riding alter-ego called Mary) usually as a metaphor for something Other that is also inextricably linked with the Self; some manifestation of the unknown that surfaces within a poem or an image. I imagine that was what got me thinking about undertaking a Mari Lwyd project in the first place.

Here, also, is a painting from around 2010. I honestly don’t think I was trying to say anything in particular with it at the time (shortly after having a baby and moving to the middle of nowhere, amongst other things). The painting looks, in retrospect, like an attempt to harness control in some way, at a time when everything felt a bit chaotic. Funnily enough, it’s called The Mare.

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The more I think about it, the more I realise that the Mari figure, for me, is a myriad of contradictory ideas; not just ‘Self’ and ‘Other’, but also anarchy and order, fear and hope. It’s an empty vessel; a fluctuating metaphor, cropping up again and again in all its various forms. It’s an agent of change and possibility, and given that, I think the tattoo Clive designs will alter in meaning throughout my life: an ever-shifting symbol, reminding me of the permanent fact that nothing ever stays the same.

Nicky Arscott. January, 2015

the tattooed man: Phil Cooper writes about his skin

I’ve been thinking for some time that I might get another tattoo, though without a clear idea of what it might be. As I approach my 50th birthday, I feel I’m moving into a phase of life that might be marked with some more ink. So, when I saw that Clive was planning the Skin/Skòra project, I knew that I’d found what I’d needed as the final push to go ahead.

I already have quite a few tattoos. My arms and shoulders are covered, and I have a large design on the left side of my chest and around my right thigh. Some were applied for specific reasons. I’ve two snakes on my right arm, the first one inked in my mid-twenties. It’s a small, simple, black design taken from a Greek vase of the third century BC. It’s just a shadow now, overlaid by a later and much more elaborate Japanese snake design in colour which covers my entire arm. I like the way (to risk sounding like something from ‘pseud corner’) that some of my tattoos are a record, bearing witness to how my life has evolved. The snake is a creature I’ve been drawn too since I can remember and it has often popped up in my life in quite serendipitous ways, so that its repeatedly suggested itself as the subject of my tattoos.

Other tattoos, such as the geometric designs I have up my left arm, don’t really have any specific personal meaning. I just liked the look of the patterns on my skin. I was fortunate to find talented tattooists in London, mainly Xed and Jason at Into You. I spent many hours with them as they worked on their designs, and we got to know each other fairly well. Jason tragically died just before he completed the Japanese snake. I left the final unfinished peony flower on my tricep as it was, in memory of him and his talent.

Moving to London in 1988 and finally coming out properly, was an intense period. I started to take my first faltering steps living openly as a gay man when such a life meant exposure not only to sometimes violent prejudice, but to a terrifying, hitherto unknown illness that was killing my friends horribly. My tattoos from that time were all black, geometric shapes, and they probably reflected how life was back then. It was a time of bold statements, When beautiful, talented young people in their twenties were dying, purely decorative tattoos just didn’t do it. I had three heavy, solid black stripes tattooed across the right side of my chest, and I remember somebody saying, ‘Oh, they look like bars across your heart’. Of course that was exactly what they were, although it wasn’t a conscious decision. After so much fear and grief my heart was pretty much out of bounds.

The mid-’90s were a dark time, my ‘wilderness years’ when I threw myself into full-on hedonism and went off the rails for a while. By 1999 I knew I had to start taking myself seriously and change how I was living or I wouldn’t see much of the new millennium. After a bleak couple of years I started to thrive again. Life took on more colour and more warmth, and my new tattoos from that period did the same. Pink cherry blossom and a big green snake coiling up my arm, full of movement and full of life.

I built a new career, and started having fun again, taking up rock-climbing and kayaking, which became major passions. My new hobbies got me out of the city and into the countryside. Kayaking through remote landscapes in northern Spain, the Hebrides and Morocco, and rock-climbing all over the UK. Not only did I have a great time, I also reconnected with parts of myself that had been forgotten for many years. The sheer delight of being out in nature, seeing wild flowers and animals and swimming in the sea. Clinging to rock faces dozens of feet up in the air put a lot of things into perspective, and brought my attention back to the joy of living on the moment. In 2007 I met the extraordinary man who was to become my husband.

When I met Jan I was commissioning health services for the NHS and local authorities, and he was a consultant psychiatrist. As we got to know each other Jan shared with me how much he used to enjoy photography, and I told him how much I’d once loved painting. We encouraged each other to pick up these pursuits again. Seven years on, Jan is no longer a doctor but has become a successful and accomplished professional photographer, and I’m… well I’m still commissioning health services, though I have picked up my paints and brushes again. But I am finishing my job in January and taking the plunge, moving over to Berlin to be with Jan and to become a struggling artist. As if that city doesn’t have enough of those. Nevertheless, I’m going to be joining them, scary and exciting as that is.

Getting back into painting again found me looking at other artists. One day as I was browsing the internet I came across an image that immediately caught my attention. It was a painting by Clive Hicks-Jenkins of The Green Knight. Seeing it was the start of what became a wonderful friendship, and I’ve been enthralled by Clive’s work since. This year I’ve acquired a drawing and a painting by him, The Dragon of Many Colours, and The Catch, the latter with it’s dreamy, tattooed fisherman.

My tattoos were executed over a period of about 15 years in total. I had them done for a variety of reasons: some were celebratory, some to act as talismans to carry me through difficult times, some as declarations to the world. I haven’t had any work done for about eight or nine years. The motivation to have more seemed to wane as I grew older and mellowed out. Times, and my life, changed. But now, with Skin/Skóra, the threads of the past and the present are coming together: Tattoos, and painting, finding Clive, acquiring a painting by him of a tattooed man, talking with him of designing a tattoo for me, and yet to come, becoming a tattooed man in in one of his planned portraits for the project. I’m so excited and so pleased to be part of it.

One of the ideas we’ve been talking about as a theme for my design is a ‘green man’, a mythological figure I’ve identified with all my life, and that I’ve reconnected with in recent years. I may yet decide on a different theme (I’m also in love with Clive’s killer gingerbread zombies from his forthcoming Hansel & Gretel book), but I’m especially drawn to the green man idea. The connection with the natural world, the spirit in the tree and the eternal budding and blossoming of life, feels right at the moment as I reach my half century, and look forward of the next!

Phil Cooper, 25th November, 2014.

Skin/Skóra: Misz’s bear

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Misz wants both his beasts to be roughy circular in shape, to form two medallions at his shoulders.

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Skin/Skóra: making a maquette for Misz

I already have a wolf maquette to help me create one of Misz Ajdacki’s tattoos for Skin/Skóra…

… but decided that I’d need a bear maquette too, to aid me with the design that will mirror the wolf on the opposite shoulder.

Not quite finished yet, but here it is in process. The white paper shapes are the patterns I’ve devised, and the blue ones are the finished pieces worked in pencil. The maquette is held together with many sliding attachments on the reverse, to give me lots of flexibility with regard to positions it can be moved into. There is a profile head as well as a full-face.

Once the maquette has been completed, then I will begin exploring poses for it prior to making sketches to present to Misz.

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Skin/Skóra: Miszek and his beasts

Misz and I have been talking tattoos. Some years ago he and I talked about making a tattoo for him based on my explorations of Hervé and the Wolf. Somehow we never finished those conversations. But here we are, a few years on, getting down to the business in earnest.

• Clive: Misz, have you had a moment to think any more about your tattoo? I’d like to get the creative process started. No rush, but have it in mind.

• Misz: Of course I have. I even printed the pictures and cut them out and started sticking them to random parts of my body (such fun!). Till saturday I’m just swamped in wool and orders so I’ll try writing something sensible during the weekend. I love the wolf – it’s exactly what I dreamt of and it hasn’t changed. Please give me couple more days

• Clive: OK. Well bear in mind that however you think you’d like it, I’ll be re-drawing and if need be recreating the wolf for you. (I need to render it on paper to get in the shadings and detail for the tattooist.) I’d be interested in seeing any photos that explain what you have in mind. This is after all a ‘bespoke’ tattoo, and can be exactly created and fitted to your wishes. (and your body) Take your time. No rush. I just wanted to reassure myself that you were ‘on the case’. (-;

• Misz: I’ve been carrying the wolves in my head for the past few days. I think I want two animals. May I?
  I want a wolf and a bear on my shoulders (there’s a picture of a guy with swallows tattooed on his shouders attached so you know where exactly).

• I’d like them both to be inscribed in a 2-3″ big circle (not exactly a circle but a roundish shape so they both correspond somehow).
  A) the bear could be a sleeping bear but I’m not sure if the sleeping bear wouldn’t just appear as a furry ball – what d’u think?
  B) the wolf – the wolves you sent me are superb – the sitting one has the right shape…

• …and the cuddly one has a perfect face expression – I love the way he presses his head against Hervé –

• I’d like to keep that – as if the wolf was trying to comfort or simply just drag you to the woods to have some fun. I’d like to keep the colours- all shades of blue.

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I began making a drawing of a wolf to sit on Misz’ right shoulder, using the crouching, ‘tail up’ position of the maquette image I’d e-mailed him that he’d indicated he’d liked, though I changed the position of tail to run down the front of his arm.

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He wrote back to me. Misio Nuna and Fisia are his dogs:

• Misz: I’ve spent hours thinking of the tattoo today.
  The shape you drew is perfect for perfect shoulders. Mine are human :—) and I know that the wolf is walking in a sneaky manner, but for a second I saw Misio Nunu or Fisia!

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• Misz: I’d like the animals to be inscribed in a circle (the outer outline) as much as possible so I thought of round shapes of the wolf and the bear – maybe a sleeping wolf and a mischievous fat bear. Your wolf with huge paws is perfect – he could serve as my bear (just cut the legs short. :—)

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Misz has given me a big headache here, to create the likenesses of two mammalian species that must be contained within roundels. With no irregular outlines to emphasise their differences, e.g. the long, brush tail of the wolf against the stubby tail of a bear, they could end up looking like two balls of fur. Perhaps he will allow some latitude with the shapes, or I may be able to create negative shapes within the roundels that help better ‘form’ the animals. Misz has sent a reference of his dogs curled up asleep. To me they just look like a pair of charred kidneys

Time to wedge my thinking cap securely down and to start being creative. This is clearly my challenge of the weekend. I’m off to research medieval misericords, which often contained animals within roundels. Perhaps there will be some solutions or inspirations there.

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This morning’s update from Misz:

• Misz: Important message:
  Only the main shape has to be round
  there might be bits sticking out – like tails or other parts!
  Off to the workshop – there’s a headless bear waiting for me there
  Good Saturday C

• Clive: Oh, good. That will help. Excellent. I better understand now. Thank you my little furry friend. (-;

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Skin/Skóra

There are currently eight collaborators committed to this project. Each collaborator will work closely with me, and each has chosen a tattoo theme. I will endeavour to make designs based on these themes to everyone’s satisfaction. Once the tattoos have been inked, the last stage of the project before the exhibition, will be for me to create a series of portraits of the participants, each displaying the bespoke tattoo that was the result of the collaboration. This post marks the start of a process that will show all aspects of the work, from start to finish. I will be announcing the participating gallery in the next few months, together with the date of the exhibition. The idea of the exhibition came about during conversations I had with Maciek Siudut from Poland, who asked me to design a tattoo for him. Three of the seven contributors are from Poland, and four from the UK. Hence the title: Skin/Skóra.

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Maciek Siudut

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Mateusz Tyburski

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Bran Dearling

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Nicky Arscott

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Misz Ajdacki

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Rosie Bowery

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Phil Cooper

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Nick Yarr

My friend Mathias van Soest in the Netherlands, a frequent visitor and commentator at the Artlog, has left a question in the comment box of this post that I think I would do well  to answer here, where everyone is sure to see it. Mathias has asked what I am quite sure many will be thinking.

Mathias: It sounds like a very nice idea, Clive, but could you explain why you need so many people for this project? What are they all doing? What are their contributions? Maybe there are specific problems when you design a tattoo? Anyway, good luck.

Clive: At the end of the project there will be an exhibition. For that I will need to have works on the walls, and in this case those works will be the seven designs, the seven portraits of the tattooed contributors, and the support material of preparatory drawings and collages. There will also be, of course, the photographs of the tattooing processes. This is what Maciek, Mateusz, Bran, Nicky, Misz, Rosie and Phil have agreed to contribute. They tell me about their lives and the ideas they have for their tattoos. One to one with me over a period of weeks, and maybe even months, each man and woman contributes an account of what he/she wants me to represent in the images that will be inked onto the skin, and the reasons for them. Their stories are complex, and the meanings underlying the designs intensely felt. The process of listening to them is moving and revelatory, and of course, intimate. The artworks are really just the physical evidence of the journeys we will all be taking together. I have never worked in this way before, and the people who are helping me have never done anything like this before. There have been lots of conversations. I had to be sure that all concerned were entering the project in the right spirit, and that the processes were fully understood and engaged with by them. The participants understand that intimate though those processes may be, everything will be seen and experienced by those who watch us online, and later, in the exhibition itself. It was not a project for everyone, but these brave seven are the ones who have elected to come on the journey. It’s their histories, their passions and their expressions of themselves that will be at the heart of this. They will tell the stories in their own words. I’m the listener and facilitator who will help them to realise their images into a reality.

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There is a Pinterest board that will be the easy-access image archive for the Skin/Skóra project as it unfolds. Find it HERE.

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Maciek and the Mermen

Maciek Siudut lives in Warsaw, and we connected through Facebook. When I asked him to write about himself for this post, he sent the following:

Maciek’s Biography 

My name is Maciek Siudut. I was born on October 13, 1977 in Gdynia. In Poland people born in Gdynia they call śledzie (herrings). Since I remember, I was a sensitive person. Always reacted emotionally to music and film. Probably that’s why they are the closest muses to me. Quite addicted to watching movies and always listening to music. This doesn’t mean that I’m not interested in other art directions. I also love architecture and graphics. My life never was complicated. Quite ordinary. I come from a military family. My dad is a sailor. My mother never worked. I spent part of my childhood in Dresden, Germany. This is where I started my schooling. There I experienced my first friendships, first raptures of love. Very happy period. After returning to Poland, I had problems with acclimatization to the new reality. It turned out that the Poles feed a huge dislike for the Germans. I unfortunately was in their opinion a German… After primary school I landed at Salesian High School. This was not my choice. I yielded to my mom. I was never a believer. Strange experience, I have to admit… The next step in my life, higher studies. This decision I made already by my own. I chose Architecture and Planning at the Technical University of Gdansk. I met many interesting and wonderful people there. At this stage of life I also began to explore my homosexuality more. I’m gay and I’ve always been. Since childhood. I’ve never had a problem with it. My orientation doesn’t define my lifestyle. I’m first and foremost a human being. At the moment I work as a copywriter in an advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi. A completely new experience. My passion is tattoos. I like to watch people. I like to travel. My life never was complicated. Quite ordinary.

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Maciek and I are about to embark on a collaborative art project that will continue over an extended period. I’m to create an image based on a description by Maciek, and he’s then going to have it tattooed on his body. Maciek has suggested two mermen, facing each other from either side of his torso. He wants one to be Neptune and the other a young sailor. The sailor is the sea-god’s lover, and has been transformed into a merman in the process. I see the design as a sort of garland curving around Maciek’s belly and up onto the sides of his abdomen, though all of this will be open for discussion between us as the design evolves.

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From the e-mails

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• Maciek: I’m really very happy and can’t wait to see first sketches.

• Clive: I will try to clear some time. I’m not going to rush this, as I see it as an ‘art project’ and as such I’ll need to think my way into it and get it right. (I’m wondering whether I might get exhibitable material out of it.) I guess you know that I blog about my work. Are you happy for me to write about this project as it develops? And will it be OK for me to quote from our e-mails? This is definitely an art collaboration. The subject was one you decided on, and you’re to be the canvas. I think the process of  us working together will be interesting for people to read about. I’ll need a photograph of your torso that I can scale-up and print out so that I get the shapes fitting correctly. Can you do that for me?

• Maciek: Sure! I’ve made a photo.

• Clive: Got it. Thank you. The figures will have to be larger than in the example of a tattoo you sent to me earlier. Mermen are more complicated than the bluebirds in the image.

• Maciek: Yes, I agree. Maybe you have another idea, where I should make this tattoo? Maybe it shouldn’t be at the pelvis area?

• Clive: I think the pelvis is good. It’s one of my favourite parts of male anatomy and it figures quite a lot in my work. But we’ll keep discussing the possibilities as the design develops. If at some point we both agree that the tattoo would be better somewhere else on your body, we can rethink and adapt. While the overall shape will be symmetrical in feel, it cannot be a mirrored image because you want two different characters. This won’t be a problem for me to balance in a pleasing way, but just bear the fact in mind.

• Maciek: I don’t want them to be similar. They should be like a younger and older brother, or like a father and son. Each should have his own attributes.

• Clive: Agreed. I’ll draw out the image in a way that will allow for all the detail you’ve described. Then we can re-scale it to fit you. I think the likelihood is that the mer-tails will either have to curve back and up and wrap around your sides, or they might sweep down and to the the centre to intertwine at your pubis. Do you want the design to stay above a low belt-line, or are you happy for it to partially disappear beneath it?  I’m assuming you don’t want the mermen’s tails disappearing into your pubic hair.

• Maciek: I like better the idea their tails are curved back and up. They can surely wrap around my sides. I also don’t have a problem to go with the tattoo beneath my belt line, but I’m not sure I want it to go into my pubic hair.

• Clive: I agree. OK for men who shave down there, but otherwise I think it would just look messy. I recently made a painting of a bearded fisherman… the first in a planned series… with a design of a giant nautilus pursuing a sailboat tattooed on his forearm.

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• Maciek: That’s my favourite painting of yours. Maybe the sailor should be also ginger? What do you think?

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• Clive: I don’t want to lock too much into the idea of colour just yet. Let’s leave that area for later discussion. Right now I’m going to concentrate on form. A couple of years ago I made illustrations for a fold-out alphabet book that included both Neptune and a sailor. Neither looked the way you’ve described what you’d like, but I’m including them here as a bit of background detail to illustrate that I like your idea! (The drawings for your tattoo will be a lot more detailed, and the outlines of the figures will be designed to be more elaborate in decorative terms.)

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• Maciek: Your drawings and paintings are really well detailed and I could wear every each of them on my skin.

• Clive: Well that’s very generous of you. I’m conscious that the tattooist will be working with a needle, which means I’ll be thinking carefully about making a design that will be right for that medium. Do you have someone in mind? You need to be sure that the design is going to be carefully transferred and executed. If you don’t have already have a tattoo artist, then you’ll need to start looking.

• Maciek: I have already a tattooist, he is perfect for this job. He’s name is Marcin Surowiec. Here you can view his work.

• Clive: I’ve just been to look. That’s very impressive work. He uses colour fantastically. Thinking about his beautiful use of blue, I wonder about using a vibrant blue and black, in the way the two are combined in this Hervé and the Wolf painting. The tonal values here would translate well to Surowiec’s technique.

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The project continues