I Will Not Drawing Your Fucking Tattoo
(Parodying Josh Olsen's "I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script")
I will not draw your fucking tattoo.
Plain and simple, black and white, clear as crystal. I will not drawing your fucking tattoo.
To most of you, you're probably thinking "I didn't ask you in the first place, stop yelling at me". To you I'm sorry for my rudeness. If you're an artist however, whether amateur or professional, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about. The situation is playing out in your head all too clearly. Someone (probably with no creative inclination themselves, but more on that in a minute) found out you were an artist and said "dude, you're an artist?? I had this idea for a wicked sweet tattoo! Will you draw it for me?"
Right about this point you probably felt your stomach turn. Even if they were willing to pay for it (which some are, but even then it's hard), you could probably barely contain your contempt and wished with all your heart the person asking would get torn apart by badgers on the way home. Sadly it's an all-too-common occurrence for us.
There's many reasons for this. First and foremost? Most tattoos are lame, let's just be honest about it. Take a look at the random clip art tattoos are your neighborhood parlor sometime. Chances are you'll find a lot of Looney Tunes characters, barb wire or "tribal designs" (whatever that means), words like "Sexy Baby" in Old English font, and Asian characters. You get more than one of these on your person and your body looks like a guitar case covered in stickers. With selections like this it's no wonder people would seek out custom designs.
This leads to the second problem though: the custom design the person wants is usually lame too. It's sad to see how uncreative people are willing to get when it comes to a piece of art that they want burned into their flesh. The person asking it probably does not take into account the individual talents or styles of the artist they're asking. They even give a poorly described, unspecific description of what they want. When someone asked me to draw them "thugged out" with "lots of platinum" I can't help but sarcastically think "well that should be simple to do".
It hurts your artistic soul a little bit when someone requests such a stupid design. But there's one thing that's even worse...when a fellow artist requests you draw them a stupid tattoo design.
When I was in art college we had a club of people that got together to watch the show "Lost" on the big projector in the cafeteria. One of their members (I won't say who, but I've repeated this story a bit so my friends can probably guess) got the idea to launch a contest for someone to design his tattoo. He wanted it to be the character Sawyer dressed as Wolverine ripping out of his skin. This guy was an artist! Couldn't he draw it himself? The only prize in this contest was that the winner would get the "honor" of having their design tattooed on this chap's arm. As if you'd want such preservation.
It's time we stood up and said no. No I will not draw Sawyer ripping out of your skin. Nor will I draw Tapion from DBZ ripping out of your skin. Nor will I draw Jason or Freddy or even Bruce Campbell ripping out of your skin (what is it with tattoo enthusiasts and skin ripping?).
I will not draw you all "thugged out". I will not draw something random to later be paired up with a Brush Script or Old English font. And I will not draw Sauske from Naruto shirtless on a skateboard with blue wings playing an electric guitar.
In short? I WILL NOT DRAWING YOUR FUCKING TATTOO.
I will not draw your fucking tattoo.
Plain and simple, black and white, clear as crystal. I will not drawing your fucking tattoo.
To most of you, you're probably thinking "I didn't ask you in the first place, stop yelling at me". To you I'm sorry for my rudeness. If you're an artist however, whether amateur or professional, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about. The situation is playing out in your head all too clearly. Someone (probably with no creative inclination themselves, but more on that in a minute) found out you were an artist and said "dude, you're an artist?? I had this idea for a wicked sweet tattoo! Will you draw it for me?"
Right about this point you probably felt your stomach turn. Even if they were willing to pay for it (which some are, but even then it's hard), you could probably barely contain your contempt and wished with all your heart the person asking would get torn apart by badgers on the way home. Sadly it's an all-too-common occurrence for us.
There's many reasons for this. First and foremost? Most tattoos are lame, let's just be honest about it. Take a look at the random clip art tattoos are your neighborhood parlor sometime. Chances are you'll find a lot of Looney Tunes characters, barb wire or "tribal designs" (whatever that means), words like "Sexy Baby" in Old English font, and Asian characters. You get more than one of these on your person and your body looks like a guitar case covered in stickers. With selections like this it's no wonder people would seek out custom designs.
This leads to the second problem though: the custom design the person wants is usually lame too. It's sad to see how uncreative people are willing to get when it comes to a piece of art that they want burned into their flesh. The person asking it probably does not take into account the individual talents or styles of the artist they're asking. They even give a poorly described, unspecific description of what they want. When someone asked me to draw them "thugged out" with "lots of platinum" I can't help but sarcastically think "well that should be simple to do".
It hurts your artistic soul a little bit when someone requests such a stupid design. But there's one thing that's even worse...when a fellow artist requests you draw them a stupid tattoo design.
When I was in art college we had a club of people that got together to watch the show "Lost" on the big projector in the cafeteria. One of their members (I won't say who, but I've repeated this story a bit so my friends can probably guess) got the idea to launch a contest for someone to design his tattoo. He wanted it to be the character Sawyer dressed as Wolverine ripping out of his skin. This guy was an artist! Couldn't he draw it himself? The only prize in this contest was that the winner would get the "honor" of having their design tattooed on this chap's arm. As if you'd want such preservation.
It's time we stood up and said no. No I will not draw Sawyer ripping out of your skin. Nor will I draw Tapion from DBZ ripping out of your skin. Nor will I draw Jason or Freddy or even Bruce Campbell ripping out of your skin (what is it with tattoo enthusiasts and skin ripping?).
I will not draw you all "thugged out". I will not draw something random to later be paired up with a Brush Script or Old English font. And I will not draw Sauske from Naruto shirtless on a skateboard with blue wings playing an electric guitar.
In short? I WILL NOT DRAWING YOUR FUCKING TATTOO.