Happy Memories
for Eli
Henrique contacted us to create a tribute to the four most important women in his life: his grandmother and godmother, his mother, his sister, and his niece and goddaughter.
1 / The initial conversation
During our conversation, Henrique told me more about the history of these women, and what his relationship was like with each of them.
Grandmother/Godmother: A hardworking woman, she was abandoned with four children in São Paulo. She raised all the family members.
Mother: A partnership relationship; they faced together the period when she dealt with cancer, which she has since overcome.
Sister: Her best friend, they grew up together and cultivate a friendship of trust and loyalty.
Niece/godchild: His only niece, the family's darling, extremely attached to Henrique.
In this project we had one condition: Henrique already has many tattoos in an oriental style, and he wanted to maintain that same theme for our project.
2 / The creation
Before I start drawing, as usual, I begin with research. My intention was to find representations of feminine archetypes present in Japanese culture, rather than choosing direct elements (names or photos of them).
In my research, I found 3 possible paths:
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4 seasons (In Japanese culture, the seasons have enormous symbolic significance.)
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4 deities (Mythological characters usually carry a deep meaning)
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4 species of Japanese flowers (subtle and elegant)
Conclusion: One of the precautions we took was to avoid making the design's aesthetic too delicate and feminine, since it's a tattoo for a male body. In this case, we opted to mix themes to create aesthetic variety.
3 / The result
Childhood + creativity
Eli told me that painting was a hobby, and we know that our creativity is directly linked to our inner child. Thinking along those lines, I decided to combine two topics she brought up in a single drawing. This is Sheep, the creative name Eli gave to her stuffed sheep.
The cranes + the trees
Here we bring two topics together again. According to Eli, the origami cranes are a tribute to Eastern culture, a reminder of the kindness and respect present in relationships between Japanese people. And the tree, as mentioned before, was chosen to symbolize her surname, which translates to "Forest".
The refuge
For us Brazilians, the tropical landscape might sound like a cliché, but Eli is Dutch, and this type of scenery evokes a very strong sense of travel and refuge, since this isn't a common destination for them. To reinforce the idea, I added small travel stamps and labels to the back of the drawing.
The family
The ghost is also a reminder of Eli's childhood, a game she used to play with her grandmother. And the olive tree, with the specific number of 4 leaves and 2 olives, represents the 4 members of her family along with her two kittens.
Your constellation
Here we solved three issues: we incorporated the moon that she already had on her arm, I like this solution because we managed to give a post-healing result that shows the first tattoo was conceived along with the whole design, and taking advantage of the theme, I added the stars and represented her sign with the constellation of Scorpio.
Before I start drawing, as usual, I begin with research. My intention was to find representations of feminine archetypes present in Japanese culture, rather than choosing direct elements (names or photos of them).
In my research, I found 3 possible paths:
4 seasons (In Japanese culture, the seasons have enormous symbolic significance.)
4 deities (Mythological characters usually carry a deep meaning)
4 species of Japanese flowers (subtle and elegant)
Conclusion: One of the precautions we took was to avoid making the design's aesthetic too delicate and feminine, since it's a tattoo for a male body. In this case, we opted to mix themes to create aesthetic variety.
