Tribal Snake Tattoo

Question:
My wife and I drew out what we hope to be her first sizable tattoo -a coral snake winding from her shoulder down her back, hip, and then around her upper thigh. We did find a probable candidate artist here in Seattle with a couple nat'nl convention awards. He seemed excited to do it but said it would take ~25-30hrs for the kind of detail he thinks it needs. - With THAT kind of investment, we want to do a very good research job. I'm worried that too much attention to detail will be wasted in three-five years as it ages. Don't want it to look like a blob from the distance. That concern is partly why we have heavy tribal styles for our other tattoos . So I'm looking for examples of good snake detail work on skin to help us have a brighter image. Dragons would probably be good for us also. URL's, posts, or binaries would be very much appreciated. I'm surprised that I've had trouble finding good examples other than japanese style work. What I've been able to dig up myself locally looks more like simple flash. Any info on how to deal with more extensive work would be great as well.

Answer:
-I am reminded of a comment by the late Kevin Nicolay, who painted wonderful pictures of plants and lived in Seattle before he died in 1990. He was discussing artistic technique in flower painting, where detail -- or the *appearance* of detail -- is quite important. His comment: fake it! Suggest, rather than portray. -My dragon took over 45 hours. I've already put in at least 60, maybe more, hours on the phoenix. It isn't close to being done. What you mean by detail and what the tattoo artist means may be two different things. If he's going to put in colorful and intricate shading (and this WILL look good in 3-5 years), it'll take some time. Sometimes to get the depth and shading right means 3 or more gradations of the same hue, or related colors, applied one after the other, slightly overlapping, for an even blending of the colors. An artist who takes the time to do this gives you a tattoo that doesn't look like it was done by a 6 yo with tempera colors. I suspect that you do not want a truly detailed tattoo but one which gives the appearance of detail, which suggests more than it actually depicts. It would seem to me that such a tattoo would age better than one that actually has a lot of detail in it. I'll leave the unearthing of a suitable tattooist as a class exercise. -Ok, so I have a blackwork snake around my left lower leg, about 8 hours work, in a fairly intricate tahitian-influenced style. However, I don't have any piccy's of it as yet (it's a fairly new piece, and we haven't got around to photoing it yet). So short of sticking my leg in the scanner , I'll have to get back to you with it at a later date (e-mail me personally if you want me to send you a gif when I have piccy's). As far as detailed, extensive work goes, well... A well performed tattoo should not end up looking like a blob just because it's detailed - tattooing has moved on a lot since the days of blue-green navy tattoos, the kind you usually see spread out all over someone's arms (although I know some older guy's with navy art that looks great - the exception rather than the rule!). As far as the time estimate goes, whilst I don't have too good an idea what level of detail you're looking at, that sounds reasonable given the scale. As I mentioned, mine took around 8 hours (not including drawing on) in freehand, and that was just for lower leg.