If you've been following this blog for a while you might recognize this guy (or at least his tattoos). It started as a half sleeve on one arm, then when he overcame his fear of upsetting his folks we dropped it down to a 3/4 sleeve. Technically it really is called a 7/10 length, so I should start using the correct language from now on I guess. After we finished it with various kitsune (fox) motifs, we went to the other side and started a matching sleeve of various tengu. He had always expressed an interest in getting some tebori (traditional Japanese hand poke) work and said he would wait for that to bring it down to the wrist. Last year when my friend ToshiHide came to visit he got a couple of chrysanthemums around his right wrist. And recently when Horimasa was visiting, he got the other forearm done with the large orange chrysanthemum and a uchide no kozuchi (lucky hammer) pictured above.
He then asked me to bring the background down behind the new work to a clean cut off around the wrist. Sounds simple enough, but to hook up the the existing piece and navigate behind the new work and make it all look natural in such a tight space was a little trickier than it seems...
Luckily, I'd say it all worked out well. I have to admit that it's a very cool pair of sleeves. To get two sleeves by the same artist in a very close time period with matching motifs (aesthetically and symbolically) and then throwing in the twist of the hand poke work by two different members of the Horitoshi family...how sweet is that?
Still a few more sessions to finish the tengu side, then extending them to the chest?
Here is the other arm...
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