Spirit Kanji Tattoo

Occasionally I design tattoos for friends of mine and this is one of my personal favorites. The time was 1992, I was living in Santa Cruz, and working at a company called SCO. The gentleman I produced the commission for was Jeff Bailey, widely known as "Jazzy", supposedly derived from DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince by a co-worker. He is a very pale, red-headed, Irish guy and he had an Asian dragon on his left shoulder blade by Pinky Yun. He wanted something Asian in flavor, and he liked some of the kanji tattoos that I had. This kanji means "spirit" and it is combined with a lattice design and a blossom.

After coming up with an outline design that he liked, I colored about forty variations with colored pencils. I did all kinds of color combinations. Jazzy reviewed these and quickly had two that were similar that he liked. The finished design is the lattice and kanji colors from one and the flower colors of another. In the final tattoo, Mandy Flynn suggested that the purple in the center be changed to blue, as the tiny dots wouldn't show otherwise. You can see the blue in the final photo (top right).