Sumi-nagashi is a form of Japanese ink marbling, and something that I had played around with in graduate school as a result of a surface design for textiles class. I knew I wanted one of these pattens for the background on my arm. I marbled tiny swatches of paper. One immediately struck me, and that was the one I took to Greg and said "Can you make it like this?" He did.

The three photos below show how the background was tattooed in stages. First Kulz did the general pattern outlines. Then in the second session, he added the thickened part of the line. For the third pass, he added the subtle marbling and shading.

Here are digital images of my left arm taken in 2001