Very proud of this piece!! I’ve been planning on getting a tattoo for about a year now, and I’m almost surprised how straightforward and nearly painless the whole tattooing process was!! Needles are a major phobia for me, but the tattoo artist I got it at was really friendly and welcoming and made the process much more relaxing.

This design is very significant and personal to me; Fireweed is my clan crest and the pen is specifically a stylus pen, meant to represent my passion and love for drawing and digital art. Fireweed is also a significant factor in the environment as well, as it most often grows in areas of disaster, specifically in burned out and landslide areas. It’s ability to grow quickly and in harsh conditions means that it can grow easily in areas hit heavy by wildfires, and when it dies it leaves plentiful resources for other plants to regrow on top of it.

So while the stylus pen represents my passion and love for my craft, the Fireweed represents both my culture and family as well as the hope and ability to recover and continue my craft no matter if I face burnout, loss, or other negative situation that makes me feel like my career path is hopeless or my artwork has no use.

Overall, I’m really happy with this design and how it turned out on my skin. I’ve gotten several requests/enquires about doing formline tattoo designs, and I think this experience is enough to convince me to actually look into designing tattoos. I’m going to be doing a ton of research and studies into the subject beforehand and I’m going to reach out to some other formline tattoo artists of course, but I’m excited and curious to see how this interest will turn out!!!