I used to draw various fantasy arm glove-looking things on my arm all the time during high school to keep from getting too bored in the boring classes. I did it for about a month or 2, almost everyday. I decided that doing it once more would work for this task. Since it has been almost a decade since I've done this, I made a schematic of sorts- planned out ahead kind of what I was going to draw.



I didn't remember exactly what I used to do, or how it evolved once I was at the height of this art form of mine, but I remembered some basics. So I used the basics I remembered- borders, a long never-ending squiggily line to fill in the area that wasn't a border, jewel, and a personal rule was to use every color in the pack at least once. My arm is a lot more strangely shaped and curvier than I remember, and mistakes were made. These inks tend to smear more than wipe away too, but after some initial mishaps I got a final product that seemed reminiscent of what I was going for-






That felt too easy, so I decided the other arm was going to get a design too, and since the other one was a thing of my past, I decided to go for what I would draw today, should I be getting bored in a class. I decided something kind of bio-mechanical was a fun direction I could take it in. But I've never drawn anything of that nature before, so research was needed. Google came to my rescue- a search for gears brought me to a great wikipedia entry full of pictures, and a search for bio-mechanical brought me to a website full of bio-mechanical tattoos. Perfect! But beside being entirely new subject matter, yet another difficulty was going to be my handedness. I am kind of ambidextrous- in kindergarten I picked up writing utensils with either hand until my teacher told my parents to get me to pick one. After close observation, they decided I had a slightly higher ratio of grabbing something with my left hand, so I am left handed now with fine motor skills like writing, chopsticks, etc. I used my right for everything else though- baseball, bowling, scissors, tennis. So I CAN write with my right hand, but haven't practiced or honed that at all. So, new material, in the hand I can't really draw with. Woohoo! Schematics are VERY necessary this time-



I like most of it except the stretched skin thing I tried towards the top- that didn't work out at all. I don't even know what I'm going to draw there instead, but I'm ready to go anyway. (Notice I still draw a right hand, even though this is going on a left hand. Change, oh noes!)

This takes a lot longer than I anticipated, and my poor right hand gets tired quickly. Just the 2 intertwining tubes that are my border take forever, and cause a ton of attempts at erasing which result in smearing. When I finish, I contemplate stopping entirely.




Ironically, the rest went pretty quickly. Good thing I didn't quit :P I just sort of made it up as I went when it came to the top part below the big gear on my hand- didn't come out too badly. Stupid smearing.