Alongside the cockatoo in 2021, I channeled my fresh ink energy into creating a darker, highly stylized flash sheet. This layout brings together a collection of intense, heavy-contrast graphics. Including a skull-faced butterfly, a coiled scorpion, an anatomically detailed jawbone, a cocktail glass framing a hidden grin, and a splitting skull dripping with a single black rose.

This sheet allowed me to move away from light animal studies and lean back into the heavy, punchy blacks that make tattoo art so striking.

Process: Hand-inked by laying down dense, thick outlines, then packing solid black fields alongside granular stippling fields to make the highlights look stark and dramatic.

This page marks the absolute finale of my early tattoo-inspired era before a long hiatus. Shortly after finishing these designs, I returned to full-time work to get through the rest of the pandemic, which led into a year and a bit of intense life challenges where I didn't pick up a pen at all. Looking back, this sheet stands as a high-water mark of my technical execution right before a long, reflective break.