Tattoo, second stage.
So, now that I’ve tested out my remarkable wimpiness against the process of getting a tiny tattoo, I’m ready to launch out on something a bit more serious. I gave the bloke at the studio my picture of the Bewcastle Cross
and asked him to turn it into a design that could actually be tattooed on. While I was asking for the impossible, I also mentioned that I would like it to go around the cross on my shoulder. He measured how much space there was on my arm and came up with this:
which I think is brilliant. I’m pretty certain that no one else in the world will have one like this 🙂 So now it’s just a matter of saving up for it. No one told me that the major sacrifice involved in getting a tattoo would be financial. But I think I can justify the outlay to myself if have it for my birthday. (Which happens to be less than a month away.)
That style of decoration is called “whitevine” and, when done as calligraphy, it is normally coloured in. The vines are painted white, with shadowing to show they are “round”, while the animals are painted in their natural colours and the background in strong, rich colours – typically green, blue, red &/or gold. Google “whitevine calligraphy” and you’ll get some pictures of what it looks like.
Whitevine was heavily influential on the Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau movements of the late 19th/early 20th centuries.
I’m normally not keen on coloured tattoos, however I’d defiitely make an exception in this case. You could easily have the black inkwork done, and then get it coloured in at a later date, when you have the money.
I hadn’t heard of “whitevine”, but it’s nice to see it – it certainly looks as though it’s a descendent of the same tradition that produced the Bewcastle cross. But I had a year studying Anglo-Saxon art and archaeology, and there we called it “Inhabited vine scroll”. At that date (7-8th Century AD) it’s usually found in carvings rather than illumination. The panel above is a drawing of one of the sides of the Bewcastle cross in Cumbria http://www.bewcastle.com/cross.htm
I could easily believe that the carving was painted when it was new – and it would be nice to think that the illuminations could be taken as a guide for what it looked like, because that would be very splendid. But in the face of not really knowing that, plus the fact that – like you – I’m not fond of coloured tattoos, I’m inclined to leave it plain.
That way if I change my mind at a later date I can get colour added. If I colour it now and then change my mind, I can’t get it removed without lots of trouble and expense.