Tattoos with meaning

So, I've finally settled on a design for my latest tattoo.

Mucha's daisy

As with all my tattoos the 'Mucha's daisy' design has a special meaning and significance to me. It's a two part homage.

Firstly, gerbera daisies always make me think of my best mate, Ryan, who passed away last year. I tried to think of ways to design a daisy that weren't too plain, but I certainly didn't want just a realistic inking of a daisy. But, mostly, I wanted something that wasn't too limp.

Finally, after a few months inspiration struck.

The second homage is to one of my favourite artists, Alphonse Mucha. My dissertation for my masters was based around the flower series by Mucha. So I drew inspiration for the tattoo from his print 'Woman with daisies'.

'Woman with daisies' - Alphonse Mucha

Once this epiphany hit the connection for me became even stronger as Ryan was very proud of her Czech heritage and loved visiting Prague. A love of Mucha's work is one of the few convergences in our very different tastes (in everything from music to art) that we bonded over. 

So, once I had my mind set on this the rest of the design fell together. It's still quite different from the others but I want it to be. It's meant to remind me of a the friendship and love and confidence that Ryan's friendship gave me. It's supposed to be gentle and florid compared to the very heavy 'masculine' lines of my other tatts. It will blossom over my heart when I need a reminder of all the love I have in my life.

The other tattoos

My very first tattoo is a glyph of a phoenix. 

It's a simple symbolic tattoo. I created a stylised image of a bird rising above of a triangle, the alchemical symbol for 'fire' (also the mathemetical symbol for 'change'). (Double nerd alert: It's also inspired by the phoenix tattoo Rachel Summers had burned into her skin when the Shi'ar attempted to wipe out the whole Grey family bloodline.) It reminds me that life comes in cycles. It rests on my shoulder and bursts to life like fiery wings when I need to burn white hot to get through a challenging time and reminds me to rest and recoup at the end.

My second tattoo is a series of Adinkra Symbols: 'Ananse Ntontan' - wisdom, creativity, 'Nea Onnim no sua a, ohu' - Life long education and 'Wawa aba' - perseverance. 

When I'm feeling discouraged they remind me of my philosophy for success: perseverance and proliferation! You've got to keep creating and learning and doing new things in order to get where you want to be. There will always be set backs. But, as long as you keep going, you'll keep growing. It's embedded on my arm to give me strength from day to day.

Enjoy!
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