Tattoo sketches

Gambling Tattoo
A friend asked me to do this

In 2008 a friend of mine asked me to draw some sketches for his tattoo. He had allready the first part, pic1, tattoed on his shoulder. He wanted something with flames and gambling stuff.
I started copying his original tattoo without colours and worked from there. Took me about a week (working on and off, whenever I had a whim to continue and a new good idea).

He never actually got the Tattoo done this way. Kind of sad really. But he had the chance to get a smaller tattoo really cheap because he got to know someone who would do that on him. So he simply made a smaller and much simpler sketch himself. Something with a star and flames, kind of punk looking.

But I'm kind of proud of my work, so... here we go.

pic1 : The original tattoo without any colours (you can see the colouring further below).

pic18 : Last picture of the jokerhead, supposed to be furthest below. :-/

pic2 : added my first ideas, a crown and some playing cards.

pic3 : next idea was a pin-up queen card and a roulette thing...

pic4 : added some shadows...

pic5 : more details and a new idea: chips or maybe coins...

pic6 : more details

pic7 : they became coins... let's add some money as well.

pic8 : new idea, a joker in the left upper corner. more details and the coins became chips again...

pic9 : new idea: more flames, a band to connect to the original tattoo, a shamrock for luck, maybe some cherries a slot machine and a diamond?

pic10 : another new idea: roses to the left (beside the joker)?

pic11 : the diamond has become real, as well as the shamrock.

pic12 : the slot machine has becoma real. new ideas: a horse shoe, leprechaun and gramophone as well as a little text in the middle maybe? and musicnotes, a dice more, cherries, and the roses...

pic13 : more details, more musicnotes... this is actually the finished piece done with a pencil on paper. I newer moved the joker to the left. after this i stopped working on this piece, since my friend didn't need it anymore.