After finishing the Cempaka tattoo, I didn’t get any tattoo for a while. During that time, I actually thought about getting a memory of Ari as a tattoo. You know, Koda and Aina had their turns… Ari has to have one, too.
For some personal reasons, I wanted the tattoo to be a Hanuman tattoo. We’ve done research of what type of Hanuman to draw. I was sure that I wanted the Hanuman in Indonesian style… It could be in a form on wayang kulit, wayang orang, or mask from places in Indonesia… I was sure I didn’t want it to be in Indian style. Ari and I tried to draw a few artworks, but none of them really connected with me. So finally we decided to find a tattoo artist who could draw the Hanuman that I liked. We contacted a few tattoo artists, met with a couple of them, but it was like a dead end.
After getting desperate in finding tattoo artist, Randy suggested Ferdy from Lawless Tattoo, the guy who was working on Randy’s huge back-piece. I contacted Ferdy through whatsapp (he was in Jakarta and I was in Singapore) at the beginning of 2013. After I explained what I wanted and sent the picture of my current Cempaka tattoo (I wanted the Hanuman to be on the same area as the Cempaka), he came up with this:
And I fell in love with it… The Hanuman was holding the cempaka! Perfect!
I think we finished the design process (which was done very quickly) sometime in March, but I couldn’t fly to Jakarta until September. So, the tattooing process had to be delayed for almost 6 months. Thank you, Ferdy, for being so patient!
In September, I made an apppointment for the 12th… and Ferdy started to work his magic…
Ari and Aina also came along to the Lawless headquarter in Kemang (Noushka stopped by later after work). And while they were waiting for the 3-hour tattooing session, Aina was drawing her own Hanuman, too.
The whole process took about 3 hours. Unlike the Cempaka tattoo when I was having a flu, this time I was completely healthy. So the process was super easy compared to the Cempaka tattoo, even though it took 3 times longer. I didn’t feel any discomfort until the last 15 minutes.
First he did the outline. It took about 2 hours to finish… I was quite comfortable then. So comfortable that I started to feel sleepy midway…
I loved the outline so much that I even considered stopping… Sooooo pretty!
After we finished the outline, Ferdy took a small break. Drinking and resting his hands, while I walked around straightening my legs and had a glass of water. Then we continued with the shading.
The shading took about an hour. By the end of the session, I started to feel uncomfortable. Kinda like annoyed with the pain. And tired, perhaps. I guess my limit of tattoo session is 3 hours. After that, I started being bitchy… haha.
Then, it was all done… and it was even prettier!All those tiredness and irritation went away when I saw the finished tattoo… I was sooo amused by the amount of details on the tattoo. It looks soooo good, even better than what I had imagined it would look.
Then, after it’s all done, and the fresh tattoo had been oiled and wrapped in cling wrap, I had to take a picture with Ferdy, the tattoo man. Thanks Ferdy, I really love the new ink!
The rest of the photos are in the Thalia’s Tattoo: Hanuman photo album in Flickr.
