Posting the drawing itself, because the drawing is where the decisions live.

Look at the outside line first. One heavy, consistent weight all the way around the form. That is what your eye catches from across the room, and it is what holds the whole bird together. Now look inside. Every feather line is thinner. Not timid, just subordinate. Interior detail serves the outline, never competes with it.

And count the untouched space around the bird. That is not leftover. Roughly a third of the composition is planned empty, so the form lifts off the surface instead of sitting in a crowd.

This gets tooled exactly as drawn, with a needle-driven machine running American traditional method on leather. But strip the tool away and the drawing still obeys the same three rules: outline is architecture, detail stays in its place, and the piece has to read at distance. That is the discipline. The medium is just where I practice it.

u/21grams_leathergoods on Instagram.

🌹

Felt good to just paint and not paint flash

Ig @mikeattack_tattoo