Tattoos

For my fisherman/sailor character Ozzy has confirmed that he is happy to act for me. Which led me to thinking about how I want this character to look and act. I decided to go down the 'stereotypical' route but decided to push it to the maximum.

 

The first thing I wanted to look at was sailor tattoos, and spent an hour designing a range of my own. First I looked at different images of excising images and recreated them in my own style. I am really interested in blue ink and personally I feel this looks more aesthetically pleasing and links to the ocean more. I am really happy with my designs, and by creating my own rather than using other people's images, I think it adds more interesting detail and depth to my design and again adds to the hand-crafted look I am aiming for. I am also able to add humorous tattoos in too, such as the 'chips' crest.

 

I found this website about how I would make my own temporary tattoos from scratch. Although it sounds interesting, it seems a very time consuming method due to the amount I am wanting to create, plus it uses not so readily available resources which I would need to source from somewhere.
http://victoriacullen.typepad.com/queenwithoutacountry/2012/08/tattoo-you.html

As I am wanting lots of tattoos created, I was willing to get them all printed on transfer sheets you are able to purchase rather than getting them professionally printed as I simply don't have the budget to do that. I found this pack on Amazon, however it has really mixed reviews and I am sceptical whether this method would work at all, plus where I would actually be able to print them using this paper as I don't have my own printer and college is strict about using your own printing materials.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tattoo-Transfer-Paper-A4-Temporary/dp/B006ELY672

I also looked into other ways temporary 'tattoos' are made, which led me to thinking about henna tattoos, this is a much more drastic yet more permanent solution. I would not want my actor to have his skin stained for after the shoot and this would be a very last resort if any other method didn't work.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/TheRedHotShop-Beauty-Essentials-Mehndi-Henna/dp/B0050BIOC0/ref=sr_1_cc_3?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1382447300&sr=1-3-catcorr&keywords=henna+pen

This final method I found is definitely my first choice. It is basically a pen, almost like an eye liner, which you draw straight onto the skin and let it dry for a few minutes. I have read a few reviews where it doesn't stay on the skin longer than a day and washes off really easily, which is bad in their cases, but really useful for me.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stargazer-Semi-Permanent-Tattoo-Pen/dp/B003AWKM3K/ref=pd_sim_office_1

Here is a quick Google search into what some people have managed to produce using these pens, there aren't many results, and I have looked on other photo sharing platforms and found it difficult to find any different pictures. I am going to buy the pen myself and do some experimentation and see if it is smudge proof, which will be important if my actor is being thrown around as if on a boat.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=stargazer+tattoo+pen&client=safari&rls=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=4EFkUvyjCuOQ1AXsvoHgDA&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ