Solaris- Tigershark and Lionfish

I’ve been busy lately so I haven’t had the chance to draw and post art, oops!

But here’s some tattoo references I did for Ai-Bee's Solaris babies Rilu and Atka.

Rilu’s pirate nickname is Tigershark and Atka is Lionfish; I tried to incorporate each animal into their tattoos in abstract-ish ways, like the water/tiger stripe hybrid on Rilu’s, along with the shark teeth at the bottom. Atka’s is more complex since lionfish tend to have pretty complicated striping, but the face on their right shoulder is supposed to be an abstracted visage of a lionfish’s face.

Even though they act like father and daughter, they’re not related by blood. Rilu is Black/Hawaiian mix, so their tats take a lot of Hawaiian cues, while Atka is Maori and is pretty obviously inspired by their traditional tattoos

More of this project can be found in this gallery:
 

And you can also reblog this on Tumblr!