Sailor Jerry inspired Weed Tattoo Design

I wanted this piece to look as much like a piece of Sailor Jerry flash as possible. To do this I chose one of his pieces I like most and referred to it constantly throughout my processes.

This was the piece of Sailor Jerry flash I referred to.

I started with a basic picture of a piece of marijuanna that I felt looked easy to work with on photoshop.

I heightened the contrast and saturation so that the flower stood out from the background more, this was to make it easy to cut out with the magnetic lasso tool.

After cutting it out and adding it to a new layer I was now left with just the flower, which was all i wanted.

I added a basic paint effect filter to simplify the colours, this was semi-pointless as I eventually filled it with a block colour anyway. But it did give me a clearer indication as to what colour I should use.

On the Sailor Jerry piece and most other Sailor Jerry pieces the image was drawn on a really nice, grainy, old effect brown paper. So I found something similar using GoogleImages and opened it in photoshop.

I added a Film Grain effect to the paper to give it more texture, similar

to the one i was referencing.

After filling the flower with a block, pale green colour, I lined it using the pen tool and stoke path combination like my previous piece.

I used a soft brush tool with a basic black colour to shade the image, trying to keep my shading as similar as possible to my reference.

I blended out my shading roughly to fit the theme.

After the shading, I added the same Film Grain filter I used on the paper background so that everything had the same texture.. so that the flower actually looked as though it was drawn on to the paper.

I added some basic detail to the flower, to make it look more like a marijuanna flower.

Using the pen tool, I started to add a scroll to the piece. This will eventually read the message, " I love you Mary Jane".  Referencing a song by Cypress Hill, a song famously about the love of marijuanna. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-ADAr9-Aqs

I filled the scroll with a colour, and shading similar to those used throughout Sailor Jerry's flash pieces.

I added a sphere behind the piece, for no other reason than I like to do this. I like how it looks. I think its nice. Its nice... right?

I added the same film grain filter to the sphere so that it matched the rest of the piece.

Changed the colour of the sphere. 

I was going to use the text tool and a font to fill the scroll with my desired message. Unfortunately there was no font suitable or nice enough in my opinion to fit the bill, so I used the brush tool and a solid black line to draw the letters in manually trying to keep it as similar as possible to my reference piece.

Over all I am very happy with the finished piece. I feel that by trying to keep the piece as similar as I could to my reference photo, I achieved what I wanted to and the piece turned out great.