A design I have recently submitted to Threadless for consideration (results TBD), this was inspired by my previous Sugar Skulls pattern and the continued inspiration of vintage tattoos and Dia de los Muertos. I also have a serious love for drawing wonky body anatomy.

Above: all of the individual sketches and inking, done in two sizes of Micron pen (005 and 01), plus the super original color study (bottom right), which I quickly trashed because it felt too complicated.

 

Below: another color study in the bright, celebritory color palette, which stayed around a lot longer.

Below: the final narrowing down of colors and repeat style--I put this one on Facebook and Twitter and asked people's preferences in the gray repeat and the response was overwhelmingly for the right design.

From there I decided to submit the pattern to Society6 for holiday sales (buy here) and to Threadless for consideration as a Select design.