Jill's Birds and Flowers - Part One

Jill sent me some imagery of old Japanese woodcut prints and Chinese bird and flower paintings. Here's some description of what she wanted from our initial correspondence: "Flowers - I love them. I'm a gardener. I like how perennials "die" in the winter and come back in the spring. I like cycles of life/death/rebirth. renewal. I like the idea of birds as symbols of freedom and their ability to take off and rise into the sky to see things from a completely different perspective than a human's very limited one." "Part One" of this blog post is the first section, which flows across her back. There are a few old runes tattooed down her spine, that got completely covered under the right-most bird's wing. The second design will flow from her shoulder onto her arm, and be our next tattoo session.

Here's the first section, worked to completion in one session: