Description:Be amazed: this might just be the final design!!
For those of you who are completely lost at this point, I've been trying to design a tattoo for my mother for... ooh, almost a year, now.
You can see a few substandard sketches in my Scraps. I haven't done many sketches, because I've been letting ideas ferment in my brain, rather than letting them out on paper. Remind me
not to design anything that way, ever again - it doesn't work out. *Pulls a face*
Anyway, after searching through lots of Nordic and Germanic ornamental art, and even flipping through a book of Art Noveau... I decided (and mum agreed) that a stylised design was the way to go. Mum's a fan of very simple, elegant design - which I actually find harder to do, because you've got to capture the "essence" of your subject with a lot less lines than in realism.
Some of the "unspoken" parts of this design -
- the circle represents unity; the whole mother-daughter-family thing (something I wanted to put into the tattoo from the very start, which was originally to mark mum's 50th birthday).
- the circle is also representative of the serpent Nidhogg in the original world-tree myth: with his tail held in his mouth, he supposedly encircles the entire world. So there are themes of "protection" in there too, on some level.
- Both the circle and spiral represent femininity, and are *very* old symbols. Mum has a soft spot for the old idea of "Earth Mother", and the power of female sexuality(think the Venus of Willendorf - very primal, very powerful.
).
- There are one or two heart-shapes hidden among the branches... I imagine their meaning's fairly obvious.
- And lastly, at mum's request - the design is assymetrical. "Because life is like that".
I'm quite pleased with this design... though I'm going to let it sit for a while just to be *certain*.
Anyway, my main question to anyone reading this, is: does anything in this scream "NOOOO, I won't work as a tattoo"? I took into account the fact that ink will blur over time, and I
think this design should still work OK. But I've no experience with the process of tattooing, so some input would be really helpful so that I can be sure this thing looks good *long-term*.
Permanent proof of temporary insanity demands total comfort with the design.
Though perhaps you could use a double circle? Or, at least, a perfect circle, instead of the slightly wobbly one you have. 
That's just my own faulty skills with pen and ink. Still, I'll be checking with the tattoo artist that 
