The Crowing

I’d like to reiterate something, if I can but figure out how to imbed a youtube video. Hang on whilst I try…

Well, I failed.  So instead, visit this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8urmVy_7ng   I’ll wait. 

Terrible, eh?

Anyway, a friend of mine contacted me and asked me to design a tattoo for him.  Many of my friends have had similar requests of late, and I regret I haven’t been able to put effort into them, but last night when I read the message from the man we call A-Train, I immediately accepted his challenge. 

See, since Justin passed, almost all of us have considered getting inked in his honor.  I drew something for his brother, Joey, and he’s scheduled an appointment to get it done.  He did do as I suggested and have somebody else redo it so it would be bigger and have more detail, and he said he’d had some new ideas, so that’s good too.  Technically I suppose the tattoo he gets won’t be the one I designed, but he says it looks a lot like mine.  I’m fine with that, I was just trying to help him get his vision on paper, so I’m happy if somebody else improved it. 

Anyway, A-Train’s request may have been a little more challenging than Joey’s.  This requires a little backstory to help everybody understand the description.  Justin, if I never mentioned it, was a wrestler.  It was one of his great passions; he loved being in the ring, watching others in the ring, and studying the business from as many angles as possible.  For much of his time as a wrestler, his "finishing move" was the Shooting Star Press, which he called the "Outlaw Star" because his ring name was Justin Outlaw.  That, and one of his favorite anime series was "Outlaw Star."  Anyway, the Shooting Star Press is a rather spectacular, acrobatic, high impact move with possibly greater risks for the one performing it than the one on the receiving end.  It’s a difficult move to describe…  Here’s another link.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=–KhG6m-YcQ  

A-Train wanted me to depict a man, upside down, mid-Shooting Star, with long red hair like Justin had.  I immediately thought that the best way to figure out how the hell that would look would be to find pictures.  Google image search, however, left me dry.  There were one or two pics, but they sucked.  All too far away, or not clear, or at an angle I didn’t like, or at a point during the maneuver that didn’t look the way I wanted.  So instead what I did was look at pictures of people performing Moonsaults, a completely different acrobatic maneuver that still has the body bent in pretty much the same way, since both are essentially a backflip.  I don’t feel like posting another link.  I found two different pictures that I thought looked about as graceful as possible, and most importantly would be instantly recognizable by Justin’s friends as his signature move, caught mid-air.  I sat here in front of the ol’ lappy for about an hour working on it, and I find it funny but I have to mention this– I almost never produce anything artistic while I’m comfortable.  It’s like I have to be hunched over, trying to balance my sketchbook on my knees while trying to keep out of my own light, almost as though actually preparing– like by getting a nice, bright light source and a pulling my chair up to a desk– I somehow jinx myself.  Anyway, I managed to come up with something I like.  Sorry, at the moment I don’t have any way to show it off.  Hope I didn’t build anybody’s expectations up there.  I’ll try to get around to posting a picture of it at some point.  Gotta head to [rhymes with jerk.]