Hollis Fletcher & Don Ed Hardy: the Maid of Orleans (Patreon)

While I have skin in the game when it comes to the 'drawing tattoo designs on an iPad debate' that invariably comes up almost daily on social media, I do miss the wildly elaborate colored pencil studies that tattooers used prepare for their appointments.

Ed Hardy, specifically, who I consider the most important tattooer in the history of the medium, was as prolific a draftsman as he was a tattoo artist, producing a body of work of concept drawings that could have been a career in it's own right tattooing not withstanding.

A few years back, a selection of Ed's prelim tattoo concepts were on display at the Pagoda City Tattoo Convention in Reading, PA, and this piece caught my attention both because of design and who it was designed for- eccentric tattoo collector Hollis Fletcher.