Austin Kleon

PROCESS: BUDDHA TATTOO

buddha tattoo design

About a million years ago my buddy Nate asked me if I would design him a tattoo depicting the Buddha-to-be sitting under the Bodhi tree:

Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha-to-be, sits under the Bodhi tree and vows to reach enlightenment and break the cycle of death and rebirth. The demon Mara, who is temptation and death personified, attacks SG with his army in an attempt to thwart his enlightenment. In one fantastic scene, the arrows shot at SG miraculously turn to lotus petals mid-flight and rain down on him. After his army fails, Mara sends in his three hot daughters to tempt SG back to the world. Ultimately, Mara fails and SG awakens as the Buddha. This all happens over the course of one night.

And here I am, giving him a tattoo of the Buddha, but without the tree. (Or the hot daughters.) What kind of friend am I?

The real truth is, I couldn’t figure out how to put the tree in there without it totally overpowering the cool Buddha-to-be.

First, I started out with our best friend, Mr. Google Image Search:

Sketched:

I thought a kind of punky, badass young Buddha was appropriate for Nate:

Carved:

buddha tattoo design

Now all we need is videos of the tattooing—if he decides to go through with it….

MAP OF TWIN PEAKS BY DAVID LYNCH

MAP OF TWIN PEAKS BY DAVID LYNCH

From Nigel Holmes’ out-of-print Pictorial Maps:

Before showing the pilot script of his revolutionary show Twin Peaks to executives at ABC television, director David Lynch drew a map to give them an idea of where the action would unfold. The peaks of the title, and the town they name, are clearly visible as white-topped mountains rising out of the modeled landscape. By creating a sense of place, Lynch made the town all the more believable. A straightforward map would have been dull by comparison and might have suggested that there was something intrinsically interesting avout the geography of the place. What was much more important to convey was the mood of the story, and it’s nicely captured in Lynch’s quirky drawing. Not many maps in this book attempt to convey both a mood and data, but it can be done, and Lynch’s map shows that information can be imbued with emotion and retain its factual authority.

And more from Lynch:

We knew where everything was, and it helped us decide what mood each place had, and what could happen there. Then the characters just introduced themselves to us and walked into the story.

HELVETICA

mindmap of helvetica

An 80-minute film all about typography that interviews lots of great designers…what’s not to like?

LETTER TO A YOUNG COLLAGE ARTIST, PART TWO

Since people dug the previous post, here’s another letter—short this time—from collage artist Winston Smith sent to me in 1997 (I was still 13). In this one, Winston raps about saving money by not being addicted to cigarettes, the greatness of Leonardo Da Vinci, and Anti-Nazi German collage artist John Heartfield (who, coincidentally, worked with George Grosz).

Read the whole thing as a flickr set (with enlarged scans).

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Read Winston’s first letter

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