Realism
I planned this full sleeve as one dark-fantasy scene running through the arm. The Viking longship starts the story higher up, while the dragon and fortress carry it into the lower section. Black and grey shading keeps the different subjects in the same visual world. Small warm accents in the windows and wings lift a few focal points without changing the sleeve into a full-colour piece.
The wrist pattern gives the composition a deliberate finish instead of letting the background fade out at the hand. Large sleeves need this kind of route from the start. If each reference is drawn as a separate picture, the arm can quickly become a stack of unrelated panels. I decide which subject leads and where the darkest parts sit. Then I work out how one section hands over to the next. Only after that do I make the first big stencil. This sleeve took four sessions, about twelve hours in all. The photographs show the finished work and the scale needed for this level of detail.
