From Consult to Design: Tree of Life

I’m eager to demonstrate how these formulas have worked previously for some of my clients. Lucky for me, and my ADHD, I can sprinkle in these sort of blog posts whenever I have a moment to.

Okay, so cutting to it. Today we are taking a peek at Olga’s Tree of Life/Tree of Knowledge design.

Olga came into the studio as a new client who was very excited to learn about this alchemy process and how it could help articulate expression in her piece.

After I sat down with her to discuss the basics of the consultation, she gave me the following information.

She wanted to get her forearm tattooed. She knew she wanted some sort of tree of life, but also representing knowledge. She is a school teacher who just graduated a degree enrollment. We spoke about her experiences as a recent student herself, her past experiences of being a student, and what sort of school she works for/teaching she does. This helped me to get to know her, since we hadn’t really spoken previously. She also mentioned she wanted to get a sunflower to pay homage to her home country of Ukraine.

I asked Olga what sort of attributes attracted her among the different modalities I offer, and she said quite plainly, all of them! So we wanted to include a purposeful energetic placement, numerology and tarot reference, element symbolism, animal symbolism.

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I do a fair amount of channeling while drawing custom work for my clients. Sometimes its preferable for me to do this with them, sometimes, for whatever reason (probably some sort of distraction or time restraint) I will channel on my own to come up with a rough draft layout. 

I started to visualize the piece in front of me and realized quickly that a tree of life is very circular, where Olga’s forearm is not. It must fit the space appropriately. So with composition in mind, I offered Olga the concept of showing the cycle of life between the branches and the roots. Whether connected somehow, or falling leaves off the branches to be interacting with the roots below. We needed to show some sort of cyclical energy, otherwise it would just be a tree. 

Olga also had a vision of having the roots entangling a stack of books, to represent the idea that nature is our greatest teacher. 

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After some time channeling and doing my due diligence research, I presented Olga with an Alchemy Love Letter, detailing all of the design elements, as well as a drawing. She revised it, asked for some changes to the tree, as seen in image 3.

I had discussed in the alchemy love letter the importance for the placement of the pieces together as one. 

And there you have it! A finalized line drawing to use for my tattoo stencil. Stay posted on my Instagram to see a final rendition of the actual tattoo!

Hope you found this helpful!