Hominid Skulls wearing Mexican Wrestling Masks

Not every art project for a client sees the light of day. Here's an example from a few years ago.   
(I retained the copyright on the images even if the contract had gone through: in this case, I was never paid so I'm quite sure there's no conflict, and it's fair game to post these.)
The client had asked for a challenging tattoo design.

Up to you to judge whether or not these fit the bill. The concept was three different hominid skulls, each wearing Mexican Luchador wrestling masks. In black line: no colour, no grey scale. See?  Challenging. How do you bring out the masks on very specific human ancestral skulls without colour?I got started by working on the hominid skulls and on the layout. Homo sapiens sapiens, Homo erectus tautavelensis and Australopithicus afarensis.

Deciding the layout of the three skulls.

Originally, I drew the concept in reverse by mistake;
three masks that look  like hominid skulls. 

I played with the drawing in Photoshop to get a different view of a "messier" ink style.

Now the challenge of overlaying cloth onto skulls,
and making the bold cartoon outlines found on Luchador masks.

Final submitted image. The Australopithecus on the bottom is wearing a half-mask.

There were more drawings than these few; I like to keep clients informed when working on a project and it's especially important for the personal work involved in tattoos. Ultimately, the project was never fully realized. But what do you think of the last image?  Does it read as hominid skulls wearing Luchador masks?

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 Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow under Creative Commons Licence.

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