Milan convention

Just a quick update. The Milan convention was an absolute blast and if you have the inclination I would highly recommend it as something to visit. I had a really nice time meeting up with old friends and making a few new ones.
I managed to get a couple of cool freehand tattoos done alongside some doodles.

Brighton is this weekend, I hope to see some of you there. I'm fully booked, but I will have some prints and original artwork for sale. If I look busy don't worry about disturbing me as it's all part of working a convention.

Cheers

Fake Sushi :)

Something for the weekend 18

This week has been on the quiet side. With the Milan and Brighton conventions looming ever nearer I decided to take things a bit easier to conserve energy for the madness.
Indeed this time next week I'll be in Italy and hopefully working on a tattoo. So the blog will be next updated the Friday before the Brighton convention.

I did manage to get some cool work done this week and another tattoo that I forgot to take pictures of is shaping up nicely.

I've also been asked to contribute my work to a blog that features female tattooist, for the month of February it is showcasing male tattooists, so I was honored to share my thoughts and work.
Once the article is published I will post a direct link, for those that wish to check out the site now (which I highly recommend) this is a link: https://ladiesandink.jux.com/

Something for the weekend 17

I can hardly believe January is nearly over and in less than two weeks I will be working at the Milan Tattoo Convention. The first convention of the year and my first one outside of the UK. I'm a curious mixture of excited and nervous about working alongside some of the biggest names in tattooing, some of whom have a had a big impact on my work.

The above reason and flat hunting have seen the rather sporadic start to this years posts. I'm doing my best to keep track of things but I can foresee the next couple of months will result in intermittent posting.
Hopefully life will settle back to some sort of normality in March and I can focus a bit more on this side of things.

Below is last weeks work with some of this weeks. Although I've neglected this blog I'm really pleased with how the tattooing is going. I'm slowly removing all stencils from my work and as many of you know I do a fair bit of my work by drawing it on. The severed heads and snake piece bring me a step closer to working in a way that all tattooists did before the invention of stencils. It's challenging and time consuming to do everything without stencils but I think the end result and 'feeling' you get is worth the effort.

Thanks for reading and I'll try and keep up with a weekly post.
Cheers

Something for the weekend 16

The first post of the year, it's a little later than I imagined it would be. I have lots of 'balls' in the air at the moment so the blog was put on hold until now.

Apart form having a nice relaxing break over Christmas and New Year, not much has happened. It was my first week back and I've started a few new pieces which is always nice. Looking forward to doing more on the bigger pieces I'm working on with renewed energy.

I was also lucky enough to have a double page spread in this months Total Tattoo.

Enjoy the New Year folks.

A quick drawing from today, done using Pentel Brush pens.

Something for the weekend 15

This week has really had me thinking about how I share my work on the internet and how others treat the images.
You will all be aware that I use instagram and facebook amongst others as sharing platforms. Over the last few months all free to use services have slowly changed their terms of use. Whilst I'm ok with them using an image for advertising I'm not so happy with them selling an image to a third party. As it turns out this was the result of a badly written paragraph in the tos, but it could happen so I'm future proofing somewhat.

After considering my position on how best to move forward I've decided to mark my images.
Watermarking photos is something I've avoided, because I prefer the honour system of life, and except that although some people will rip you off, most are genuine and can be trusted.
I find myself adding them in an attempt to protect my work from misuse by individuals re-posting the work without any credit to myself, which I'd say is at least as bad (if not worse) as the free sites changing the terms so they can sell an image to a third party.
I hope that this wont detract too much from the enjoyment of looking at my artwork, but I'm getting really fed up with seeing my images on different sites without getting any credit for the hours of effort I put into my tattoos, drawings etc.

Whilst thinking about all the discussion/hype around the issue on instagram's new terms of service it dawned on me that I and others have become lazy and far too relient on free services for promoting our work. I suspect alongside the ease of use the allure of hits, likes and positive comments help fuel the ego and the whole thing becomes slightly addictive.
Although it's a pleasurable experience I've found that updating several social networks eats into my time and the subsequent follow up further adds to the time 'needed'. All this means less focus on projects that could be done quicker, or having actual free time for sitting around thinking or writing for this blog.

In the short term I'm going to carry on posting on Instagram, Facebook etc. However over time I would love this blog/website to be the only source for my images online. Weather that will become the case largely depends on feedback from customers and how the other sites intend on using the images I post on their services.

On to the last seven days work. Only a couple are watermarked this time and I'd be interested in hearing any feedback about the watermarks.

Cheers and Happy Christmas to those of you that celebrate it.

Something for the weekend 14

Christmas is just around the corner and I'm looking forward to time off with my family and hopefully catching up on and finishing a few projects (my online store for one) This weeks post is going to be a short one, I'm working on the Fudo image and spending time at the computer is keeping me away from it. So apologies for the brevity of this weeks ramble.

I also had a few days off this past week so the amount of tattooing I've done is somewhat limited. I did however manage to finish of the psychedelic space tattoo. I'm very pleased with it, although we may return to it and add in a few details of darker areas in the new year.

Pushed the Shishi sleeve along today, we will be finishing it in a week or so. Really looking forward to seeing todays work healed.

Something for the weekend 13

So Christmas looms ever nearer and I'm reminded how quickly this year has flown by!! At least I've achieved some of the things I set out to do and failed at others (generally less important goals) you win some and lose some I guess?

This week has seen me finish two tattoos, do more an a backpiece, start a new cover up and the left arm on the Fudo body suit. On top of trying to organise myself in some way to prepare for the onslaught of next years projects :) The beginning of the year promises to be a hectic one on both a work and personal front.

Hopefully this coming week my online store will be going live and I can make some progress on the Fudo print. I'm also waiting for better light so I can get good photos of the skateboard.

Here is the weeks work, hope you enjoy it and thanks for looking.

The carp below was completed over two session and was a total of between 7.5/8 hours work.

This snake was 100% freehand adding to the half sleeve (also freehand and a snake design) again it was over two session and of a similar time to the carp above.