wednesday 29th june

Glasgow with the usual crew today, and some extra excitement,,, there was a big drugs bust a few doors down on Bank St, someone had been gardening three floors of marijuana in one of the town houses!  😯
Wouldn’t you be able to smell something like that? maybe that’s why they got busted…

luckily our thatrick wasn’t involved, he was there for his appointment to get the rest of his back started.
He’s been a big fan of Steven’s tiger from a couple of years ago, and today we outlined one just for him. I’d designed a composition that was quite different to Steven’s backpiece but had the elements that appealed to thatrick, dragon, muscley tiger and some water with koi.

we got it drawn on and outlined today, even started on some basic shading. I like a good 4 hr session!

there was time left in the day to finish off what we didn’t get round to doing on sean’s chinese 3/4 sleeve. This is based on an antique chinese opium pipe and the designs on it, we copied the design where we could, but had to make some adjustments to make the whole thing fit on his arm
we will be adding a grey shaded background to it at a later date

tuesday 28th june

we had our Christmas night out on sunday, we went to the Sheep Heid pub in Duddingston where they have one of the old original victorian skittle alleys, it was so much fun! Today we were all moaning about having sore muscles from carrying the big heavy bowling balls about and having to pick up the skittles and put them back by hand….us tattooists aren’t used to that kind of hard work  😆

Actually, having a christmas night out in summer is fun, drinking in the beer garden in the sun, more like Christmas in Australia!

So, tribe 3 today, with Erik, Alex and laura, and a quite different day of tattooing for me.
First up was vegan Sheena, I like tattooing fellow vegans.

Sheena was getting a tattoo with her 18 year old son’s name in it, sweet  😀 we also went over the lines and colour in some of the old tattoo above the new addition

then dawn got the roots of a tree on her back. We did them in dot work,  to give the design some added interest and delicateness.
Dawn is concerned about taking the tattoo above her collar line for now and wants to keep it ‘respectable’ for her job, but there will be more to this design, including little leaves falling. I’ll wait until Dawn feels a bit less respectable hehe..

saturday 25th june

strange day at Tribe 3 for me, my first customer showed up as planned, we did the tattoo and then I waited for the next one. Unfortunately Mark phoned us from Glasgow and said my customer had rocked up there for her appointment…. english isn’t her first language, so we think something might have got lost in translation! We were going to start a half backpiece. oh well, that’s now been delayed.

I got some well over due maintenance done on my tattoo equipment while I waited for my consultation to come in early instead of at the end of the day, and then left early! What a part timer  😆

My customer who did show up was dean, we finished the bulk of the black and grey on his piece today, colour is next!

tomorrow we are having the Tribe Christmas night out. No, we’re not making some kind of ‘anti Christmas’ statement or being ‘krazee’ by having it 6 months late, we’re just a bit pathetic at organising ourselves, and it’s taken us this long to get it together. embarrassing!

friday 24th june

tribe 1 today, with Rob, George and Tiddy,

my first customer of the day was Javier, he had a memorial tattoo he wanted on his shoulder. His two brothers were killed in a plane crash, and the older one Rama, had a tattoo on his shoulder that Javier wanted to base his piece on. We looked through photos of Rama and some video footage taken when Rama got his dragon tattoo done to get an idea of the position and look of it, and drew Javier’s tattoo on with this in mind.
Javier’s tattoo is not identical to Rama’s, as Rama’s tattoo incorporated a few existing pieces, but we took elements to show a family resemblance between the dragons.

there will be some colour and black shading added next time

the Lynsey stopped by to get a japanese fan tattooed, with cherry blossoms, pretty!  😀

just found this website, featuring ‘ladies who ink’, myself included  😀
http://percolatemagazine.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/ladies-who-ink/

wednesday 22nd june

glasgow for me today where i had myself a koi kind of day..
the first koi booked in was Paul, I was extending an existing tattoo of a dragon into a full sleeve.
the dragon was a cover up by another artist and might require some lasering at a later date, but for now we are concentrating on getting some flow and interest into the lower part of the sleeve, hopefully that will distract from the work further up the arm. Once all the new bits are done we can step back and see how much more work the older part needs.

geoff had been to see me about a koi tattoo a couple of years ago and we’d got as far as lining it and putting some basic shading in, but then he had some bad health and operations, so the tattoo was put on hold for a bit.
Now he’s back and we can pick up where we left off, putting some colour in and going back to the bits we didn’t finish last time. One more session will cap this

tuesday 21st june

today is the longest day of the year, and probably the wettest, too…. I don’t normally moan about the weather in Scotland, I’m aware that our location isn’t very promising in that respect, but come on! Where’s our summer??

Raffi has returned to Italy for a week’s worth of sunshine, who can blame her.

Joining me in Tribe 3 today were laura and Alex, and our customers who came in looking like drowned rats, poor buggers.

I started two big pieces today, the first one was a continuation of a dragon tattoo by another artist, my job was to make it into a sleeve.
Scott had picked a picture of a japanese samurai warrior and wanted me to base the tattoo around that, the message being that the warrior was the protector of his family. The family is represented here by a mother and son, and the warrior’s cape surrounds them protectively.
scott is a body guard by trade, and he also looks after his chronically ill wife and their son, so this tattoo fits him perfectly.

it will be mostly black and grey with some bright reds in the cape and possibly some other colours here and there if we decide it would look good.

then mark took the leap and got his backpiece started, it’s gong to be the biggest dragon I’ve ever done, and will cover his whole back. yeah!

we started with the head, next we will outline the rest of the piece and then go filling it in in sections

saturday 18th june

a busy weegie saturday working with the usual suspects,
joining me first was Dave, we are starting a new sleeve! This one will be of quite a dark theme, fiery as opposed to wind and water, with dark imagery and a general air of doom, gloom and destruction   😈

starting it off is a fire bird, or what will be one when we’ve had more time on it

a bit of a cover up going on here, too

then some pin striping, we’d laid the general design elements out last session and were refining the stripes today

and last but not least, Paul got his family portraits finished  😀

and for those of youse who have been taking an interest in my painting, there has been another frog incident. I thought I was over it, but obviously not…

friday 17th june

down at tribe 3 today, and the day started off with a meeting with the salesman from the yellow pages. (Ian, I tattooed a koi on him a few months ago) I’ve decided to shrink down our very expensive adverts in the yellow pages, because really, who still uses the book? Don’t we all just go online when we want to look something up?
We’ve got a new website in the pipeline, and will concentrate on the old internet for spreading the good word more from now on. we’ll keep a small box open in the yellow pages with our detail so that people can still find us that way, but nothing elaborate.
times are changing..

after Ian i had Simon in the chair, we are working on his first cover-up, he’d had lasering done to break up the shape of the old tattoos, but there was still some green and grey here and there, so we’ve covered it with some nice ‘aqua-mech’ as Erik has called it  😀
the forearm is next

then Kenny was back after a couple of months, we made a start on shading the lilies we outlined last time. We’d also got some background shading in already, so now we’ll concentrate on the flowers themselves. oh, and we his 4 wee names in his sleeve  😉

wednesday 15th june

glasgow as usual on a wednesday, working with Mark, Tim, Simon and the italian girls, although half the crew seemed to slope off at some point during the day  😆

my first project was a cover up, Roz had been lasering an old piece that used to be an indian, and now the plan was for a 3/4 japanese sleeve with colour. So here’s a photo , I just remembered to get a snap of what we were covering before it was too late

and this is as far as we got today, not bad for a first session

and i also put the finishing touches on the bougainvillea piece, nice and feminine

tuesday 14th june

just me and Tiddy in Tribe 3 today, Erik, Laura AND Alex were off after the Gwar gig last night, still trying to get red fake blood off themselves no doubt!

I’ve been meaning to tell you about the temporary tattoos I designed, three of them, and they were for the  Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo. These people have finally decided to get into the ‘tattoo’ connection and run with the theme, I’m surprised it took them so long. maybe they thought our type of tattoos were just a little too plebby to be connected with, but oh, how things change…..  😀

here they are, they’re tiny by the way, very cute. I get my name on the back of the packs, so that’s good advertising!

onto my tattooing, Barry got his water and flower sleeve finished today, yay! the top bit was done by another artist, but by bringing colour into the top flowers and continuing the theme all the way down we were able to make the two parts of his sleeve flow together

Also had Coco in, we popped some of the colour into the flames we outlined last time.
I’m doing a charity tattoo hour every month where I donate the proceeds of one hour of tattooing to a charity, and this month I’ve decided to pick Coco’s piece.
The theme of his tattoo is torture and all the gruelling things humans are capable of inflicting, so the charity I have chosen to donate to this month is the Dr Hadwen Trust, a charity concerned with funding alternatives to animal testing.
check out their website, the work they do is revolutionary and inspiring

http://www.drhadwentrust.org/