24th + 25th September

I think I barely touched a drop of black ink these last two days! Everyone was getting colour 🙂

I’d not seen Simon since april, he’s been away in hot places working. He’s been a good boy and put plenty of sunblock on his arm, though, keeping his colours nice and vibrant. It’s not that a tan actually fades the colour, it just temporarily stops them from being vibrant, as the skin is darker. Tattoos tend to look more colourful and sharper when the skin paler.

We added some finished the dragon today bar a bit of detailling, the rest of the blues in the body and the golden colours in the whiskers and crest.

Nikki is also going for vibrant colours, her phoenix will take your eye out when it’s finished  😆

Jim needed some colour in the cherry blossoms and leaves we did last time, another couple of hours to finish the tree and background

and caroline is very nearly done with her fox’s tea party, we finished the scenery in the background and darkened some colours here and there.
This piece always puts a smile on my face!

20th + 21st September

chris wanted a sleeve that was a collage of sorts of some of his favourite things. He is a chef, and he wanted to include a chanterelle mushrooms and cloudberries, a tree to represent his family, two pigeons for his grand parents (who kept them) and a ruined castle wall from a specific spot up north ( I forget which one it is, next time!)
We started with the berries and mushrooms, from there the tree grows up and the castle is in the distance at the top.
I will research the pigeons better and prepare them for our next sitting, they are not just any old pigeons!  😀
There will be a background to the tree and more branches, this is just the beginning of course. The mushrooms and berries will be in colour, but the rest mostly in black and grey.
We are working around a patch of stubborn psoriasis which Chris is having treated at the moment, once it heals up, hopefully we can continue the design in that area. Until then it’s a no-no unfortunately.

Gerald is extending his backpiece down his backside, we are going for a hanya mask and more of the stylised waves we did on his back, with the mask getting coloured in reds.
Gerald is looking forward to the next person who insists on lifting his kilt, hehehe! They’ll get a fright

Dave is getting the last little gaps filled in on his post apocalyptic hell sleeve/ collage. We might be done here, just need to let it heal and see if anything else needs looking at.
Dave is a fan of the colour orange 🙂

And another phoenix backpiece! Helak is going to get this in vibrant but darker colours, to complement her Brazilian skin tone

17+18th september

This time he wanted three lilies and three thistles, a tattoo dedicated to his family

We got the lines and some shading done, next time we will finish the shading and add detailing

The next day In Glasgow was phoenix day
Chris got an epic one on his back started, it’s going to be finished in autumn colours

and kenny got a bit more colour done to his. As he was just back from his honeymoon in Corfu, he was very tanned and getting the colours to match up with the muted ones we chose last time, was a bit of guess work. Once the tan has faded we can see if any of it needs adjusting a bit

11-14th september

Neil’s dragon is pretty much finished, apart from maybe a quick finishing session should it need it once it’s healed
Neil went for a vibrant yellow/orange/ red colour scheme for his dragon, set off with green whiskers and crest.

Neil and his tattoo 🙂

Gorgon got his raven finished

Rick is adding to his peacock tattoo, today we finished the black and grey and made a start on the cherry blossoms. The large flowers will be next time

Hayley got the background to his hanya mask done last time, and then went crawling around in the mud with backpacks and rifles strapped to he (he is a soldier), and this gave him problems with the healing. When he showed up this time, there were parts of what we did last time where the ink has disappeared and a fair bit of scabbing been troubling him. This we will have to let heal properly before we can touch it again. It’s the worst bit of healing i have seen in a long time, luckily he is not going on exercise for two weeks after today’s session.

And this is where the pictures thin out… I didn’t photograph he ongoing blackness that is Bill’s leg tattoo, I will post an update once we complete this section we are working on.
I FORGOT to photograph Brad’s Guernica piece, we have one more sitting left on it, so I will post pictures then.
I had a customer who would rather I didn’t post photos of her piece online, which is absolutely fine of course (don’t hesitate to let me know if you would rather I didn’t include your piece on my blog, no offence will be taken!)

but I do have a picture of Emma’s back, we are just about done with her phoenix, just a few flames left to go

3-7th September

big fat blog today, last week was a bit hectic and I didn’t get round to catching up with my blog midweek as I usually like to do. So, this blog covers four working days, I did work an extra day on top of that, but it wasnt doing my usual work, so i wont include it here. Nik is away on holiday at the moment, so i went in an extra day to cover some of the tattoos he would normally do, lots of small pieces on nervous first timers  😆
The students are back in town and we are busy with requests for their fist, small tattoo, and it seems a bit churlish to turn them away when I am perfectly capable of doing it for them.
My usual clientèle is of the seasoned pro variety, and I tend to forget the terrible nerves people can suffer before their fist tattoo, and all the calming down that is required!

My week started of with an all day session with the lovely Mel, she wanted a mermaid on her leg. The reference material she brought in was quite varied, but two of the pieces seemed to me to work nicely together, so with a bit of tweaking and changing, we did a curled up mermaid with a mermaid skeleton rising up beside her.

I am in the middle of fixing up a backpiece that started out very rough, we are slowly putting some colour and shape back into it, but there is also some lasering required. I didn’t take a photo of it, I will let it take shape a bit before I present it, it really is a monumental task.

Steve is getting a cover up with a difference, this piece covers some old and lasered stuff dotted around his arm, we started on the colour today to disguise what was left of the blue and green ink that can’t be lasered, once he cover up is finished we will continue with the detailling in other places

Matt is also getting a cover up done, there was some old work getting lasered on his forearm, and now it was time to close that gap it had left in his sleeve by covering it with lilies. We had tattooed lilies all around the gap waiting for the lasering to do it’s job, so now it was time to get shot of that pesky patch.

Steven wanted to go for a sleeve and decided to take a full day session to start off with, talk about jumping in at the deep end!
😀
it’s a phoenix with some flowers and a geisha. The phoenix represents his battle with cancer 7 years ago, the flowers (carnations, violets and thistles) are for his parents, and the geisha is loosely based on a picture of his wife. Japanese in style, but with a more personal meaning.
There will be colour through all of this, but for today we stuck to the linework and some basic shading.

30th + 31st august

Rick has decided to extend his half sleeve of a peacock we did a while ago, into a full sleeve with more clouds and big flowers. He likes it chunky and bold, with bright colours and lots of movement, so he’s come to the right person  😀

Winfried was after a tattoo of bamboo with cicadas hanging from it. Not just any old bamboo, but a painting by a chinese artist (who’s name escapes me), so I was carefully copying marks made with ink on paper and transferring them into the tattoo medium.
I could tell from my experience with ink and water colour that the artist had used only yellow and black to create the varying green tones, with a splash of red in the cicadas. This helped me with the tones, but I still kept getting completely lost in all the details and had to take a step back every now and again to find my spot again  😆

Harley only had a short session booked to get his sleeve of geisha, samurai and hanya mask, so we just filled in some of the background we had already outlined

Steven got some colour added, his foo dog is now finished and the lotus at the top is nearly done. One more short session to pull this all together, although he might decide that the part of his sleeve that was done by another artist now needs a bit of bolder colour to make it blend in with the new sections. Unfortunately there is a patch of stubborn psoriasis on Steven’s elbow that we just have to work around, maybe one day when it’s gone away we can fill the gap.

and Scott got his sleeve finished! Sorry about the shine on the photo, also I might get some more photos of this when he isnt just back from holiday and sporting a tan. Scot will be back in November to start his other sleeve, by then he should be the usual scottish blue-white colour and i can get some shots showing off his tattoo to it’s best advantage.