End of the first year

 I just want to start off by saying that today is the one year anniversary of me starting to tattoo! I tattooed my first "client" out in Hawaii last year on this day. Kinda weird that it went by as fast as it did.... I'm very happy to be finally doing what I've worked so hard for, and I plan on doing this for the rest of my life.

So in honor of this, I figured the first image should be this cupcake I started last night on a friend. She just turned 21 (in case you can't read) haha so I gave her this as a bday gift. It went in her inner arm and we unfortunately didn't get to finish it, which is ok... I want to see how it heals up and make any adjustments to the color once it's healed, and add some more detail to the sprinkles. Tried my hand at some realism, hopefully i'll get more opportunities like this one. Kudos to Lauren! I'll post better pics once it's done.

 This was an interesting one. She walked in, this was her first tattoo (if I remember correctly) She brought in this image which was pretty straight-forward. I set up for her and she also had a weird request... she wanted a little smiley face on her toe. I wasn't sure why until she took off her sock and there it was! two little toenails! kinda weird n all, but after seeing the nails like that, they make two little eyes and the smile completed the picture. Such a fun lil tattoo, even though it probably won't stay.

 TOE SMILE!

 Got to add onto the eyeball tattoo this week. He wanted to do some polynesian type stuff around it with some color. I haven't done much of this style, so I thought it would be a good time to try it out and start with two segments. I did some sketches, let him choose what he liked, then went to draw on him. This is the sketch phase.......

 After finishing the linework and shading I'm overall happy with it, however after getting some feedback I think I would like to thicken up some of the lines in the upper portion, but we will see how it heals. I would like to sit down with my friends who are good at tattooing this type of stuff and get their opinion on how they would approach this when I go to add on.... will keep you posted on this.

The lettering walked into NJ... his first tattoo. Super nice guy. Hope to see him back for more work.

This one made my slow Monday!!! My good friend Parker let me do this on him! Boxing cock! We didn't get to finish it as it's in a very sensitive area and it was getting late. Very fun tattoo and it was inspired by this Adam Shields flash we have here at the shop. I really like how he does his eagles/birds and so did Parker, so we used that for reference (mainly the face) and then redrew the rest. I will post more when we get to finish this! So excited! Thanks Parker!!!!  

Until the next post...... don't let the rain get ya down!