Amy's Feathers from Hawai'i (updated)

We're tying up some loose ends from earlier this year, and figured we'd share this cool tattoo:

This piece, on the back of a woman named Amy's leg, came to us in March via e-mail from the island of Hawai'i. Amy was a student of my mother's at the University of Hawai'i, Hilo campus. Mom snapped this photo, with Amy's blessing, for best-tatto-design.

We don't have any further detail on the tattoo, like the name of the artist, and the origin of the design. There are peacock feathers, and I'm guessing eagle feathers, but I can't identify the other plumage with certainty. Nonetheless, we thought it was worth sharing, and clearing out our "in" box.

Amy credits Delshay at K-Town Tattoo & Body Piercing in Kona, Hawai'i with this tattoo. She added:

"I came up with the concept. Delshay put it all together for me. It's my bouquet of feathers.

The feathers range from peacock, bustard, macaw, flamingo, blue jay, pheasant and myna.

The story is mine."

Here's another photo from the artist's tumblr page: 

Mahalo to Amy for sharing this tattoo with us here on best-tatto-design! And thanks to Mom for sending it our way!

This entry is ©2011 best-tatto-design.

If you are reading this on another web site other than best-tatto-design, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://best-tatto-design.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Melissa's Feather of Memory

Back in October, I reviewed Kat Von D's The Tattoo Chronicles (here).

I also went to a book-signing and met Ms. Von D.

As you would expect, there was a long line to see the author, who is indisputably the most famous tattoo artist in the world.

Despite the long line, I did have a chance to chat at length with several other people at the event. We talked tattoo as we queued along 46th Street, around the corner onto 5th Avenue, up an escalator, and through a maze of book stacks.

One such fan was Melissa, a student, who was accompanied by several friends. Talking with Melissa and her friends made the two-hour wait much more bearable, indeed.

Melissa offered to share this tattoo with us here on best-tatto-design:

This white feather on the inside of her right wrist is tied to the memory of her mother who passed away a couple of years ago.

Melissa's aunt often said that a floating white feather represents the soul of someone who's died. That said, whenever Melissa sees one, she thinks of her mother. By tattooing it on her wrist, she is assured that the memory of her mom will always be close at hand.

The tattoo was inked by Kerry O'Neill at Shotsie's Tattoo in Wayne, New Jersey. Work from Shotsie's has appeared previously here on the site.

Thanks to Melissa (and her friends) for keeping me company on that long day in October, and a special thanks to Melissa for sharing this poignant tattoo with us here on best-tatto-design!

New tattoo designs added to best-tatto-design.com

Hi!

A few months ago I started working on a new set of tattoo designs. At this moment I created 6 new designs and updated my galleries on best-tatto-design.com.

The first design is for the lower leg, placed on the shin and the sides will wrap around the calf.
The second design can also be used for the calf or shin, but it would look good on the forearm/shoulder as well.

The three designs below are designed for the forearm.

Click the images to enter the tattoo gallery:


























And here is one new shoulder tattoo design:













Any questions? Just let me know,

Kind regards, Mark Storm
info@best-tatto-design.com

Jessica's Feather for her Mother

I met Jessica on the express platform at 34th Street earlier this month.

She shared this gorgeous peacock feather tattooed on the upper right section of her back:

The piece is an homage to her mother, who loves everything peacock, and has countless items, like bracelets and other jewelery, that emulate the vivid colors of these beautiful birds.

She credits this tattoo to an artist known only as Allison.

Thanks to Jessica for sharing this wonderful tattoo with us here on best-tatto-design!

best-tatto-design Goes To Hawai'i - All in the Family, Part 5 (Ulu's Amazing Plumage)

In January 2008, when best-tatto-design was a mere infant blog, my mother sent me photos of some of the ink my cousins possessed.

I already shared Keali'i's sleeves here, but included in that email from Mom was this astonishing piece from his kid sister, my niece, Ulu:

Photo by Diane Scrafton Cohen Ferreira

I reached out to Ulu (which is a shortened version of her middle name, Uluwehi, which is abbreviated from her full middle name, Kamali'iwahineuluwehi) and we exchanged messages, but we never connected to discuss the tattoo. Then, last month, I was in Hawai'i, at the home of Ulu and her husband Travis.

For the record, despite my inkspotting ways, I was never sure if I'd have the opportunity on this trip to document all my nieces' and nephews' ink. I knew I'd be seeing them, but my purpose for doing so was not tattoo-related.

But as you may have read over the last week, there I was at Ulu and Travis's place, hanging out with family, and the subject turned inky, and out came the camera.

Still, I wasn't sure I would be seeing the tattoo from my mom's photo - Ulu was wearing a dress and I'm always walking on eggshells when it comes to lower back tattoos. But I was taking pictures of everyone else's tattoos and Ulu's back piece was mentioned. She happily changed into sweats so I could take a closer look at this amazing peacock feather tattoo:

One of the things I had always wondered was how far around the feather went. I got my answer soon enough:

As you can see the tattoo dips gracefully down after it rounds the hip. I'm glad I got to see this side because I was able to capture the detail in the color and the tiny pink butterfly near the tip of the quill:

Ulu got this, aside from the beauty of it, to cover up a "tramp stamp" [her words, not mine - no angry comments, please]. The original piece is covered by the eye of the peacock feather.

The artist responsible for this incredible tattoo is Libra, who freelances in Hawai'i, but occasionally does guest spots at 808 Tattoo, and was at East Side Tattoo Studio at the time this was done.

In that original email from Grandma Diane (my mom), she also included the tattoos of Travis, Ulu's husband.

I had never met Travis before, but was welcomed by him as one of the family. I took my own photo of the forearm ink he wears, also by Libra, in honor of his and Ulu's children, Ezra and Trinity.

My deepest and most sincere thanks to both Travis and Ulu, not only for their hospitality and kindness, but for sharing their tattoos with us here on best-tatto-design.

This concludes the "All in the Family" subset of the best-tatto-design Goes to Hawai'i series. A warm mahalo to all of my nieces and nephews for letting their mainland uncle help share their tattoos with the best-tatto-design community.

Previously in the best-tatto-design Goes to Hawai'i - All in the Family series:

Part 1, A Preface
Part 2, Keali'i's Sleeves
Part 3, Ikaika, In Progress
Part 4, Lehua's Eternal Tribute to Poppa John

The Tattooed Poets Project: Eboni Hogan

On this final day of the Tattooed Poets Project 2010, we have a double treat - the tattoos and poetry of both Jeanann Verlee (here) and her friend Eboni Hogan.

What follows is a tat-alogue of Eboni's body art.

She prefaces her work with the following proclamation:

"A Note About The Artist: A majority of the work (the shoulder piece, the peacock and the cherry blossoms) on my body were done by an amazingly talented artist named Craig Spencer out of Whatever Tattoo II on St. Mark's Place who was also my boyfriend of almost four years until fairly recently. Yay! It's a sado-masochistic love story! Some liken this to getting a man's name tattooed across my boobs but I can say he is truly one of the only artists I trust with my flesh."

And now the ink:

"This shoulder piece is a custom design that took the most amount of tweaking before I actually got it inked. There are three quill pens, a skeleton key and a key hole, all tied together with ribbons. I'd had a strange dream one night in which a creepy old woman handed me a set of keys, tied to three feathers and told me that if I could find the door, the key would let me out...


...In my dream, I draped the key over my shoulder for safe keeping (dream logic...) but when I finally reached the promised door, the key and the feathers were adhered to my skin. The image stuck when I woke up and I talked to the artist about designing a similar piece. He suggested that the feathers be quill pens to pay homage to my love of poetry."

Next we have an image linked inexorably to the history of tattoos in the West, with its background in naval history. It was inked by an unidentified artist at Capitol City Tattoo in Madison, Wisconsin:

"I adore old school tattoos of the Sailor Jerry variety. I am also really active in the poetry slam community and every team I have ever been coined "the anchor"- the poet put up towards the end of a slam to (fingers crossed) make a home run. At the 2008 National Poetry Slam in Wisconsin, I decided it would be suitable to get this piece on my ribs."

Next up we have some cherry blossoms on the back of Eboni's right biceps:

"Blossom on the tree you know how I feel. Text by unknown artist, Addiction Ink, St. Mark's Place, cherry blossoms by Craig Spencer. If my life were a television series, Nina Simone's song "Feeling Good" would be the theme song. On my worst days, this is the never-fail anthem. The particular phrase that I decided on just happens to be the line in the song that feels infinitely more magical when sung at the tops of one's lungs. Try it."

And last, but not least, this lovely peacock:


"Peacocks are symbols of renewal and are revered by multiple cultures across the world. Furthermore, let's face it- they got a whole lotta swag. I found a vintage painting of a peacock that I loved though it's not the traditional green and blue image people are used to seeing. I got it on my left hip so that it could also serve as a cover-up for a pretty awful tattoo I got when I was 17 and foolish."

Thanks to Eboni for sending along so many tattoos for us here at best-tatto-design. Be sure to head over to BillyBlog to read one of her poems, dedicated to poet Jeanann Verlee, here. Jeannann's tattoo (here) precedes this post, and her poem is dedicated to Eboni.

24 year-old poet, actress and Bronx native, Eboni Hogan, has performed in over 30 U.S. cities and facilitated workshops from refugee camps to prestigious universities. She studied theater at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She is the winner of the 2010 Women of the World Slam Poetry Slam, the 2008 Urbana Grand Slam Champion and a two time representative of the Nuyorican Slam Team. She is published in the anthologies His Rib and Double Lives and recently released her first collection of poetry entitled Grits through Penmanship Books.

Two Tattoos from Taylor

I met Taylor where she works at Kaleidoscope, a toy store in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

I gave her a flier after admiring her really cool feather tattoo that was inked behind her right ear.


A week later, I was zipping by on my bike and saw her on a break outside the store. That was when I had a chance to speak to her about her tattoos and take the photos for this post.

This is one of her nine tattoos, and was done by an artist named Chris who works out of Puncture Tattoo in neighboring Dyker Heights, Brooklyn.


Taylor says the tattoo is inspired by the fact that she feels free-spirited, like a bird, and that her aunt, who died in a plane crash, used to call her a "little Indian girl". The dangling feathers behind her ear seem to capture both sentiments nicely.

Unlike the first time I met Taylor, on this occasion she was wearing a shirt that showed off this cool tattoo at the top of her back:


Taylor explained that she loves cats and her sister's gray cat Dusty passed away from breast cancer, which has also been a disease that has run in her family, as well. She had the tattoo artist, Peter Cavorsi, of Body Art Studios, model this piece based on Dusty's eyes.

As always, Peter did a superb job. He is no stranger to best-tatto-design, having inked one of my tattoos (seen at the bottom of the page) and several of my wife, Melanie's. This link will show you all of Peter Cavorsi's work that has appeared on the site over the last two-and-a-half years.

Thanks again to Taylor for sharing her two beautiful tattoos on best-tatto-design!

New forearm tattoo design in Kirituhi style

Hi there,

At the moment I'm working on a new collection of tribal tattoo designs, the first series consists of 4 forearm / lower arm tattoo designs, with feathers in a symmetrical style.
My plan is to create around 30 or 40 new tattoo designs in Maori/Kiri tuhi style, which will be added to my website/webshop at the end of April. But to give you a small preview, I will post the designs on my blog for you, so you'll be the first to see.
Normally I don't shade my designs, but to give the image another dimension and more body I decided to use it in this flash series.














Size is 28 x 15 cm (11 x 6 inches), but because it's a high resolution design, you can re-scale it.
Price for this design is 29,75 euro / 40 US dollars.

As soon as I receive your payment, you'll receive an e-mail with the high resolution design (.jpg file) and a sheet/ linedrawing for your tattoo artist.

Kind regards, Mark Storm
info@best-tatto-design.com
www.best-tatto-design.com

Canvas tribal tattoo prints for sale

Hi there,

I made a total of 6 tattoo designs on canvas, here are the last two print designs.

These designs are available in 3 sizes:
Small 40 x 40 cm (16 x 16 inches)
Medium 50 x 50 cm (19 x 19 inches)
Large 60 x 60 cm (23 x 23 inches)

Prices for the canvas prints:

Small € 150 (215 US dollars)
Medium € 175 (250 US dollars)
Large € 200 (285 US dollars)

Prices are incl. Shipping/transfer costs

Both images are symmetrical, have realistic feathers and some nice koru curles.

Title: "Black & white canvas"

Size

40 x 40 cm €150,00 50 x 50 cm €175,00 60 x 60 cm €200,00

Title: "Lime green canvas"

Size

40 x 40 cm €150,00 50 x 50 cm €175,00 60 x 60 cm €200,00

Ps. The designs on the canvas prints are also available for a real tattoo.

Kind regards, Mark Storm
info@best-tatto-design.com
www.best-tatto-design.com