Miguel's Vision Reveals What Lies Within

A few weeks back, I popped in at my wife's workplace, and she introduced me to Miguel, the husband of one of her colleagues. In warmer weather, she had seen that Miguel had a tattoo, and she thought I would be interested in talking to him about it. Unfortunately, at the moment, it was in the high 20's outside and Miguel had on layers of clothing, which covered the artwork on his upper right arm. I did, however, ask him to send me a photo when he got the chance.

Miguel was good to his word and e-mailed me the following photo:

Miguel told me that, one night, a couple of years ago, during a difficult time in his life, he had a dream about the tattoo and, when he awoke, he drew up the image he had seen in his mind. The vision, to him, "represents the evil that people have inside". He took the idea to Sunset Tattoo in Brooklyn, and one of the artists  created the piece.

Thanks to Miguel for sharing his tattoo with us here on best-tatto-design!

Jenny's Skeleton Key

January was a bleak month here in New York City. The second snowiest month ever did not bode well for inkspotting, but on the last day of the month, I met Jenny, a graphic designer, at my local bookstore.

Jenny had two tattoos visible, but has nine others as well. She offered up this cool skeleton key tattoo on her inner left forearm:

She told me that the tattoo's orientation on her arm is, if you'll pardon the pun, key. It points toward her heart and represents the fact that she makes her own decisions in her life, or in her own words, "I open my own doors".

She had this done by Mumia at Omega Tattoos in Queens. She added that all her tattoos are in black and gray, saying it is a matter of personal preference and that colors don't translate well on her skin.

Check out Jenny's website here to see some of her design work. I especially like this example of her design for a tattoo shop.

Thanks to Jenny for sharing this special key with us here on best-tatto-design!

Busy Busy

 So I got to tattoo my coworker/friend Kris the other day... He wanted a parrot with the banner and a rose, so he let me design it how I wanted. I'm really excited about this one, it's the second largest design I've done so far, and had alot of fun with different liners. It's really strange working around the achilles tendon... it was like tattooing a lizard skin or something. More to come on this after I start the shading. The plan is to make this in full color.

The next day a military kid came in and wanted some lettering on his inner arm. This one was great practice for fields of grey shading, and got to play around with more line weight and drop shadows. While I was working on this I noticed that my shading wasn't going in as smoothly as I had hoped. Good thing Bill walks in during this one and helped me out and told me to SLOW DOWN! I seem to want to do things fast.... gotta always tell myself to slow the hell down and of course as soon as I did, the shading smoothed out much better. Overall lining this one went ALOT better than the first inner bicep I tattooed, and got the thumbs up from Bill on the final outcome. Next time I think I'm going to omit the halo around the lettering, even though that's what the kid wanted. Bill had a good point about framing the design in the sense that if he wanted to add anything around this later on, it would be difficult to blend other designs into this one. Definitely storing that info for later.

This one came in last night. I was able to apply the shading techniques I learned from the lettering to this design. He chose a Hardy dragon from our reference and I changed it a bit. He wanted to change the claws... and overall I think I did an ok job except for the bottom claw. I think I could have done better with that one. I had alot of fun with this and it was the guy's first tattoo.

I don't tattoo again until tomorrow. Working sales tonight. I have an appointment tmrw night for a small hibiscus and plumeria on the ankle, and then Keone comes in for shading on his owl Wednesday.

Until next time....

ALOHA

A Quartet of Tattoos from Greg

I met Greg outside of Madison Square Garden last fall, and he happily shared several of his tattoos, inspired by magic and mythology. On his upper left arm is this wizard:

On his upper right arm, he shared this dragon:

Below that, on his forearm, is this fiery skull:

And, in a tribute to his Irish heritage, is this coat of arms, with the Irish colors:

Greg credited Eddie and Ray, at Lucky Hearts Tattoo in Jersey City, New Jersey, as the artists responsible for his work.

Thanks to Greg for sharing his tattoos with us here on best-tatto-design!

woot woot

So yesterday I was able to get a walk-in... small dragonfly on the shoulder. This woman picked this off the wall, but she let me improve on it.

It was fun to experiment with using grey lines for the wings to make them more transparent. I wish she would have let me put a drop shadow on it... it would have really made it pop.









So Keone came in last night to start his owl! This is my biggest piece so far...

This was the most fun I have ever had tattooing... Keone was nice enough to let me tattoo him again... for his second tattoo. It was nice to experiment with all different types of needles for this one, lining in grey and really figuring out a game plan for how I was this to come out. Bill sat with me the entire time and helped me along. After we finished the linework Keone had to go home so next Wednesday hes going to come back to start shading the background.

This is the sketch I did for him, so you can get an idea of how I want it to look when it's all finished. All black and grey. So excited about this tattoo! More to come when the linework heals.

Here's another view of the linework. Half the stencil was still on there so its a bit hard to see, especially in the face.

I'll post more of my thoughts on this tomorrow, I just wanted to get this uploaded so everyone can see.

ALOHA

Rilke On the Flesh

It's February 1, which means we are only two months away from the start of a new edition of The Tattooed Poets Project, and I have begun assembling the first posts for this annual extravaganza.

What better way to acknowledge this looming event, but to post a poetic tattoo?

The following piece is one that I spotted at the end of last summer on Penn Plaza. Belonging to a young lady named Rosa, it has been one of my few remaining 2010 leftovers:

What I noticed first was not that this was a line of verse, but that it was placed on the body in an unusual way. Most lines of poetry, when manifested on flesh, are on the arms and wrist, or the lower legs and occasionally a back. This tattoo runs from the front of to her back, vertically climbing and descending from her shoulder.

The line is in German, and represents a piece from Rainier Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies.

Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich

Or, in context:

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’
Hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me
suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.

 Those are the opening lines of the first elegy, translated by Stephen Mitchell.

Rosa didn't give me much insight as to why she had the line tattooed, but it is quite a powerful statement.

When I asked her who the artists was, she replied only that it was someone in Brooklyn that went under the name "The Milk Maid". This sounded familiar at the time, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Of course, I came to be reminded that The Milk Maid is the moniker of Joy Rumore, at Twelve 28 Tattoo, quite a wonderful artist, whose work has appeared previously on best-tatto-design here.

Thanks to Rosa for sharing this lovely line of verse with us here on best-tatto-design!

My first polynesian

So last night Noah came in and we're almost done reworking his tribal piece. All we have left are the two small triangles on his chest.

 It was interesting to see how differently his skin reacted this time around. We were out late the night before drinking and I could notice the difference in how much he bled and how much harder it was to pack the black in solid. This is why we don't get wasted the night before you get tattooed!

Now everything lines up nicely and is sharp again. I'll post finished pics in a few weeks once this is all healed.

Dustin came in last night and showed me the tiki we did during my last trip. Mike Brown added the poly stuff onto his fingers and the stuff on the top of his hand he had already when we did the tiki. So last night's mission was to connect the two pieces with some polynesian designs, then we're going to fill up the inside of his forearm on a day when we have more time.

First he let me draw on him.

 So this is what we came up with... they came in later on in the evening since Pro Bowl was going on and no one was coming in to get work done.

We continued the poly around his kids' name on the other side of the tiki, and we plan on continuing the patterns around his arm the next time.

 This was challenging and fun at the same time. After doing this for the first time I definitely have a better game plan for the next time. Watching Anna and Mony work for the past 3.5 years helped me figure out how to line it. I am pseudo-happy with this tattoo. Looking at it after the fact there are a few things that I want to/need to do differently.

 First off I definitely plan on using two different pens to sketch on the skin... one for the rough sketch and a darker color for the finalized lines. It's difficult to put a small line over a fat/sketchy line.

This was alot of fun and kudos to Dustin for giving me the chance to practice poly on him. In a week or two we're going to work on his inner forearm and give me another chance to draw on the skin.

I'm working on the floor today, hopefully some walk-ins come in. Keone (with the island tattoo) is coming in at 6 today after my shift to start a huge owl on his outter arm. So stoked! I'll be sure to post pics when I'm done or tmrw.

ALOHA