Danzig Shin

Andy got this on his shin, right below his knee. Ouch.

I'm not sure how much I've gone into the extra dimension of depth while tattooing. The concept is taking more time than I imagined. I am drawing with a set of needles going in and out of the skin. Which seems …

A Little Guy

I added this flash butterfly above an already existing tattoo. It's nothing special, but I liked it. While I was finishing up, I realized my comfort level was higher and I was curious why the process went faster... then I realized that I'm slowly building …

Different Styles

View Ohana in the gallery

While some clients communicate what look or feel they want directly, others approach with subtle adjectives for me to pick up on. As I gain experience, I'm slowing figuring out how to translate the communicated vision (a murky glimpse of what …

A Handful of Tattoos Posted

Along with what's been posted here, another handful of tattoos and commentary has been posted in the Tattoo Gallery. Script samples, a celtic thingy, two french hens and a tie dyed peace symbol.

Covering Up

Here's a cover up I did yesterday. She wanted stars and picked out curves/shapes from off the wall. The fun part was randomly stenciling on the stars then drawing the cloud shapes with my Fisher Space pen.

Overheard on my cell

"David, you've been messing with colors, right? Doing it freestyle... mixing them together to get other colors?."

"Um, yeah. Have you been reading my blog?"

"Sure. Hey, do they make a skin color?"

"Yep, and you can mix to try and match your skin tone."

"So, do you think …

A little here and there

View larger image

I got to go over a tattoo I did awhile back. I wasn't about to change it much, but I certainly wanted to enhance it. My 26th tattoo, I didn't know much about color mixing, so I tried to fade a light grey wash straight into pure yellow. The result was …

Shovel Coal updates

Jesus Arm Piece

I went at this version of Peter Paul Rubens' Raising of the Cross. It's flipped horizontally and I threw in some touches of negative cross space and flow lines to try and smooth it into Dale's arm.

Outlining seemed impractical, so I did the whole tattoo with a 9 mag, …

Hope - A Tattoo in Stages

Rachel came up with the idea to have the letter "e" in "hope" represent the ribbon for Breast Cancer Awareness. She tossed it around with a friend, and this is the drawing that was presented to me for her first tattoo...

I loved the idea and we talked about turning …

Day 03 - Collaboration

I have to say, today was insane. I've worked a daily deadline at a newspaper and a monthly deadline at a magazine. But none of it has compared to the level of stress I went through today.

Take two guys, put them together, and let them tattoo one at a time (back and …

Day 04 - Another Collaboration

One of the guys, Brian, got to exchange ideas and drawings with Nate today. They worked their way through a zombie baby. You know, gnawing on his own guts.

Being able to watch the process, from initial sketch to final outline was great. But watching that thing come to …

The Secret Seminar of Doom

I'm in recovery mode and I want to try some stuff out. So for the next couple of days, my posts will be minimal... but I'll be doing my best to whip out some tattoos to show.

I've gotten a lot of emails asking about the seminar. Well, this was the first of what may …

Day 05 - Skull and a Rose

We just watched Mr. Nate Beavers complete this piece on the back of a calf.

Happy Saturday

My little one is healthy, the day is beautiful and I've got good news to tell you later...

Bugpins

Hey, I tried bugpins and I think they'll be wonderful for some pieces. I used a 11 mag with #8 (or 000, long taper, standard point) bugpins in a 9 tube. Those suckers are tiny so the grouping is obviously smaller.

It seems to me the little diameter and long taper …

Copper

Copper frame, patinaed, hand rolled coils (wrapped in embossed copper wraps), mosaic damascus yoke, with full copper hardware from Pulse. Top it off with a huge U.S. penny from the 1800's for the rear deck hold down... and you'll have my new shader by Junebug.

I'm …

Hyperspace Studios

Rest stops, coffee, NPR, and audiobooks... I write this after returning from a six hour drive.

I fired off an email asking Markus Lenhard when he'd be in the States so I could get a tattoo. Oddly enough, he responded, "next week." A few exchanges and I was off to have …

Photoshop CS3 - Align and Blend

I've been messing around with Adobe Photoshop's latest CS3. There are some new, powerful tools and I can't wait to dive in deeper.

For now here's a quick little something:

Four individual images

After taking four shots of my new tattoo, I've pulled up all of them …

So What's the Good News?

It seems I'm no longer an apprentice.

That's right. You're looking at a bona fide professional tattooer.

The news probably doesn't affect you, but for me - today was a completely different day. It was my first day to jump into shop rotation. So congrats all around …