I work at a tattoo studio and we don’t hire people with facial tattoos. You know why? Because even though I live in a very heavily tattooed population the general public isn’t very accepting of facial tattoos. We want people to feel comfortable in our shop and not have any preconceived notions about our staff. Same as any place.

LORD OF THE RINGS!!!!
Forrest Gump
Snatch
Lucky Number Sleven
The Goonies

These are just a few of my favorites. Lord of the Rings is the best movie (I see them as one instead of a trilogy) ever made. It’s nuts how much time and how many resources were put into that film.

Here is a pumpkin that I did 2 years ago.

Yep. I didn’t want to interfere with my co-worker’s tattoo too much so I shrunk it the tiniest bit. I think it worked nonetheless.

I would love to guest spot in Iceland some day. I’ve always wanted to go there. Hopefully some day I’ll have made a name for myself and people from your country would actually want tattoos from me. I have a lot of work ahead of me.

Finished.

I don’t drive anything fancy right now. I used to have a 1951 Ford f100. I drive a Subaru Legacy Outback presently and I’m building a low budget Yamaha xs650 bobber. I picked it up for $30. My goal is to have it going and looking sweet for under $1000.

I don’t buy expensive vehicles because of the diminishing returns. Believe it or not my…[Read more]

I use photobucket.com. Set up an account and upload your photos. Once uploaded, the site will give you an HTML code to copy and paste into your post. Just preview your post before you submit it to make sure the picture you wanted is in there and press submit. Et, viola!

I have a leg dedicated to random tattoos after I ruined it with a crappy tribal dragon about 15 years ago. I have a “mom” heart, gooey bio-organic eyeball, an anvil with the words “black metal”, and a foo dog. Aside from the tribal dragon all the tattoos are well done. The “mom” tattoo was the first tattoo I ever did on live human skin and it was…[Read more]

I’ve been thinking about getting a candle burning from both ends as a tribute to my tattoo apprenticeship. I work 45 hours a week on top of apprenticing about 30 to 35 hours a week and work hard to some day be a success.

I love skulls.

I know. I paid $750 for my Tebori tattoo and thought that was a bargain considering the fact that it’s hand poked. It’s not even that big.

Some people just want a tattoo for the sake of getting one regardless of the outcome. Sometimes when we get walk ins they’ll go somewhere else instead of making an appointment because they want a tattoo right now.

I probably should have prefaced my comment with the fact that our shop does custom work, we don’t even have flash on the walls. We also do most of our work by appointment unless of course there has been a cancellation. In that case we can sometimes fit in a walk in. We actually encourage people to look at our portfolios ahead of time. Some won’t…[Read more]

I would say that a fair estimate would be 1 in 5 people that come into our shop off the street don’t care to look at a portfolio. Most of them just want a tattoo now and cheap.

The raw talent is there as far as your eye for color and composition. As was stated above, drawing skills are what translate best to tattooing. Line work is arguably the most important part of tattooing. Watercolors are probably the best medium to work with when painting tattoo designs because tattoo ink is transparent like watercolors. Tracing…[Read more]

That’s because people have an aversion to telling others how bad their tattoos really are. Most people don’t want to hurt their friend’s feelings. People will tell them that it’s good just to be polite and that person with the bad tattoo will go back to the same person over and over. Customer loyalty knows no bounds when it comes to tattoos, even bad ones.

Sorry I left you hanging. Check out Stefan Johnsson. The spelling is probably wrong but his tattoos are stellar.

I think the best term for that style is neo-traditional. It combines traditional images with updated style and color. Check out

Doesn’t even look like an arm. Kind of disgusting… In a good way.

Because UV tattoo ink is so new, nobody really knows that much about it, how it ages, or what the long term effects are. I do know that there is an amount of phosphorous in the ink and I know that’s not good for you. Tattoo ink isn’t regulated by the FDA so there aren’t any in depth studies on it. I wouldn’t do it.