Roots

I recently saw a film called "Horismoku" which came out over a year ago but my lazy ass didn't get around to seeing it until now...

anyways, it's a documentary primarily about Sailor Jerry.  I learned a lot about the history of American tattooing from the film. 

One thing I learned was that Sailor Jerry was pretty closed off to the world. 

I've heard often that old school tattooers kept tattooing a very closely guarded secret, and they most definitely didn't share information with just anyone...  As someone pretty new to the tattoo industry, and as someone who owns a Sailor Jerry machine (from Lucky mfg. not an original) it really made me feel like shit honestly.  

I realized that if Sailor Jerry knew I was working with a machine he had designed, he'd probably roll over in his grave. 

so anyways not to get off on a rant, i've just been thinking it's time i learn more about my history, and also work harder at appreciating where all this treasure trove of information that's so readily available to me really came from.

Hopefully I can continue to learn and grow as an artist and remember those important people who helped shape tattooing into what it is today.

and if you haven't seen Horismoku, I highly recommend it.  It's an amazing film. check out the trailer   

also another great film to check out is Stoney Knows How here's a clip from it.

also here's a great story from Philadelphia Eddie, and is an outtake from the Horismoku film.

I'd kill to meet Eddie, that guy's amazing!

also here's a pic of some Owen Jensen stencils I decided to repaint into my first sheet of flash about a year ago.  

so it's time to get my study on and continue learning as much as I can about the history of my chosen profession

Evolution of a painting

this post is in response to a few friends asking what my process is in regards to my watercolor paintings.  Hope this helps a bit.  The process really depends on the imagery that I choose...  If it's something more illustrative like this piece I mostly use alot of washes and just build up the colors in layers instead of using say solid colors with fades in between or fade outs, etc... 







Start off with the outline. You can use anything from markers to pens, to brushes. Just make sure if you are using pen/ink that it's waterproof/permanent... then the fun begins with the watercolors

 black and grey fades/washes

multiple shades of 3 colors layered in washes.

 skin tone, multiple layers of a wash, darkening the mixture as i go

 add background

Coffee wash background.  Personally I like to just way over saturate the paper with big blotchy areas of coffee, let it dry, and then go back over the whole thing to smooth it out a little.  You get some pretty nice textures out of it that way.

R2deetoah

nothing funner than a star wars tattoo.  Did this one about a year ago and just remembered how fun it was..
been working on a star wars leg sleeve also, need to get pics of it soon.

new blog

So I decided to jump on the bandwagon and start a blog.  Never done one before so this should be pretty fun.  I'll start out soon by posting pictures of tattoos and paintings that I've done and I'll be posting really soon some drawings of tattoos I'd really like to do.  To kick things off here's a fun little tattoo I did recently.  It's pretty self explanatory...