tattoo letter

Hawaii update

 So my trip started off pretty slow, it was practically dead after that one busy Sunday I had when I first got to town. Dead for almost two weeks. All comes with this profession...feast or famine. Especially in this town.

Anyway, these photos aren't exactly in order so I'm gonna wing it.

This little sunflower was a walkin from last night. Her first tattoo, with her kids' names and a bible verse.

 This rose was done on a friend of a friend, let me do any kind of rose I wanted, and I wanted do something fun with color. The cover up underneath was done by someone else. This was alot of fun to do and got to experiment a bit.

 Another first tattoo on a mother who wanted her daughter's name in Hawaiian.

 Another stab at some polynesian! He was a surfer from Australia with some scarring on his arm. Haven't worked with scars too much as of yet so this was good practice for me. Had some fun with the design, he let me do my thing for the most part.

 This was a fun day! Not much was going on and one of our regulars came in for some pain!!! He wanted these anchors on the soles of his feet! He's been tattooed a bunch already and knew that these would not last. So I got my friend Stolfi in on the fun, we tagged teamed tattooed him! Was my first bottom of the foot as well!

 OUCH!

 Lettering on inner bicep....another first tattoo for a young father.

 Keone came in last week to get his owl all finished. Really stoked to get this one under my belt, and because of this one, I have now two more owls to work on before I leave town! Want to play around with textures with the next one. I'm happy with how he healed and the overall layout. Can't wait to do more big pieces like this!

 Canadian dude in town for a few days... wanted this in stone on his back.

One of the very first hip tattoos... cute little shell on another first-timer.



Until next time....


ALOHA

Back in Paradise

 This walked into the shop the other day... his first tattoo. He wanted something for his wife and he brought in an image and this is what we came up with. He sat well for it and it was a good end to a very busy day here in Waikiki.

Some letters and a date on the chest for him and his new wife...

The day before I left town my client stopped in to start another design, this time with tribal and stone. When I get home we can get this done.

Another small walkin before I left town.















This was a fun one. She came into the shop at NKO before I left town and wanted a shield with symbols in it representing important things in her life. This is what we came up with.

only 3 days away

This was my deer skull that I started yesterday. We went into the shading in the skull for the time being, and outlined the antlers. I had fun with this one, its my biggest tattoo I've done to date, and I can't wait to shade in the antlers. It'll be cool to see how this heals....

This was done last wednesday....on my bestest friend Lauren. She's been wanting this tattoo for years, she's been waiting for me to tattoo her since I started apprenticing years back at the other shop, however it was well worth the wait. Although the foot was pretty painful for her, she sat through the whole thing. Kudos to Lauren!!!!! xoxox

close up

Walkin done at No Ka Oi last week. She wanted just an outline at first but I think a little shading and the blue really brought it out.

Cool walkin from today at No Ka Oi. She was super nice, from out of town, and this was her first one. Again, she just wanted linework originally, but after some careful persuading we added some shading just to give it at least some depth. Tattoos that are just outline always look unfinished to me (there are exceptions to this of course) So after this was done she was super stoked on it, as was I. I hope to see her back in the future to possibly add more to it.


So the countdown begins. I leave Friday morning. I'm almost done packing, have to get my bike all packed up so I can ride around the island, and getting all my other stuff in order. I can't wait to get out of here for a little while. It'll be nice to be away from everything and come back refreshed. Its kind of funny....I had literally just mentioned going back to Hawaii to my boss a few weeks ago, and then I get the call to go out there. Funny how things pan out.

Until next time....

Hawaii bound!

So it looks like I'm heading back out to Hawaii to guest spot at Skin Deep again. I leave Dec 2 and I come back to Philly sometime early Jan....very excited, yet very stressed out. Unfortunately we lost a very important man named Mike Brown, who has been tattooing for well over 30 years. Super nice guy, honest, funny and a pleasure to be around despite the fact that he can be cranky :) He let me tattoo him the last time I went out there, it was one of the first roses I ever did. He had an impact on me and I'll never forget him ...... here's to you Mike!

And now back to business..... since I'm leaving town in 2 weeks, I'm scrambling to get shit done and do as many tattoos as I can. Here's what I've been up to....

This was a sweet walkin that came in today... super nice guy that has a love for Sailor Jerry designs. He brought this one in, and we got it all done....after I get back we plan on doing more with his arm and adding all the stars and dots to go with it. Definitely fun one to do, my first Peacock!

Finally got to finish this one last week... Jon is letting me do some fun stuff on him lately! He let me design this lettering and do it however I wanted... so we finally finished it after the outline healed.... here's what we got so far...

The next one we started is a rose near his elbow... it's a crappy pic so when it's all done I'll be sure to post it.

Steve came back last week also to finish the poly segment that we started... we were finally able to get rid of that line that divided the spearheads... going to see how it heals up and hopefully I can get a nice touchup session in with him so I can get some good photos of this. I want to be able to put this in my book for Hawaii so I can get more experience with Poly designs.

The lovely Rose came back to NJ last week to get a few letters added to her IRS shield. After we were thinking about it, we should have just put the initials in the center of the shield, but at that time she was unsure about putting his name in there considering the shield was his....Anyway I got to see the tattoo up close and healed up, overall was happy with how the color healed, touched up a few tiny spots....the outline needed some work, I wasn't too stoked on how they seemed to blow out a little after it healed. I'm just being critical. Going to watch myself on that one.

A BIG kudos to Parker for letting me do this boxing cock on him!!! I got to play around with weird color combos and deal with working with really stretchy skin since he's lost so much weight over the years. This second session went way better, I got to see how his skin worked and had less trouble streching. I hope to see this healed great so I can get to the purple behind the head again... I want to blend it out more I think. Also it'll be good to see a pic without the blood :)

This was a walkin about a week and a half ago. A challenging design that definitely made me sweat a little, however it was a good challenge. I guess you could say it's good practice/warm-up for my upcoming trip to Hawaii...lots of tribal-type designs.

Well that's all for now, got a busy week coming up! I'll post more when time allows....

ALOHA

new stuff

Even though it's been slow, I did get one walkin the other day in NJ... an older gentleman came in for this one. He brought in the patch and asked me to duplicate it. He was super nice and I hope to see him again.

So this one is just in the sketch phase right now... this is a client of mine from a few months back, I tattooed a bike gear on her calf. She came in a few days ago to discuss a deer skull on her upper back. Naturally I was stoked on this idea, and went right to the drawing board. She's going to stop in tonight to take a look at what I have so far, measure it up to fit her, and then get back to the drawing board again for a solid greyscale study and final line drawing. I'll keep you posted on this!

Until next time....

Progress

So even though it's been a bit slow round these parts because of the time of year, I've managed to do a few things in the past two weeks.

This was a small walkin at No Ka Oi yesterday, small n simple. Her first one.

 Another walkin the other day...the stencil line is still there but we only did the letters. Another first timer.

 This was an awesome day.... I was scheduled at No Ka Oi on sunday, so in the morning before we opened up I had an old friend come in, Heather. She volunteered to be my first ribcage tattoo. Really stoked on this one. It was also cool to have both Bill and Anna there will be, I was beyond shitting my pants on this one... stretching wasn't as bad as I thought...although it's all because she was the perfect candidate. I took my time and made sure it was really nice. Now the mission is to get more awesome people like Heather to help my cause and give up some skin in the areas and I'm inexperienced in: ribs, lower back, chest, stomach, hip..... any takers???  Many kudos to Heather for this one!!!

This is on a client that walked into NJ a few weeks ago.. he came back for me to finish his big flag. This is one of my biggest thus far, and really excited to finish it.  Another thing was that Bill gave me this really old Micky Sharpz that works wonderfully for greywash....so I got to use that and was really happy with the results... I still need some more work smoothing out the grey, but overall I'm happy with the tattoo and how it flows with his arm when he bends it. I hope to see him back soon for some good photos of this healed.

This was a walkin in NJ a week ago...name jawns for dayyssss

Many thanks to Amanda for giving up some skin for a small one dedicated to her Hub... classic!


Looks like that's it for now, I'll be posting more soon! Come in and get tattooed!