Cody Deegan
I think it was the comedian Jimmy Yang’s father who once said, “Everyone does what they hate for money and use the money to do what they love.” I don’t hate my job. Quite the contrary – I have a great job. However when I am not tattooing a client, I am usually not interested in tattoos. It hasn’t always been like that. Probably the first 10-15 years I was consumed with tattoos for the simple fact that I felt an urgency to be as good at my profession as I could be. Now I feel a pressing need to engage in my own personal projects. I have two more weeks of online teaching and then I will free up my schedule.
I am still working on limiting the types of tattoos that I do. I still want to do as good a job as I can when I’m tattooing, and I like doing more realistic styles. I had a client who started a lion tattoo about 10 months ago. He finally came back and got the tattoo finished.
I have a repeat client who used to have a job working on a few different old sailing ships in California. She is getting two of them tattooed on either side of her back. We just finished up the first one and I am really happy how it turned out.
The police-themed forearm tattoo is coming along.
I also added some more to the pinup – a Nevada flag and a wooden cross.
I finished up a shoulder piece of flowers so that it wrapped all the way around.
I’ve been working on getting my recording control room connected to the live room with cables. I went under the house a couple times to run the wires and it reminded me of how I’ve aged. It’s been tough but it’s been a fun project.
One thing that has bothered me about my control room is the placement of my computer keyboard and my piano. I always had to reach out far and high for one or the other. So I had the bright idea to build a bracket that would place the computer keyboard and mouse at a more comfortable position, and it cost me nothing because I had a bunch of old video camera brackets that I was able to repurpose. I’m super happy with this new setup.
Here are the diagrams I drew when I planned out this project. I followed them precisely and am very happy with the results.
And now I have the two rooms cleaned up and connected. The live room is bright and cheery. The last order of business on this project is to invest in acoustic treatment for the walls and ceiling to get rid of echoes, and I need to invest in some small personal headphone mixers and headphones for the live room. Oh and probably some sort of rug. Maybe a drum set too 🙂