Creative
Help Acquired
I met with my new assistant earlier and we went over the shop’s inventory duties. Her name is Valarie. Her and I met about 20 years ago. She’s changed a lot since then. Now she resembles a fish from the Spongebob show. She has helped me with quite a few art projects, the most famous…
Cody Deegan
Reaper
I forgot to get a picture of yesterday’s tattoo. It was the start of Arlington cemetery on the inside of the upper arm. But today I remembered to grab a picture of the grim reaper tattoo that I started. I think it can be finished in one more session. Today’s conversation topics were movie westerns,…
Immortan Joe and the Comic
Session three took place yesterday on my son’s Mad Max: Fury Road tattoo. We absolutely loved that movie. We talked about maybe even making his entire arm an homage to the Mad Max movies (if he ever decides he wants to do more). For now though he’s got a pretty cool first tattoo. I told…
My Art Their Art
Tattooing is a great job, sometimes stressful, sometimes super fun. It can be overwhelming – especially when there’s a long line of clients waiting for me to take care of them. Creating art is challenging, and even more so when clients are not satisfied with the choices I’ve made and I have to try and…
Painting Idea and Scuba Women
My visit to Jarbidge recently has got me thinking about an idea for a new oil painting. I started a sketch and reached out to my Facebook people for some reference materials. I’m supposed to meet a guy tomorrow to discuss early 20th century Nevada cowboy attire. Vacation put me behind on all sorts of…
Being Versatile
I know a lot of tattoo artists specialize in one particular style and don’t do anything else. As much as I would love to just do realism all the time and nothing else, I feel I can’t just turn away clients if I am capable of doing the work. Yesterday’s client wanted this particular style…
Dancer and a Wolf Hat
I devoted some time over the past couple days to working on a new oil painting. I had the 4th of July off and needed something to do other than Tattoo-related stuff. 4 years ago I had seen a post on a friend’s Facebook showing his son dancing at a pow wow. I asked him…
Dramatic lighting
It had been a month-and-a-half since I updated my business paperwork stuff. I keep spreadsheets in the cloud with all my business expenditures. I have a few simple formulas that calculate my totals and how much use tax I owe. Keeping track of all the business dealings is super important come tax time. After the…
Style and the Client
The new thermal stencil printer arrived, and I got a new power supply. My first use of the stencil printer did not go so well. The stencil printed fine, but it didn’t go onto the skin very good. I was trying out the new red stencil paper along with the transfer gel that came with…
The Warrior
Today was the day to ink the woman fighting off a lion attacking her horse. I posted previously the story behind it and some of my sketches. About ten minutes before my client arrived I had a sudden urge to make some changes. The placement had changed from a thigh to a forearm, so I…