Back in Philly

So I worked yesterday at our NJ shop and was able to score two walkins. This first one was a name in old english.


This one went pretty smooth and the client was a really nice guy.

After the name came in, this guy walked in and wanted some barbed wire looking thorns behind this lettering he already had. He was also a really nice guy and let me draw it up however I wanted.

I'm working at the NJ shop today and unfortunately it's super slow and nothing has come in. Hopefully we'll get something before the day is out, but if not, thats ok too.

More to come later....

Tina

Last few days

So I got to work on my client with the palm tree on his leg, Dave the other night. I was able to work on the background and am happy with what Bill and I came up with for the color sceme. The sun up at the top is a bit scarred and he was hating me after our session, so when I get back in Jan we will recolor that in and rework the mermaid girl and smooth out the shading.

We used some grey and color reflections in the clouds and faded blues to oranges and pinks up towards the top.

I did this the other night as a last minute walk-in. I was happy with the outcome other than my outline... next time I'm going to use something finer so they aren't so bold. She loved the color and my friend Stolfi tattooed her mother and her sister as well with the same design. They flew out the next day happy so that's all that matters.... ya live and learn.

The sameday Dave came in Noah came in afterwards and we finished up another swirl on his other arm/shoulder. This took about 2 hrs and he did well.

I get to touch up Dustin's tiki today around 5 so I'll post pics of that tonight or tmrw. I'm so excited to go back home to Philly tomorrow night... I've been here for 3 months and am ready to get off the island and back home for a month and half. I'm NOT ready for the cold though.

More to come.... ALOHA

1.5 weeks left!

So I've done a few more pieces in the past week and thought I would post them....

This woman was from Brasil and was her first tattoo... She was super sweet and gave me freedom with it aside from the board. It had to be positioned and colored VERY specific.

Overall I had fun with it, and experimented with a little grey in there... nothing too crazy.

This was so random and so simple and fun!!! I had to throw it in. She was a college student and we all let her know that this wasn't going to stay. It still looks awesome!

This wednesday I had another short session with Noah... finished two small stripes. His skin was irritated from hollyrot so we couldn't do too much.

This time it was especially fun because I got to tattoo with both hands! I haven't done too much with my left hand since I started tattooing, so whynot warm up my left hand to the machine since I already paint with it?

Now I need to master it!

This tattoo walked right in on Saturday! What a better tattoo than a hula girl while in Hawaii! He picked it right from the Sailor Jerry stencil book and he let me do my thing. It was so much fun and his skin took the ink sooo well! Had a little trouble stretching up in the armput area, but once I got the hang of it everything went well. This guy is going to let me do another one on his other arm next week!

I tattooed my coworker/friend Stolfi Saturday night! He let me do whatever I wanted, so we have this sad pigeon holding an umbrella sitting on a branch.. in the rain. We did the entire thing in black, grey and red. It looks kind of dark from the photo, but I stuck to mostly midtone greys so we can watch it heal and I can get more practice in smoothing out my greywash. He was super excited about the design and I got to experiment with lineweight, used two different liners with this one.

This woman walked in today a few hours ago and picked this one out of our linework reference file. She was super nice and let me have fun with the color. Another biscuit to add to the list!

So I leave town very soon, so I need to make every tattoo count before I leave. Not that I haven't before, but I need to make sure everything is perfect.

Until next time...

ALOHA

Turd polishing 101

So Saturday I got to rework another old tattoo... this guy had an 8 yr old tribal wristband with a VERY small harley logo on the center. So I draw on him for a bit with Bill and came up with this.

 You can see how small these letters in the logo were. The tribal was easy to figure out, we added a few extra spikes to it in the front to frame out the logo, and wanted to salvage what little spaces we could on the bracelet. The logo was the hardest thing for me... those letters were so damn small and to top it all off his skin was older and the logo underneath was a little scarred.

After he approved of this we got started. Everything went really smooth I though, but like I said that lettering wasn't the greatest. I need to work on tiny letters. This tattoo was a prime example of why people shouldn't do designs so tiny. After only 8 yrs you couldn't even read the logo anymore. At least the tribal was easily fixable.

 I was able to add some white to the closed up spaces and open up the bracelet some more.

 We were able to put a little bit of color back into the logo, but as for the lettering, the best we were able to do for him at this point was to put the lettering back in and re-outline what he had. The tribal was no problem and he really liked how the lines were sharp again.

I definitely learned alot from this one, and how you can salvage tattoos that you think are a lost cause.

Lesson learned: NEVER make a harley logo this small. EVER!

More stuff to come..
ALOHA!

more stuff

So the shop is still a bit slow, but I was able to grab a name the other day and worked on the guy with the palm tree on his leg.

Here is the name...

I should have zoomed in more for this photo... so its not the greatest picture. I didn't do the hibiscus above it. I have definitely done better than this but I think I did the best I could at the time. She really liked how it turned out so that made me happy.

 So I got another session in with Dave for his leg. This time I colored in the palm tree and added some cloud outlines in the background. He has alot of faded greenish blue background starting at his foot and goes all the way up. On his foot is an underwater scene, so we decided to make the area by the trees more sky-like. We were going to color in some of the background with a light blue but he was pretty sore after the tree. I'm not the fasted yet so I worked on him for about 2.5-3 hrs.

The next session we're going to fill in the background and the clouds, and then go from there. I enjoyed working on this and hope to finish it and make it new and clean looking. He has alot of random stuff there so we need to make sense of it.

Here's a closer view of the tree.

Back to work now... until next time...

ALOHA

Another day

So even though I was supposed to work sales yesterday, and I did.... but Mike was awesome enough to throw me these two...

This couple walked in and wanted an outline of this stick figure dude in a canoe.... I think they drew it up or printed it out not really sure, but it was a cute idea and they each got the same thing. She got hers on her wrist much smaller and he got his on back of the calf. Super fun!

For some reason the wrist image won't upload so once I figure that out I'll post that too.

After these two, a small logo of an eagle walked in and I was able to do that too, but I totally forgot to take a picture! She will  be back with her husband so I'll be sure to snap a pic next time!

Off work today heading to the print shop to print out the stuff I've done since they left town. They come back today so I would like to be prepared.


More to come...
ALOHA

A good friday!

After a long week of doing sales and not tattooing, I was excited for Mike to throw me a few tattoos yesterday. This butterfly walked in a few days ago and her, along with her husband came back to get their tattoos. This woman was super nice and I enjoyed tattooing her. This was challenging because not only was the design super tight, but her skin was SUPER stretchy, and aged.... and THIN. Definitely a test in stretching skills! Overall I was happy with it and hope it heals well.

These next few pictures are a bracelet made of honus and plumeria on a woman's wrist. After I finished the butterfly she walked in and after 15 minutes of drawing we settled on this. I was really happy with this and she let me design it for her. We alerternated pink flowers with orange and yellow ones. She was really laid back and despite her conservative appearance, she had a gorgeous polynesian rib piece done on the island at a different studio. It's funny how some people surprise you.   

She comes here alot for vacation so I hope to see this again, see how it heals.

Unfortunately I don't have any tattoos today, probably won't tattoo again until next week.  Hopefully it will pick up a bit more...

Anyway, Bill and Anna come home tomorrow so I'm stoked to show them what I've done and do some more projects with them. I'll post a drawing I'm working on soon of a dragon that Bill and I are sketching together.

I can't believe that I have been here two months already! It went by so fast. Although I love it here, I'm ready to go home, take care of business, tattoo some friends and come back here with a clean slate. I feel like I'm living two lives, one in Hawaii and one in Philly. I miss Philly alot and get homesick here and there. Sounds lame but being away from everything you have been used to for the past 3 yrs can take a toll on you.

Blah blah blah Gotta get back to work now, Mike is tattooing a sweet backpiece of wings so I should get to cleaning.

Aloha!

Aloha Monday

So I finally got to do another tattoo yesterday! It's been a little slow, and I've been working sales as well.

This woman was super nice and wanted a half arm-band thing with a turtle and plumeria flowers, all different colors.

 Here is a close up of it... I really enjoyed doing this one!

I don't have any tattoos until thursday, I get to tattoo Noah again and work on his tribal stuff. Then a tribal butterfly on friday!

Nothing new to report as of yet, will post more later.

ALOHA!

Wow, it's November already!

So yesterday I got to do two tattoos.

This one was on a really nice guy from New York, he had these three hearts on his forearm, and wanted to add another for his son.

Before...

He wanted to add one more with the name "Jeremy" in it with more chains.

I really liked how this turned out... very fun to do and the guy was really nice. He's going to come to visit Philly and let me redo the entire thing! He loved it! I think I could have done better with the lettering, the r was tricky for some reason....

Close up...

This one was the friend of the guy with the triangles on the wrist that I did about a week or two ago. He was also super nice, and a military boy that will definitely be back for more. This took me about 2.5 hours to do... talk about slow! The biggest thing for me to do is to go SLOW and take my time.

Some more views too...

I had a little trouble with this side of the wing.... tattooing a design all the way around an arm with such angles and straight lines was really challenging! I think I had much better lines with the other side, but once I filled it all in I was able to clean it up the best I could without overworking his skin.

More to come tomorrow hopefully...

ALOHA!

Halloween weekend!

Even though the shop has been super slow, we did manage to get a bunch of people in the night before Halloween. We did a special on Halloween themed stuff, so I was able to do this cool hatchet on a guy's wrist.

Super fun and small.... He lives here so I asked him to come back so I can see how the grey heals up.

This girl was super sweet and also living here on the island, fun to do and she was cool to talk to. good practice for me

I have to say that this was the hardest of all the stuff I did that night. I had a little trouble with the shell part of the turtle, but I learned alot from this one. The woman was heading out of the town the next day and was super nice. She had stopped in before and was looking at the design but didn't want to commit to anything.

I have an appointment for a tribal dragon on the arm tonight... I'll post pics as soon as I'm done!

ALOHA!

It's been a few days

So it's been a few days since I've been able to tattoo anything on anyone... business slowed down this week for some reason.  I did, however have a great weekend! I got to scuba dive for the first time in my life with Anna which was amazing... I have video and pics but haven't loaded them onto my computer yet. I'll post them tmrw or the next day.

So today I had the rare opportunity of tattooing Mike Brown, an artist here who has been tattooing for well over 30 years. He let me redo two roses on his ankle that he did in the 70s sometime, along with a Mike Malone kanji below it that was old and faded. This was an epic opportunity!

Here is a pic of the old tattoo....

The upper rose was Mike's very first tattoo, which we left alone. The two below it and the kanji were my project for the day.

He and I drew in some guidelines to work from since the inner part of the roses were practically faded away...

Fresh new outline... He helped me along the entire time for this.

Finished! Took me about an hour and half bc i'm super slow, but I'm happy with how it turned out and am very excited to have tattooed Mike, which definitely was a once in a lifetime opportunity!

I'm throwing in some fun pics as well....

So excited!!! A HUGE EPIC thank you to Mike Brown!!!! Definitely a day I will never forget!

Until next time.... ALOHA!!!!!