deeperthanwar

I've been listening to a lot of Elvis and Cash recently.  A lot.  I particularly like playing it while tattooing.  I think that it has something to do with rockabilly being so linked to Americana and the slightly romanticised image that I have of tattooing in the 1950s.

Anyway, with the new studio nearly ready for action, I've been inspired to ask people what they would ideally be listening to when they get tattooed.  You know, a bit of research to see what the punters are after.  I posted this question on Facebook and Twitter a few days ago, and got an interesting set of results.  So, without further ado, here's a pick of the bunch:

Neil Young - The Needle and the Damage Done
T-Rex - Bang a Gong or Get it On
Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter
Johnny Cash - Man in Black
Albert Hammond Junior - Yours to Keep
Elton John - Tiny Dancer (I prefer the Ben Folds version)

Some people just suggested artists:

Viv Murrell (bit of shameless self promotion there, I think...
Rise Against
The Ramones
John Mayer
Foo Fighters
Guns N Roses

Another person suggested something slow and soft to calm you down.  Not a bad thought.  In fact, I have thought something similar before.
Interestingly, at least two people named things that they had actually listened to whilst I tattooed them.  I think that goes some way to showing how important music is to the tattoo process.

And of course, James Bower would like me to sing him a sea shanty.  James, if you ever get a tattoo, I would love to sing nautical songs to you.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this?  Perhaps I'll put together a compilation album or something...

For the last year or so, Beth and I have become more and more involved with the deaf community here in Toronto.  We both work with a boy who is profoundly deaf, and recently, Beth has started working with another boy with a severe hearing impairment.
Not to mention that for the last eight months or so, we have lived with our friend Sallyanne.  Sallyanne has a slight hearing impairment, but both of her parents are profoundly deaf, so her first language is, in fact, American Sign Language (ASL).

I learned a short while ago that names in ASL are usually assigned to a person by another signing person.  Often, the name assigned is the first letter of the person's first name.  This letter is then signed in a particular place, to distinguish that person from any other people with the same name.  When Beth and I learned this, we decided to ask Sallyanne's mom to give us sign names.
Having taken a few days to think about it, she got back to us.  She had decided that my name should be signed by tapping the letter M twice on the inside of my forearm, because I am a tattoo artist.  Beth and Addie have their initials signed in the same place, as that is standard practice for people of the same family.

I'd planned to blog about this a while ago, when we were given our names, but it works out well that I waited, because I had my first deaf client yesterday.  She brought two friends with her, who were also deaf. 
My knowledge of ASL is still very limited, so I wasn't able to communicate as effectively as I had wanted.  The experience has encouraged me to work harder at signing, as I think it will be an invaluable resource, particularly in my line of work.

On another related note, Beth and I have been thinking of getting sign tattoos.  We're not sure exactly what form they would take, but would almost certainly be a series of pictograms of signs, either spelling out a word, or using the signs for words that make up a phrase.  The jury is still out as to what they would say.  I'll post more on this when we have a better idea.

Do you know of any deaf people with tattoos?  Do you know anyone with an ASL tattoo?  Drop me a line and let me know!

Good point, Jerry.  But what do you think is reasonable to charge for a tattoo?
It's been a philosophy of mine (and Beth's) for a long time to make art accessible and affordable.  We don't think it's right to charge a huge amount just because you can, so we don't do it. 

Then again, when I tattoo someone, I put my all into it.  I've usually spent hours working on drawings, preparing things and setting up the studio.  I will often take hours to tattoo a piece onto somebody.  And when I'm done, they will walk away with something that they keep for the rest of their life. 

I was looking at Scott Campbell's website the other day.  No doubt he is a great artist.  But is he really worth the $300 an hour that he charges?  To be honest, I don't think he is.  What frustrates me, is that a lot of people go to him, and pay his huge fees, just because of his name.  Many of them are getting tattoos that most artists could accomplish just as well. 

The other end of the scale, and this is something that I was discussing with Jen the other day, is that you can price yourself too low, and put people off that way.  Many people expect to pay more than bargain basement prices, otherwise they suspect that the service or product you are offering is sub-standard.  Not only that, but in our experiences, it often leads to people assuming that they can take you for a ride.

I don't, by any means, want to price people out of the market, but at the same time, I want people to value the work that I'm doing for them.

Any thoughts on this?  Good/bad experiences?

I've been out the shop for more than a month now.  It's been good to take a little break after everything that happened, and to take stock of where I'm at, and where my family is at.

This past week, I've done a couple of pieces for friends at home.  The sun room that I'm using isn't purpose built, but it is certainly doing the job for now.  It is bright, clean, and calm. I've not been advertising myself as an artist, but the work keeps coming in anyway.  It's that time of year again, I guess.  My classy new tattoo bed should arrive in the next few days, and that will make it easier.

This summer, we're transforming our spare room into an awesome, professional private studio.  We have done our research and you can expect it to be pretty cool.

In the meantime, I'm thinking about finishing off my sleeve.  The upper arm is in desperate need of more work, and I've just about done the drawing now.  My good friend, Kevin Smith is going to work on it, when he returns from some crazy extreme sports in Arizona.  I can't wait to see the finished product.

Maybe that's where I'm at with my career in tattooing at the moment.  I just can't wait to see the finished product.  I don't know exactly how everything's going to shape up yet down the road. I've enjoyed the last few weeks, taking a break from tattooing, because It's given me a chance to learn a little patience.  Everything is going to come together, but for now, I think I just need to let God work it out.

It's Easter Sunday today, a day to remember that Jesus is not dead, but that he rose again from the dead so that we can have eternal life.  Hindsight is a wonderful thing - we can look at what He did on the cross, and recognise it as the ultimate sacrifice.  Jesus died to defeat death.  But we only know that he was victorious, because he was resurrected.  To be one of his disciples, close friends, family, on the day he died would surely have been torture. 
I suspect that, in their position, even if I'd had faith that He would return from the dead, I would have really struggled through those couple of days having seen him publicly executed.  Watching all that I'd built my life around dying in front of me.  I would almost certainly have felt like I was in the pit of despair.

It's so much easier when we look back after the conclusion of an event to see that it was all going to work out in the end.  Right now, I'm waiting for the time when I can see how it all works out.  But the good thing is, I know that Jesus was raised from the dead.  The situation now is infinitely better than it was before He died; before it seemed there was no hope.  And that's what I'm looking forward to.

Peace.

I'm in a time of transition again.
I've been noticing for a while that the shop I was working in is a little slow on walk in business.  This is partly deliberate - the owners wanted the shop in a more residential area, with a different feel to many of the tattoo shops you see downtown. 

It's also become clear that there is a clash of values between myself and my boss.  I've mentioned on here before that I'm a Christian, and many of my clients are too.  As a result, we often talk our faith and political outlooks. 

While it's certainly not been my intention to offend anyone, some of these conversations seem to have had that effect.  It's important to me to provide a place for my clients to speak freely, regardless of what's going on in their lives.  So, now, I find myself making the decision to leave the environment I was in, where that wasn't possible.

Right now, I'm looking for potential shops to work in.  I had an interview on Monday at a successful studio that's just moved to Mississauga.  I'm waiting to hear back from them, and I have an interview on Friday at another Queen Street studio.

I'm not really sure where this is going to end up, but I know it's going to be good.  I have been holding off on appointments for the first couple weeks of March just so we can get a better idea of what's going on.  What's for sure is that by the end of the month I will be established

I'll keep you up to date.

So, winter is always a slow time for tattooing.  At Christmas, everyone's spending money on other people instead of themselves.  In January, everyone's spent their money.  Plus, no-one is really thinking of getting a tattoo when it's so cold out that they can't go show it off.
But winter is an excellent time to get a tattoo. You don't have to worry about the sun while it's healing.  Unless you're really into swimming, you can more easily avoid the pool during the cold winter months.

Maybe that's why February starts to speed up. 

While I've been in the shop one or two days a week over the last couple of months, this week I'm in four days, most of them with more than one appointment.  It's nice to be getting lots of work again.  I'll post pictures when I get a minute's break from actually tattooing.  In the meantime, check out the gallery.  I've added some pictures from the last couple months that I didn't put up yet. 

And don't forget to drop me a line if you want to get something yourself...

I've been tattooing a lot of birds lately.  And I'm not saying that I've had more female customers than male, either. 
It just seems that I've had a lot of requests for tattoos of our feathered friends in the last few weeks.

When I first got interested in tattooing, one of my major inspirations was the work philosophy of Dave Berwick, of Physical Poetry in Leeds.  All of his work is custom, and there is no flash on the walls.  He believes that all tattoos should be unique to the wearer. 

Now that I'm working as an artist, I have the same passion for custom work.  The shop that I work in is also custom-only.  Which means that just because I've been doing a lot of bird tattoos, doesn't mean that they're all the same.  See for yourself:

I did these two birds a couple of weeks ago.  She already had some text on her high ribs: "beauty is in the eye of the beholder"
She wanted two swallows to go just below the text, one on each side of her ribs.  One had to be green, and one red, to represent the struggle between good and evil.

I went with an old school feel, but I think that the colours bring it a bit more into the new school.  They're also fairly big - nearly six inches tall.

This is a work in progress.  The finished piece will stretch across his whole chest, and onto his upper arms too.
The theme is life and death/good and evil.  When he first came for the consultation, to look at what I'd drawn up for him, he was about to tell me that he changed his mind on having the owl, but he said when he saw the drawing that I'd done, that he decided to get it.

The phoenix was much more difficult to work with, because it's not real.  Putting it next to a real bird presented some challenges.  I dealt with it by making the owl look less real, and by giving a similar shape to the feathers on both birds.

When this client comes back for the next session, we're on to the next part of the tattoo - a heart that's been ripped in half then sewn back together. 

The client in this picture emailed me to say that she'd been looking for a Christian tattoo artist for a while to do a piece for her.

As she wanted a bluebird, I went with the old school tradition, because I think it lends itself really nicely to the colours on this bird.  It was also really important to her to have the heart in there, as this tattoo is in memory of her grandmother. 
I feel like the vines give the whole thing some movement.

So there you have it.  Five birds, each designed especially for the client.  Each tattoo entirely unique to the person that has it.

If you want something absolutely unique to you on your body, just let me know!  Don't forget that we now offer gift certificates, and that we have some amazing deals on at the moment.  Check out the homepage for more details!

Well, I've been in the shop for a month now, and I've been quite busy.  I'm loving the atmosphere of working with a bunch of other artists.  It's so creative there, and there's always someone wanting to give their input or just inspire you with a piece that they're doing.

Beth (my wife) suggested that it would be a good idea to put some recent pieces up here every once in a while, and say a couple of things about why they are interesting, or what I really enjoyed about them.

This was the first piece that I did in the shop.  The guy had already got a tattoo of a scorpion a few years ago, and had been wanting to get something more, when he was involved in a cycling accident.  He had very seriously broken his femur, and the break was repaired with a huge metal pin.

He decided to tie the two things together, by getting a tattoo that not only showed the damage to his bone, and the repair work, but also that appeared as though the scorpion had ripped out of his leg.

He sent me x-rays of his leg as it is now, so that I could make the pin more accurate.  The next day, I also added scorpion tracks running around his leg, over his back and down to the scorpion.

A friend of mine asked me to work on a piece for her in memory of her mom, who passed away a couple of years ago.  She wanted the piece to be based on an illustration she had found, but she needed some changes made:  There needed to be two children playing in the tree, the boy on the branch had to have straight blonde hair, like her brother, and the girl on the swing needed wavy brown hair, like her.

The tree also has a heart cut into it, with the dates of her mom's life. 

I really enjoyed doing this piece for a lot of reasons.  The time we spent working on it was quite emotional for my friend, and I am really pleased that she ended up with this result.

I got an email a few weeks ago, from a lady in Germany.
She told me that her husband would be in Toronto for a few days to attend a conference, and wondered if I might be able to fit him in for an appointment. 
It just so happened that I had a cancellation on a day that he was free, so we started work on the design.

He already has a number of tattoos, and he told me that he got all of the others when he lived in San Fransisco while studying there.
He felt that if he got any tattoos at home in Germany, he wouldn't be able to stop getting them, so he decided only to get them when he travels.  He was very pleased to find a Christian tattoo artist here too.

The piece is a representation of the Archangel Michael - a warrior angel.  I particularly like the depth of the shading on the wings, the unwavering look on his face, and the white highlights on the sword and the sheath. 
He is very pleased with the piece, and has invited us to his home in Cologne, where he is already lining up people to get work done by me when we visit!

So, there's a few of the pieces that I've been working on.  Everything I do is custom designed for the person that gets it, so every tattoo is unique - you won't see anyone else with the same one you get.

If you are interested in getting some work done by me, check out the contact page, and drop me a line!