deeperthanwar

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!