Holidays are for Eating.

Louderhorn Inn hosted a smallish vegan thanksgiving this year,

and as always, Meryl made so much great food.

(that is one sexy vegan blueberry pie)

There was five of us sitting at the dining room table,

but enough mashed potatoes to feed 20.

(i made the potatoes)

The next day was back to work,

and we celebrated Black (Tie) Friday.

We didn't buy anything,

we just wore ties.

Adam M also has been wearing normal pants all week

(in lieu of his super tight sexy man jeans)

in order to help heal the first sit of his alligator tattoo we did on Tuesday.

Looking forward to working on this again soon.

(and yeah, that's a thigh. not a wrist, not a forearm. a thigh.
the tattoo is 11 inches tall.)

Winter Weather

There's rain, there's snow,

and then there is freezing rain,

that icky cold mess than makes you want to stay inside.

Meryl and I ventured out to the Seward Cafe, of course,

and then to Riverview Theatre for a $2 showing of Depicable Me

(the best $4 I ever spent)

and then stayed inside the rest of the day doing art,

cooking, eating, and staying warm.

Here's a cell phone camera shot of what I worked on

while Meryl was carving a linoleum block

for her letterpress class tomorrow.

Hyenas and hand puppets.

I finished the boar skull painting the other day,
and immediately started a few new ones.

There's going to be a big to do come March,

and I need to get a move on if I'm going to be ready in time.

Adam W is leaving tomorrow morning for a NYC trip,

and he wanted to get a new tattoo before he left.

I drew up this hyena head for him,

which he didn't see until he got to the shop tonight,

and once he saw the angry face,

he wanted it a little "toned down".

(like adding the teddy bear to ryan's elephant)

So we ran through a few ideas, and settled on hand puppets,

which I then markered on.

We didn't get too far, since we only got started at 8pm,

but I'm super excited about it,

and wanted to post the progress photos.

We'll work on it again some time after Thanksgiving.

New Orleans, Part 2 (ish)

I know, it's been a little bit since NOLA.
But when Meryl and I lost the camera,
we lost some of the photos from the trip as well.
Luckily this tattoo was on Erica Flannes,
a rad tattoo artist in New Orleans,
and she was kind enough to send me a photo.

I added another guest spot to the travel plans section.

I'll be headed West this time.

I'll be in Grant's Pass, Oregon from February 14-19th,

and am starting to book up now.

It's actually an amazing opportunity that fell into my lap-

thanks to Off the Map's Mary Bowen.

(in case you didn't know, she's the best ever)

Gogue Art and Tattoo, Jeff Gogue's studio,

has kindly offered to have me guest spot there for the week,

and I couldn't possibly be more excited.

(he's so dope)

6 hours South of Olympia, and 4.5 from Portland.

Delivered.

Mail art.
I don't ever talk about it on the internet.
It just doesn't really belong there, you know?
Except today.
11-11, kids.
Never Quiet Never Soft is printing, stamping and mailing for the holiday.
Just ask, and it's yours.
Both of them.
And for free.
Go get em.

not bad for a wednesday.

Here's Tony's new stormy lighthouse tattoo.

I woke up this morning and ran a couple miles with Meryl,
went to work and tattooed all day long,
and then came home and went to work on some NQNS stuff.
Thursday is, after all, 11-11.
It was a full day,
and now that it's past 2 am,
I am headed to bed.
I'm tired, my knees hurt, I even tattooed by own thumb.
(by accident, unfortunately)
But it was all pretty great.
(except the thumb part)
I also got halfway through a really fun owl tattoo,
but didn't finish before 8pm rolled around.
Another day....

No time for logic.

Adam M has been getting a bunch of work added to his cuckoo clock tattoo.
It now has a background,
but still doesn't make any sense.
Apparently this clock defies gravity.

The photo is pretty crappy,
since, thanks to DST, the sun now sets before 5pm,
so an outdoor shot was impossible.
But we're extending it all the way onto his foot,
so there's lots of opportunity for better shots later.
This is just a blog, after all, and not a portfolio,
which I have to remind myself all the time.

Tomorrow I'm doing a lighthouse tattoo for the first half of the day,
and then a baby owl tattoo till close.
Awesome.

Weekending.

This week's Painting Monday wasn't as productive as I was hoping.
I started painting this warthog skull as practice,
but I only got a couple hours into it before I was needing certain spots to dry
before I could go back into them.
I guess it's a lot like tattooing.
If you do a spot orange,
it's going to be a bitch to try and change it to white a couple minutes later.
So when I went to tighten up the mouth area,
I realized it'd have to wait till another day.
(of course, the skull is being painted from life,
since I Ryan keeps finding me the sickest skulls around,
and working off of google images is not dope at all)

I also had a bunch of drawings to do for this work week starting tomorrow.
As long as everything goes as planned,
it should be a full week of tattoo photos for the blog (portfolio?).
It's funny the waves that exciting tattoo projects come in.
Sometimes it's awesome all week long,
and sometimes it's......not.

The gift that makes the other gift stop giving.

Justin's birthday is October 31rst,
which is pretty awesome.
A little less awesome, however,
is the pumpkin tattoo he got on his birthday a few years back.
Ouch.
Justin's mom wanted to help make the pumpkin go away,
so this year for his birthday,
she bought him a big cover up tattoo.
(what? i know! such a nice mom)

You'll have to click on the photo to see it in a not itty-bitty size.
It's the 3 stages of making a pumpkin disappear.
Stencil/maker stage, then session one, then second/final sit.
I believe it was about 6 hours total.

Back at it.

Hannah came to me with a 10 line poem she wanted tattooed on her,
and wanted some images to go with it.
Somehow, we started an entire half-back-onto-butt piece,
and still didn't even put the words in there.
We're going to have to do it in a bunch of sittings,
but I'm really excited about it.
I wanted to show the beginnings,
and I'll post some progress shots along the way.
(it's a statue with morning glories climbing up it)




It's nice being back at Identity Tattoo,
with things like arm rests, and lights,
and a photocopier that has sizing options.
Conventions are fun and terrible at the same time.
I'll be in the shop all of November,
and have plenty of openings.
Just let me know.

New Orleans (part 1)

New Orleans.
Yeah.
I'm going to have to split it up into two parts,
mostly because Halloween in the Big Easy got so crazy
that we lost our camera,
and all of the holiday photos.
No kidding.
So if you were there,
send me your photos.
(or maybe our camera?)

I have some of the convention shots,
but the big action wasn't inside the hotel ballroom.
I've never seen a place get so into getting dressed up,
and I promise to bring the thunder to every Halloween to come.

Meryl was the biggest help ever,
and it was super nice to have her there.
Here's us dressed up.



I had a tail, too.
Which was forgotten about,
and since I sit down to pee,
it ended up in the toilet later on that night.
Luckily, I had another costume for when we hit the town.



I didn't have a light while tattooing,
which wasn't too bad,
but the photos came out weird in the dark.





A ton of thanks to Li for showing us around,
and bringing us to the center of all the chaos.

Thanks, also, to a bunch of super nice tattoo artists
(they do exist!)
for their hospitality and generosity.
A shout out to Eye Candy Tattoo, Mid City, and the Body Shop,
thanks for taking care of the out-of-towner without a car.

I'll hopefully have New Orleans part II up soon,
with more tattoo photos.