Last day of Fall (and Maple Grove).

Oh man.

I'm done with Identity Tattoo for a little while.

Don't expect to see me back there till April.

It's been an awesome 4.5 years,

and I look forward to more fun when I get back.

But for the next few months,

I'm very excited to be working out at Jeff Gogue's shop in Oregon.

My last day there was spent working on Manda's strange animal sleeve.

We colored in a lot of poppies around an antlered squirrel,

did some background,

and tried to tie everything together.

Up top is the (antlered) blue footed booby,

and the sheepgoat under that,

and then some squirrels playing in a poppy field.

(i didn't do the blue armband thing)

It was also Handsome Adam's last day,

and he's leaving for the west coast, too.

So after packing and cleaning up,

we smashed our coffee mugs and released a couple floating lanterns.

Adam's such a good dude,

and it's been a pleasure working with him for the past year.

So it's just Todd and Ben at the shop for a few months.

Do me a favor, and check up on them every once in a while.

Stop in and be loud for a minute,

just so they don't forget about me.

I'm afraid they might get soft while I'm away.

(i can almost hear Maple Grove collectively breathing a sigh of relief)

CATBEAR?!

aaaaarrrrghhhhhh!!!!!!!!!
It's a cat! With shark teeth! Or maybe it's a bear?

It's a dog going through a divorce

This is another tattoo in my favorite category ever: friends convincing other friends to get ridiculous nonsensical tattoos. Hilarious and awesome. And awful.

This was the first tattoo for this poor/rad soul. Description from the friend whose idea and drawing it was is below.





"i dont really remember what led up to the idea of swift getting a 20 second drawing i did of 'a dog going through a divorce' as a tattoo, but it was certainly assisted by it being 3am and a fair amount of alcohol on his part.. he woke up that next day and said "you know what? fuck it. lets do it." so less than an hour later i was paying someone $60 to permanently put it on swifts arm. dudes got sad depressed moppy divorced hair, hes unshaven and mopey, and hes got a little suitcase and dufflebag. he just needs to crash on your couch for a week or two. you know what happens when you call a tattoo shop and tell them you "want to get a cartoon dog getting a divorce", they dont believe youre serious. like 3 places didnt believe us."

Cats with no ears

I just took in two of the cutest cats ever, and so I have had cats on the brain lately. Because of this, I thought I'd do some searching for bad cat tattoos. I am SURE there are worse ones out here, but this is what I found- three cat tattoos without any ears. Why would you ever draw a cat without ears? It just makes them look like weird aliens!


This looks like a Lisa Frank drawing without the pizazz.


This is the most half-assed tattoo I have possibly ever seen. Why are the eyes sideways? Why are the whiskers blue? Where are the ears? So many unanswered questions!


This is a mix of the lady's five cats and some human (the right eye). Why the human has a lazy eye, I don't know. I also think the cat is actually the bark of a tree.


And finally, while not technically terrible, this butterfly-cat holding a flower and inexplicably wearing pants makes me laugh.

your early morning crap: lion!

Roar... this sucks!



If you have an awful tattoo, feel free to contact alice@vivalavinyl.org and she'll try to get to it.