My dear friends Meghan and Paul got hitched early this year. Regretfully, I wasn't able to make their wedding but as any good friend would do I lurked their Facebook profiles and have been celebrating their union vicariously through their photos. …continue reading
Bookmistress recently delivered me a copy of “Skin & Bones, Tattoos in the Life of the American Sailor”, a thin but nonetheless interesting little catalogue for an exhibition hosted at the Independence Seaport Museum in Philly. …continue reading
Time, how she flies.
This last month has been jam-packed with tattooing: working four days at Tattoo Zoo, my home shop in Victoria, and coming over to Vancouver to tattoo for three days at Sacred Heart Downtown.
This seven-day-a-week streak lasted just over a month and has now settled into a comparatively relaxed five-day schedule. …continue reading
In light of my Mother's upcoming birthday here's a little watercolour of her favourite critter, the Monarch Butterfly. Happy Birthday Mom!
During this evening's LOTR-esque public transit journey from Victoria to Vancouver I savoured a few spare moments (“gift time” I call it) to reflect on the past year.
Let me get all scientific-like and suggest that if you take an individual day as a representative sample of the year, today has been solid evidence that 2009 was outstanding with quite a few personal milestones achieved following a serious increase in my creative output. …continue reading
I really love the atmosphere in historic black & white photos, especially photos where a bit of an old tattoo is visible.
Once you've picked through a handful of historic tattoo photo books (Henk Schiffmacher's "1000 Tattoos" is a good place to start) you realize there are a finite number of vintage photos of tattooed folks that seem to get reproduced across many publications: discovering a previously unseen one is quite rare, so I was pretty stoked to find this charming shot through my pal John who in turn found it at Shorpy. …continue reading
For me, cowboy hats are so iconically American, iconically Canadian too, really, considering the significance of our Prairie provinces to Canadian identity. It's been my experience that a good cultural centrepiece usually has a lot of power as a tattoo.
As an eight-year-old I saw my first episode of Bonanza, in German no less, while visiting relatives in Austria (The episode was, appropriately, Doppelgänger). …continue reading
A “Thank You” painting
Some stiff competition in tattooland today.
We started with this
Did up this little design from some anonymous historic flash during a great painting session at the shop with my ol' pal and coworker Bryan J. Turnbull. Lots of painting going on at the shop these days.
It's fun doing something quick and simple to cap off the end of the day before heading home, recreational-like. …continue reading
This site is a repository of my tattoo-related thinkings and makings, and a healthy channel for the ineffable force that compelled me to pursue this bizarre carnival craft… continue
Airwolf
Each week I travel back and forth between Vancouver and Victoria so I can tattoo at both Tattoo Zoo in Victoria, and Sacred Heart Tattoo in Vancouver. On average, this round trip eats up ten hours of my week.
If you're on a budget (which I try to be), the time-consuming commute between Tsawwassen and Swartz Bay can be a real sonofabitch. Other times, on a rare warm night sitting on the outside deck of the ferry with a cold beer it's pretty damn picturesque. …continue reading