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.

Occasionally, when I've had enough of the "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" of it all I'll indulge my inner Donald Trump and fly across on a float plane which reduces the one-way trip time from five hours to a breezy 35 minutes

The cost to save yourself four-and-a-half hours of commuting time? $152.26.

For comparison's sake the same trip taking five hours on (mostly) public transit costs $30, a fifth of the cost of the plane.

Which brings us to the current week and the reason for the title of this post. I neglected to book a float plane in a timely fashion and was left with a decision: wake up at 5am and undergo the protracted-yet-cost-effective trek on public transit only to arrive at noon in Victoria or spend a few day's wages and sleep in an extra three hours and fly across on… a helicopter!!!

I should mention here I've been obsessed with helicopters since Airwolf first aired during my impressionable youth. And yet before today I had never flown in a helicopter.

I hung out in Vancouver's Helijet lounge with its resident kitty, "Rotor". He does a fantastic job of being adorable, inspecting baggage, and mousing.

Then it was on to the tarmac to board the Sikorsky which looks kinda similar to the Bell 222 (the Airwolf Model), don't it?

Idling, or whatever you call it in a helicopter, felt like being inside one of those wobbly dog toys: you're very conscious there's four giant blades spinning incredibly fucking fast just inches above your head - their motion creates a serious bounce in the passenger compartment.

Taking off was surreal and effortless - like the hand of God plucked the thing up and gently lifted us into the sky. Thankfully the wobbliness subsided as things got underway for an otherwise smooth flight.

Whereas the float plane docks just steps from the front door of our tattoo shop, the helicopter terminal is out near Ogden Point and requires a $10+ taxi ride to the shop.

My verdict: it's the float plane for utility and the helicopter for novelty. I leave you with some spoken word by Ernie Cline, just scroll down and check his bit on Airwolf, it's well… Airwolf!!!

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.

They're both inspiring people that get fully into everything they take on and I'm stoked for them to have legalized their love stuff and, as Jon Bon would say, are no longer living in sin. In a world where people are either taking that Sex In The City shit way too seriously and rocking it Samantha Jones style staying slutty and single until death, or taking on multiple wives à la Bountiful BC, it's comforting to know old-fashioned one-on-one passion is alive and throbbing.

Judging from aforementioned Facebook pics this passion and attention to detail manifested itself in one damn stylish wedding. It's cool to see how their taste for the timeless and classic shows through in their attire, wedding accoutrements, right on down to their wedding stationery. Speaking of wedding stationery, Meghan and Paul chose (the very talented) Beth Campbell to design theirs.

Meghan came to see me for some work early in my start as a tattooer and we ended up doing a poppy on her shoulder. Beth gave a nod to the bride's tattoo in their wedding invitations; with a bouquet of poppies in the basket of the tandem bicycle central to the design.

I'm always curious and impressed by how other creative folks translate their inspirations from raw source material to final product.

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.

The book describes a connection between scrimshaw and tattooing. Scrimshaw is essentially a carving made in whale bone or tooth. The carving is covered in ink, excess wiped away. Ink then remains in the grooves to define and emphasize the line work. It was a pastime for sailors aboard American whaling ships and likely lead to and/or existed side-by-side with hand-poked tattoos. It's easy to imagine someone with a sharp carving tool, a bottle of ink, and enough skill to apply strong, simple imagery on curved surfaces adapting their work from whale bone to a shipmate's arm.

Scrimshaw-inspired tattoo by Duke Riley

Duke Riley, a tattooer, scrimshaw artist, and all-around multi-disciplinary creative does some incredible work. I really like the texture and strength of his tattoos; they don't depend on color or whip-shading (in the traditional sense) for impact and completeness.

I wonder if the work of comic artist (or is that graphic novelist?) Charles Burns (who spent formative years in Seattle, a port city full of sailors) and poster/skate/surf artist Jim Phillips has been inspired by scrimshaw. They seem to have in common an almost-exclusive use of line to create lighting/dimension, an approach that might have evolved from carving-related arts like scrimshaw or woodblock.

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.

Until the end of February you'll find me at:

Sacred Heart Downtown, 725 Nelson
Saturday, Sunday, and Monday from 10am – 10pm

Sacred Heart Kits, 3734 West 10th Ave.
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 12 – 7pm

Then, at the end of February it's back to lovely Vancouver Island.

Full Circle: Tattooing where I first got Tattooed

Being at the Kits location has been a curious experience: 16 years ago I got my first tattoo there (I even kept the receipt around someplace—I'll post once I track it down again). A circle of sorts has been completed in my life: working at that shop definitely recalls a lot of my initial fascination and love for tattooing and tattoos. All these years later it remains a solid shop staffed with amazingly talented people; a great place to tattoo at, and still a fantastic place to get your first tattoo. Come pay us a visit!

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.

This isn't meant to be some big self-congratulatory backpat-athon but, hey, sometimes you have to look back to get perspective and appreciate the good times, right? You could look back on your own 2009 and pick out recurring themes and find patterns that play out day-by-day as they unfold across an entire year. Maybe there's things you can be stoked about, maybe there's even things you want to change?

Some notable themes that defined 2009 for me:

• drawing and painting
• tattooing
• machine tuning
• travel
• friends and family

Interestingly, these annual themes are almost perfectly reflected within the microcosm of today's events: I did a walk-in tattoo, built a primitive tattoo machine, cleaned some tubes, fetched coffee, food, and supplies for the shop, and the cherry on top… took a spontaneous trip to Vancouver to surprise my sweetheart with Champagne to usher in a New Year. May even get some drawing in on the bus over. That's pretty much a one-to-one thematic correspondence from day-to-year, Howzabouthat?

I have a good feeling about 2010. This will be the best one yet.

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.

Based on the fairly defined edges of the line work and the fact the numbers appear to be modeled after a typeface or some damn fine handwriting, this Social Security Number tattoo was likely a professional job done with a machine and not hand-poked.

I think it's a shame more modest working-man tattoo photos go unpublished. While I certainly understand the appeal of heavy coverage or topless women with a teensy tattoo on their thigh I'd love to see more working-class tattoos from back in the day. I suspect there are plenty of unreleased images of suave rakes like this guy, oozing style and class—especially for a migrant farm worker—with only one or two small but nonetheless cool tattoos. Bet you got a lot of bang for your badass buck with a couple forearm tattoos back in 1939: neck tattoos just weren't necessary to convince people you were a serious threat.

Head over to Shorpy if you want to check out the higher-resolution original version of the photo or read more about the lineage interested parties have managed to trace on account of the guy's tattooed Social Security Number. Pretty incredible where a little tattoo can lead you.

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).

I must be pretty impressionable because along with Bonanza, countless Spaghetti Westerns, and all that Marlboro Man propaganda I've become a total sucker for all the stereotypical cowboy romanticism: the imagery of the open plains, big sky, campfires and baked beans, six shooters, and dusty old boots. And I fully confess to having never even set foot in Saskatchewan or Manitoba, neither have I been to the Midwest/Central US. Arizona counts for something though, right?

The closer I look the more I see a connection between cowboy gear and tattoo imagery. Besides the strength and appeal of many long-standing tattoo designs that probably derive from cowboy lore, guns, stars, and the Pharaoh's Horses, for example, there's an incredible tradition of (surface) embellishment on everyday practical gear. It's a fantastic mix of utility and beauty: the leather-tooled flourishes on saddles, cowboy boots with their stitchwork and leather inlay, engraving on weapons and tools, and much more.

This tradition of ornamentation extends to almost every item in the canon of cowboy paraphernalia so I think plenty of opportunity remains for incorporating these visual elements into tattooing. Let me know if you've got any cool cowboy-related tattoos or ideas for one.

Thanks for reading

A “Thank You” painting

Some stiff competition in tattooland today.

We started with this

Since the original was a Mexican gal I figured I'd take it down the ol' black and grey route turning her into a female Mike Muir of sorts. Speaking of black and grey, during my trip to the 30th Anniversary National Tattoo Convention in North Carolina I had a chance to see the mind-bendingly rad tattoos being done by Jose Lopez. So smooth. He sets that bar real damn high. Intimidated but stoked with Lopez' work in my mind, I went on and gave the black and grey painting a go anyway.

In the end I framed my little skate rock cholita with some lettering to tie it all together while paying homage to one of the greatest skate rock tunes, Suicidal Tendencies' "Possessed to Skate".

Check her out. Lemme know what you think. Her boobs are 100% natural, by the way.

Perhaps in keeping with the whole Movember movement, Bryan busted out a lovely mustachio'd babe of his own.

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.

In the process I discovered a watercolor paper to avoid in the future: Montval Canson 140 lbs Cold Pressed. It pills up like an old sweater with even a modest amount of water and spit-shading. When I went to do a final tint wash the diluted pigment floated on the surface as if it was coated with oil. Learn from my mistakes or try it yourself and see how awful it is.