2.27.11

All week I had my Saturday and Sunday appointments mixed up in my head. I thought I had a touch up today, but that was my Saturday afternoon appointment. Today I got to finish Taryn's manatee tattoo on her thigh. I've been tattooing 12 years and I've never tattooed a manatee before. Awesome. Thanks Taryn!Taryn makes pretty damn cool robots our of found material and had a surprise for me today. Check out her work- http://www.etsy.com/shop/milocraft

2.26.11

I worked on my buddy Rodney's sleeve today and although we got a bunch more done, unfortunately when taking photos I wasn't thinking about taking shots for the blog. I just took a bunch of photos for myself to try to start planning how to connect his sleeve, to his backpiece, to his ribs.

Second appointment was a touch up/ small add on that I hope to get photos of in the next month or so. No photos of that either....

So today is another tattoo that's a few months old that I dug up from the vault known as my camera's memory card. It's on the back of Jordan's thigh and fills up an empty spot he had just above the back of his knee. I think tomorrow I'll finally be able to post photos of the longboards I painted. I'll also get to finish Taryn's manatee tattoo hopefully. Super exciting!

2.25.11

A few more pics of my Dad and I from our trip to Banff today. I'm extremely tired, lost my wallet, and then was lucky enough to have someone at a gas station find it. We ate good food, and after the wallet ordeal, went cross country skiing.

2.24.11

A little bit of mobile blogging again tonight. Back at my favorite home away from home, just outside of Banff on a trip to the mountains with my Dad. Crappy part is it's -32 degrees outside...

Nice little lobster tail appetizer before dinnerAnd a nice little fire in our private fireplace in the hotel room to end off the night and keep us warm in this extremely cold weather.

2.23.11

REALLY awesome day working at home at ye olde log cabin. Because the 2 skateboards I was working on are done and in the hands of my client, I was able to return to the flash set I had started and finish it today. DONE!!! I'm going to take it to the printers tomorrow, and hopefully have it ready for sale the week after. Also REALLY exciting, today I picked up a few custom stamps I had made. I've been wanting to get a name and logo stamp made for flash sheets forever. Definitely one of those things that was in the back of my mind for a long time, and have no good reason for not doing sooner. Yes indeed, today was a really good day.

2.22.11

I bought my copy today and listened to it more than a few times while cleaning our computer/drawing room. It seems pretty obvious to say but the new Radiohead is amazing.

2.21.11

First appointment today was working on Amy's back. Felt pretty bad because that deer's tail must have hurt quite a bit. Here ribs got a bit too sore to finish the whole area, so we worked on a bit of the grass in the middle of her back at the end of the session. She's killing it- never been tattooed before this, sits like a champ, still smiling and joking around when she's obviously in pain, and getting tattooed every 3 weeks. Nice work Amy.That's all... I'm tired and going to bed. Tomorrow- sleep, catching up on emails, finishing flash

2.20.11

One of my goals this year was to start painting more often, and I'd say so far that's be a 100% success. The last few years I've barley produced anything other than drawings for tattoos. I'd paint the odd thing every now and then, but usually because it had to be done. I painted 2 skateboards last year for the Deadly Tattoos Art Show, as there was no way I was going to turn down that invite.... and that's about all I can think of for paintings in 2010.... Oh yea, I painted a really cool little beaver rose morph while doing a guest spot at Deadly last year as well. 3 paintings total....

So far this year, I've finished 2 prints, a painting for Teagan, 5 sheets of flash, and 2 longboards. So in 2 months I've already produced more than 3 times the amount I did all of last year. Pretty satisfying. And there's more to come....

I finished up the longboards that were commissioned by a client tonight. I was fairly happy with them upon completion of the painting... and then I applied this magic elixrAdding a clear coat to an acrylic painting changes everything. It just smooths everything out and give it a consistent finish. Super excited to give these to my client tomorrow. She should definitely be the first one to see them. Sorry bloggers, you'll have to wait until tomorrow.

2.19.11

Paint, paint, paint, paint, paint, paint.... So here are some more pictures of cats....

1.18.11

Often times when tattooing, a client will bring a friend and as some point they'll ask me "I really want to get tattooed but it's not a sleeve or back piece, so who should I go get tattooed by?" I say "Well, me if you'd like." They're usually quite surprised and ask "but I thought you only did really big pieces. You mean you'll tattoo something that only takes a couple of hours? I feel bad, like I'm wasting your time."

In fact, the opposite is true. I actually really enjoy doing one shot tattoos that can be completed in that 1 to 4 hour range. Hell, I'll even tattoo something that takes 5 minutes if that's what the client wants.

So much time and energy goes into completing a larger tattoo, and that's if the client follows though and actually gets the tattoo finished. Smaller tattoos that can be done in one sitting are super fun, and really rewarding.

So yes, please. I don't only work on large scale designs. I'd say I'd be more than happy if my bookings were 50% larger tattoos, and 50% one shot tattoos that can be completed in one sitting.

Having said that, I tattooed a really fun one shot tattoo on my friend Tammie today. Obviously the photos are really fresh and have a ton of flash burn, but we'll get healed photos in about a month when she comes back to have her other arm tattooed. I also worked quite a bit on setting up the web store today. It should be good to go tomorrow or Sunday at the latest.

2.17.11

Day off today from the studio. Pretty exciting because I picked up the first set of prints for 2011. It was also the last painting I did in 2010. Tomorrow I'm going to work on setting up a web store via my site so they can be purchased. Small run of only 11 made for this one. I'll post more info once a store is up and ready to go.My Dad gave Teagan and I tickets to the Oilers vs Habs game tonight. Super fun! His office has really good seats and it was actually a really good, fast paced game. I say actually really good since our Oilers are in last place in the league, but decided to come out and play hockey tonight and win 4-1.

2.16.11

I found this in iPhoto today. Obviously a bit older considering the grass is buried under 4 feet of snow right now.I love my wife so much.

2.15.11

Elbow day today at the studio which is never a fun day for myself or the client. Elbows are my least favorite part of doing a sleeve, I know it really hurts the client yet I know it's an area that can't rushed. I usually prefer to slow down a bit and make sure it's in there so I don't have many touch ups if at all possible.

Dan's sleeve is coming together quickly now and we should be done everything including touch ups in one or at most two more sessions. It's always awesome when a small area gets filled and changes the tattoo completely. We maybe tattooed for 3hrs today and that small section made the tattoo look so much more full and complete. Really exciting when that happens.
I also worked on my friend Adam's lower half sleeve today, but didn't get any good photos. Way too shinny, but that's okay. His tattoo is so ridiculously crazy that I'm going to wait until it's completely finished to post photos.

2.14.11

I worked on a painting for pretty much the whole day today and made good progress. Unfortunately the client who commissioned the painting is giving it to someone as a gift, so I can't really post photos of the whole thing quite yet. However, I will post a small preview of these tiny roses because I'm really happy with them. I'll be able to post the full painting by the end of this weekend.

2.13.11

Really fun Sunday at the studio. I tattooed the back of my buddy Noel's leg this morning. Noel usually has crazy ideas that he wants to combine into one tattoo. This time we outlined a fox head in a sunburst, with a human figure from the cover of a book that he didn't like, being shot with arrows. We decided to do the figure with fairly dynamic colours, so I added a few really simple traditional roses at the bottom for balance.

The really fun part today was drawing on leaves to connect to a tattoo on the front of his shin. I stepped away from the normal leaves I draw behind roses most of the time and tried something new that I was extremely happy with. Really happy with the outline of the fox as well.

Noel wanted to stop after the outline so he could work tomorrow, and I'm totally fine with that. Unfortunately every picture I took was out of focus. This was the best one, run through a few Photoshop filters to sharpen the image.This afternoon I finished a tattoo of an old 50's Mercury, but today was my Friday and was to impatient to wait for the tattoo to stop weeping so I could take a photo. She'll be back in about a month for photos and touch ups.

Tomorrow my day off and it will be spent finishing a commissioned painting for a client. Pretty excited about that as well.

2.12.11

Maybe from now on whenever I'm tired, need to stay up and work on drawings, one day away from days off, and have no energy to blog... ...I'll just put up pictures of my cats.

2.11.10

It's the first ever iPhone Friday. You guessed it.... pictures from my iPhone. These are all from today. In the future, I'll post pictures I've collected through out the week.

I needed more paint todaySecond stop was corporate office supply store that I don't really like. The photocopier at the shop hasn't made a clear copy in probably 6 months. Anytime I have to make a stencil for my day, I go make photocopies of my line copy in various sizes just in case the size I traced out needs to be 10% bigger or smaller. It can be a bit of a chore first thing in the morning, but it's well worth it to have a clean copy to make a stencil with. Then I had to go look at colour proofs for prints that should be ready next week.I need a snacked for workClean grips for tomorrowInstagram is pretty awesomeI filled 2 more small spaces on Sandy today. We usually spend more time getting the stencils to fit in the spaces he has to work with than we do tattooing. Small tattoos are really fun.
Dad's are awesome.

2.10.11

Unfortunately this will be a sad post. One of my favorite clients was involved in an extremely tragic work accident mid November and passed away far too young at the age of only 21.

Josh was an amazing kid, and the perfect client. He was always extremely happy, positive and great person to have around the studio. He was always so excited for each of his appointments, showed up 30mins early, never took a break, and took amazing care of his healing tattoos. Every time I tattooed him, there was never a second thought in my mind that the colour would be unbelievably vibrant when he came back for his next session.

He absolutely loved tattoos and had so many ideas for future projects. Unfortunately, I never did get pictures of his healed work because it seemed to be a given that I'd see him within a few weeks to work on something new. It's an extremely strange feeling to lose a client in this way. I'll definitely miss seeing him around the studio and talking about our passion for the snow covered mountains.

His Mom, Dad, and sister all decided to get tattoos for Josh and I was extremely grateful to be able to work with them. I tattooed his Dad and sister Tuesday, but unfortunately worked so hard that day that the tattoos were extremely fresh and had way too much flash burn in the photos to post.

I tattooed his Mom today and did this rose with angel wings on her leg. None of them had been tattooed before and all sat start to finish with no breaks or complaints. Again, it's an extremely strange feeling to lose a good client and friend in this manner, and I'm still a bit at a lose for what to say. It was an absolute pleasure to be able to work with such an amazing person, and an honor to be able to work on these tattoos for Josh. To his family- my thoughts are with you during this difficult time and I wish you all the best.

2.9.11

Outlined about two thirds of back piece today. Sometimes I bold the lines right away if the client's doing okay and can sit for a while, other time I just try to get it in as fast as I can using a small tight liner, and then work on the tattoo in smaller sections each session . We still need to add the sky and a tree in the background, but it has to tie into her sleeves. I drew on her for a bit, took a tracing and will clean it up and outline that next time.

2.8.11

I worked unbelievably hard today to get two larger sized tattooed done, both in one shot. Since I was semi rushed all day, I didn't get good photos of either. I'm ridiculously tired, and I have a large line copy to get ready for tomorrow... so here's a picture of our cat Tomas.

2.7.11

My Dad and I spend the day together today, unfortunately here in Edmonton and not in the mountains as planned. After a quick visit to my chiropractor, we went for lunch and a walk through a forest just out of town. What a beautiful day to be outside.







I rambled enough yesterday, just pretty photos today...