hula hips

So my laptop almost died AGAIN today, so i was flicking through my files seeing what i would have lost....and now i think about it.....not backing anything up still! anyways, came across this quick sketch/watercolour i did a while back that i never posted.



so here ya go, the huge hipped "ukulady". p.s i am now the proud owner of a pink flying V ukulele. it's so awesome! if ya dont believe me, swing by the studio, it's displayed proudly, and if ur unlucky enough, you might walk in on me attempting to practice playing!
check out this awesome website for all your uke needs!

Superorder Selachimorpha

Thats "shark" for all you people who didnt know. You learn something new every day eh?

Anyways, here's the 4th tattoo i did today and boy am i all tattooed out! Think this ended up takin bout 3 hours on a newbie who sat like a champ. I dont get the chance to do much stuff like this (that's right, not everyone wants big fat ass black outlines on their tattoos! why.....i just do not know........), so it sure felt like work!

Pretty pleased with how it turned out though!

Anyways, as summer is quickly coming round the bend, here's something to keep y'all on dry land, where people should be!



Oh, and just a quick heads up for anyone who was planning on stopping by the studio next week, we r closed tues and thurs coz we r having work done on the studio ceiling.... so monday, fri and the weekend are all good.

Blood, sweat and beers.

So here is todays 4 and a half hour doings. Jeremy Fish artwork i had to painstakingly redraw from a few jaunty angled photos of his recent San Fran exhibition. I'm a HUGE jeremy fish fan, so i was super stoked to be doing this piece. it's gonna be part of a larger fishier piece, but this is part 1! anyways, check out his official website HERE

So, introducing george and ernest sitting in the buggy, keeping it hood y'all (beatsy boys aint got shit on these 2 homies). mr bear aint got a name, neither does little dude riding mr bear. any takers? click on the pic for a much bigger and better image!



we were originally doing this as a lower back piece, but after a few" umms" and "ahhhs" we ended up doing it as thigh piece. then we were gonna do the woodgrain effect from the original photo, but after a few "umms" and "ahhs" we went with brown tones, so as to match with the next installment. luckily this was the only piece i had booked in today, and after starting an hour later than planned it filled up my whole day.I have a super early start tomorrow with a client coming from Macau, and a super hectic day of tat zappin' ahead of me, and being 3am and my dinner still in the oven....i'm most definitely not looking forward to tomorrow....today......waking up in a few hours if ya gets me drift.
love and peas, til next time.

oh and p.s, when u wait so long for a bus you can actually feel yourself getting sunburnt.....that's too tooo tooooo long. am i right?!

AnD tv party tonight!

so we went to the skate first party tonight, albeit late, which is never a bad thing when u walk staright in after a long day tattooing and dont have to pay! anyways, i have ta admit, i was like."how much for a beer?!!! whaaaaa?" but i was there and i'm stubborn so i bought my fare share, and then.... an angel came and gave me 6 free beers! 6 free beers when they cost an arm and a leg (and maybe a bollock if ur male) so anyways, life just got way better, then i find out half the bar staff like star crossed tattoos and have visited the studio many a time, so we get free shots. lots of free shots. very good stuff i must say! cant complain.... at all.
the night was ok, funny dancing from most, and weird lazer lights in the club that make you feel like u r about to walk into something at any given moment (i guess u had to be there, but imagine a constant moving prison cell that kept bumping into your face at any given moment....), but....i dont care too much. i got so many free drinks! mmwahhh haaa haaa!
good stuff, go buy the dvd its available at HMV laaaa.
til next time all u breakdancing dudes who cant quite do the splits and all you tutu wearing bleach blondes! party on.


more punk references to confuse most of u i'm sure... anyways, quick post from the studio before i take my long trek home to sai kung....

Oi! Punk whatchoo lookin' at?

So Combat 77 (band from Hanover in Germany) played a gig for us at the Wanch on sat. It was friggin' awesome! For all of you poor people that missed it, "I pity the fool"! It was the best gig i'd been to in so so so...........forever. (in Hong Kong that is........obviously!)
anyways, i had to work super stoopid early the next day to tattoo 3 of them, which was fun and far too tiring at the same time!
The whole band are super sweet people, i havent got a bad word to say bout any of them. Check out their myspace page HERE!

Here's a few pics of them n me and them and us and them n stuff. enjoy!

oh, and also in this group shot is Ray from "no name" check them out here
and uli.... good guy we met last year.
there's no link for uli.....maybe i'll make a website just for him......nah.



this is me tattooing Noppi, the guitarist .


here's a pic from the gig i stole off someone's flickr for all your viewing pleasure.



oh and here's one of todays doings. i thought i'd throw this up here too, coz unadvertantly, this piece kinda makes sense if ya know your punk. if not....... "i pity the fool!" but here's a link for anyone remotely interested!

just a coi

so recently speakin' of people price shopping when it comes to tattoos, here's the perfect example of a sensible guy who's gonna get an awesome tattoo coz he has a little bit of patience. so what if he cant afford the whole tattoo in one go? we've decided the best way to do this is to do a few hours every month when he gets paid. here's the first hour and a half. so what if it takes a few months to finish? this tattoo aint going nowhere, and a few months wait for a good tattoo, when u gotta live with it for the rest of your life don't seem so bad i think!
my camera has been doing the "i dont wanna do what i'm supposed to" thing again, so no external flash for photos today, so apologies, but i think they are clear enough to show ya'll what i'm talking about.

tattoos dont grow on trees either

so this is gonna be a little bit of a rant, but i am honest to got sick to death of fixing up other people's mess! it's getting to the point where i get exited if i actually get to start a tattoo from scratch and dont have to cover or fix other previous work by other people. dont get me wrong, i am by no means expecting everyone in life to choose an awesome artist or an awesome design all the time, but oh my god people, there seems to be some sort of degenerative disease striking people nowadays when it comes to choosing tattoos and "artists".

i think the main reason for the problem in hong is one of 2 things:

a) people shopping around for price....you get what u pay for. deal with it. i am sick to death with people trying to haggle me down when if anything, i undercharge a lot of the time.

b) people not doing any research and either going to the closest shop, or the shop all their "friends" go to. if your friends tattoos all suck, and you go to the same place, guess what? its not rocket science, your's will suck too.

oh, and also, if you seriously think it's a good idea to go into a strangers tattoo studio and saying "what do u think i should get?" it's not!

(people really ask me this, and obviously i turn them away, but it seems a lot of studios don't seem to have the moral highground to realise this person has no idea of the consequences of their actions or the fact that they are completely new to everything "tattoo" that they will honestly take your advise to get some lame ass piece of crap that deep down inside your mind is thinking "well, the rent is due soon" and you slap in on them til death do them part)

here's the perfect example of the crap i have to deal with, and do not be mistaken, this wasn't done by someone's friend in their kitchen, this came out of a "legitimate" studio right here in good ol' hong kong where the government have absolutely no say in regulating the tattoo industry.

i always do the best to fix up some of the crap that walks through my doors, but it's getting to the point where i am becoming more and more picky with what i will and will not even attempt to fix, coz at the end of the day, once i've touched it, thats my name on it, and i take pride in my work.

so for future refrence, if you come to me asking me to cover your old tattoo with something around the same size, that will never happen.

if you come to me asking me to cover your old tattoo with writing, that WILL NEVER HAPPEN. it's physically impossible.
and if you come to me asking me to cover your fat ass black tribal with a pretty pink flower, that too will not happen.
do your research.

i have fixed and covered way worse than this in my time, but i normally dont even bother taking photos of this kinda stuff anymore. i just needed some piece of crap to post.



if you click on this pick, you can see a huge scar down the centre of the cross where the first artist musta been trying to dig for gold. i had to work super light handed on this coz his skin had been so chewed up, it was about ready to split at any given moment.

enjoy.

it's gonna be stormy weather i like it or not

started a nice piece yesterday, and had the best intentions of finishing it but 3 hours later, with at least one more to go, and after moving my next guy back 2 hours and him still showing up before i was done.......it just wasn't meant to be! anyways, i hate taking pics of stuff half fresh and half healed, but hopefully when i finish it, i'll be able to get a half decent pic to post.

so. thought i'd post yesterdays later doings, haven't posted anything like this for a while... this came out nice n clean so...... thought i'd share.



today was free'd up a little thanks to a no show, well a last minute "i've got the flu deal" (i think i'm gonna have to start demanding doctors notes!) so that meant i had time to squeeze this in between some beautiful work on miss katie.



one easy customer by anyone's standards, and she gets 10 bonus points for constantly telling me how gentle i tattoo! (wow, now we're doing bonus points?! how will i keep score?)
mucho thanks to sam for bringing her by, can always use more customers like u guys!

anyways, miserable weather, a little shocked my bus didnt crash on the way home, visibility was literally like, 10 meters max, and in true hong kong "driving" fashion, he didnt go below 65 the whole trip. good on ya, ya crazy sonofabitch!

Guns n Roses

So....friday the 13th.......ooohhh.
Anyways, quick blog a doodle do to post yesterdays doings.



I would have posted it last night if i hadnt "celebrated" a bit too much! Birthdays should be called deathdays from now on!
anyways, hope y'all had a good fri the 13th. not much happened at the star crossed fort. not much at all...............

sea men n' cider

this is by so far....so so far the best blog title i have ever come up with! i'm sure most people reading this wont even get the genuis of it, but it makes me laugh and it's so fitting to what happened yesterday!



anyways, here's what i got up to yesterday. realy enjoyed this one, nice n big and nice n bold. this anchor is definitely not going ANYWHERE!

today's my day off from the studio and i am meant to be doing designs for 2morrow, so far i got 2 and a half outta 3 done, so i think i'm done til tomorrow now. got a cool piece booked in for tomorrow so if all goes well and i get it finished, i'll be posting that. ok i'm out, it's beer o clock and i got better stuff to do than this.

once upon a time.... i did this!

i was briefly skim reading my past blogs, and i realized i never posted a pic from the Karena Lam / Christin Dior photoshoot i worked on, and came across this one. i rememebr i didn't/couldn't post any pics i took coz it hadnt been released to the public yet....but that was then and this is now. so here's the only pic i mustered up after googleing the google outta life. i wish i got a show with the chestpiece i did coz it was sweet, but "meh", what can ya do?



she looks awesome as ever, but i have to admit i think everyone looks better covered in ink!

grassroots and evergreen

So here's todays doings. dude sat like a super hero champion of trooperness (wow! right?). 10 points. anyways, nice little piece to do. photo came out surprisingly well considering my camera seemed to go on a preemptive strike a few days ago! It's ok though coz a few eleastic bands, some tape and Voila! good as second hand!



And here's what i got up to last night. Got a new sketchbook so figured i'd give it a "new face" to start afresh. Couldn't get this scanned coz once again i do not know how stuff works, but the photo came out ok i think.
cool, done for the day, so farewell. and remember, if MacGyver could fix it with tape and a toothpick, so can you! (that too goes for your face by the way)

no show's are just plain RUDE!

so this week i had not 1, not 2, but 3 no show's! i have no idea what's going on! luckily for me none of them were really big pieces or pieces i was really looking forward to, just your usual stars, script etc etc..... but still, has the world mad?!
anyways, i've been pretty behind with my designing pieces and i at least got to design tomorrow's pieces all today at work which means right now i have the luxury of doing not much at all.
here's a little piece i did yesterday, got a cool piece coming up later in the week which'll be a one shot, so i'll have more to post soon peeps!



til then'

magnum mentality

so a good 4 or so hours and a shirt later (why do i wear light clothes to work when they ALWAYS get ruined?) and you end up with this :
(apologies for the not so amazing photo, it's a little distorted and long looking coz i had to have her lean over slightly to get less glare)



I forced myself to use a magnum for the whole thing, and i'm sure to most ppl who tattoo that means nothing, and it's kinda a "so what?".....but to me it's like, "OH MY GOD!".
let me explain...... see..... i dont use mag's. ever. really.
UNTIL NOW!
i think if anything it took me a little longer than if i were using my normal textured 14 rounds, but .... i'm gonna keep at it.
10 trillion points to my customer for sitting like a champ, i'm glad i got it all finished in one shot. and i'm glad i have something to blog about other than my back (which is now in agony by the way! i love bending at a 90 degree angle for long periods of time) but it's all gravy baby. I'm getting it all realigned again 2morrow, so who cares eh?!

anyways, i'm about to crash for the night, so here are some other magnums for all of you who have nothing better to do than keep reading..........

n.
A bottle, holding about two fifths of a gallon (1.5 liters), for wine or liquor.
The amount of liquid that this bottle can hold.
A magnum cartridge or firearm.
adj.
Of or relating to a cartridge containing a larger explosive charge than other cartridges of the same size.
Designed to shoot magnum cartridges.

see ya laters ya alligators.

but "i'm a laaaaydeeee"!

So here are the paintings i said i was gonna post before my back pretty much broke.





(went to get my back "realigned". i can at least walk now, and go up and down stairs albeit sloooooooowly, and only took one day off work so nothing got too messed up. gotta go get it "realigned" like 4 more times before it's "stable" apparantly!)

the good news is that my chiropractor was very impressed with my shoes! 10 points for me.

Anyways, just about to leave work for some TACOS! oh yeah, and my 4 o clock a doodle doo appointment for tomorrow cancelled today so i got some more time to paint, or maybe fiddle about with a gig poster i may or not be doing . more on that tomorrow, or not. (i'm not trying to be mysterious, i just dont wanna say i'm doing the poster until i AM doing the poster if ya catch my drift.

toodeloo til tomorrow y'all!