don't give a hoot!

“The crow wished everything was black, the owl, that every thing was white.”
William Blake

here's a fun lil' piece i did today. pretty small on a girl's shoulder blade.

sweetness, sweetness i was only joking when i said...

sweetness i was only joking when i said...i'd like to smash every tooth in your head.

Ahh, Morrissey! cant go wrong!

So here's that sweet tattoo i was talking bout a few days back! Had fun with this one. He got it to surprise his wife for her 30th b'day. sweet, right?!



It's only just dawned on me how little time i have before i head off to the UK, and how little i have managed to get organized! Our spanking new t shirts got delivered yesterday, which was sweet, they look great! My new banner for the convention is done, but i still need to get prints sorted out. Tomorrow is my last day tattooing then its pack pack n pack!

In Bloom

So all the tattoos i did today were flowers. It's weird how a lot of the time, i seem to get whole days of the same subject matter booked in (unintentionally). did 3 pieces today, here's 2 of them.

First one is a cover up, and i'm starting to get more and more picky with which cover up's i take on. from now on, i dont want so many size restrictions. It gets frustrating trying to something that would be A) so much easier if it was just a little bigger, and
B) look so much better if it was bigger too!



This one came out OK though, but if it was just a little bigger...... I'll shut up now.

Second up was this geometrical hallucination. She sat like a champ, cant have been plesant going over the shoulder onto the chest. 10 points lil' lady!




The half sleeve pics from yesterday didnt come out too great, all the black was healed, so the fresh sections looked swollen and funky, by the time we finished the bottom half had settled down, so here's a section that came out ok with not so much glare! more geometrical madness. I'm not an architect people! No fun! haha I have a deep rooted hatred of drawing anything that needs a "tool", ruler, compass, protractor etc etc (the closest i came for a long time was using a beer mat to trace a semi circle for a light ray on a sketch!)

fancy photos

dont have much to post, so thought i'd post these.....





taken by Stefano Leonardi for a project he's currently working on. (some have just been published in Nude magazine.)

i finished a half sleeve today, not sure how the pics came out, and they aint on this computer, so maybe post them tomorrow.

til then y'all! love and peas!

stupid gravity!

OK just finished for the day (extrememly early, as my last booking is stuck in singapore airport :( )
did this piece today, the guy added the date last minute (and yeah, he wanted it that small and written in that order..... i dunno.) it sucks when u get a nice piece, u get it sketched out ur getting super psyched bout it and then there's a "oh yeah, and can i have this and that ....blah blah'' and u think WHY?!

dont get me wrong, i dont mind dates on tattoos, but i do mind when someone obviously wants something added for a reason, then making it SMALLER, and smaller....and smaller! anyways, it was a fun piece to do, and it came out pretty sweet. he gave me free reign with the rest of the design, and the colours.



I've been using my brand spanking liner the past few days, it's not quite run in perfect, but it was getting there (WAS. past tense) coz i just dropped it on the floor. DOOOOOM! sucks! so tomorrow, i'll start all over, it sounds ok, but the contact and A bar had shifted a lot.... and i aint great at tuning machines at the best of times. my approach is normally if it aint broke....




but here it is! (aint she a beaut!) Ross built it for me (among many others) and i wanna get it running smooth by the time i go to Londumb!

Here's a few more machines Ross made for me. First one was my Christmas pressie last year. Seth Ciferri frame, and other fancy schmancy goodies on it. I love the coils (Thai antique notes). This is running like a champ, love it!




I figured it was far too classy, so we ordered in one of these lil' thumb screws! TOO CUTE! love it!




And here's the partner in crime! )also awesome coils, lurrrrvly!





for some reason this week has been going insanely slow. and i want it to go way faster, coz i got a sweet tattoo booked in on thurs! (sweet in more ways than one!)

ross' roses and the unamed irish neighbor

ok so finally, finally finally! after far too long, and ross trying to figure out what would be easier, not getting this piece finished and getting it lasered off, or just dealing with it. in the end he did neither, he had panic attacks, bitched and moaned, and drove me close to slitting his throat just to get it over and done with.
anyway, after a very limited time scale, i got this finished before he tapped out. (got it all coloured in 1 and a half hours. world record anyone?) i think so.



earlier today, i owed a friend and my next door neighbor a favor for helping out with walking my dogs back in .... god i dunno. last time i went away. singapore convention in january? i cant think of a better present than a free tattoo. well, maybe a house. that would be cool, or a motorbike, or an island.......

you can read him like a book.

So yesterday i had to do this. not fun. not fun at all.



i pray to god i never ever ever ever have to do another one like this! not only ribs, which i hate working on, but all these itty bitty chinese symbols that i had to double check as i worked, coz i cant read chinese, plus the huge difficulty of not wiping off the stencil (which also was a huge pain in the ass to apply!) bah!

after this, we went out on the piss with this guy, and his friends (one who also got tattooed but all my pics came out blurry :( .)
we ended up in none other than AMAZONIA, or as i like to call it, the TEMPLE OF ROCK! or AMA-FUCKIN-ZONIA!!!!
anyways, i got the pleasure of seeing a guy play jimmy hendrix on the guitar with his feet!

of course, i didnt have my camera.

oh, and on the way to work today, i saw a dude wizzing round in an electric wheelchair, giving a chick a ride on the back. very strange, and of course, again, lack of equiptment which captures pictures at the touch of a button :(

just finished work today, bout to take a pic, then i'm off to Ned Kelly's! AWESOME!

hopefully i'll blog todays doings later on tonight, if i dont get too drunk........

fancy weather thing-a-me-jiggies!

Just found out about this little weather fancy schmancy stuff! i might have to try and crawl outta bed at like, 9am on my day off (boo, minus ten points) sucks, if i knew bout this i would have brought my proper camera and not my piece o' crap thing that somehow by sheer fluke seems to work very similarly to something i made in school with a pinhole and a shoebox.

good thing i found these super safe instructions ....



The largest solar eclipse in Hong Kong since 1958 will take place July 22, the Hong Kong Observatory says.
If the weather is fine it will be visible as a partial eclipse in Hong Kong from 8.15am to 10.46am, with the maximum eclipse occurring at 9.26am when 75% of the sun's diameter will be blocked by the moon.
As the sun's elevation is high the eclipse will be visible in most places with an unobstructed view to the east. However, to avoid eye damage the Observatory warns people not to look directly at the sun or through telescopes. A safer way is to project the sun's image through a pinhole or a telescope onto a piece of white paper or cardboard and view the projection.

"I'm afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery."

Hell isn't merely paved with good intentions; it's walled and roofed with them. Yes, and furnished too.
Aldous Huxley

To be honest, there are far too many awesome Aldous Huxley quotes for me to choose from, here's todays tattoo, of good ol' Aldous himself. (no!...... it's not a bad drawing of James Dean...)

The customer brought the pic with him, so not quite sure which book it's from.... this was a fun one to do, broke out my loose 14 liner, it's like tattooing with a Sharpie! haha



This was on a really nice guy who travelled down from China to get the piece done. His first tattoo, and he sat like a champ! 10 points young man, 10 points well earned!

Here's a few more words of wisdom by Mr Huxley:

Maybe this world is another planet's hell.

Perhaps it's good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he's happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?

The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly.

We are all geniuses up to the age of ten.

A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor.

tweet twoo

i'm on this blog
yippie! i love this blog! if i had the man hours, the patience and that general life luster for doing stuff thats time consuming only for self gratification i would start a chihuahua blog.....but alas.....

Prints available soon!

You can't control how you are perceived, and you are a fool if you waste any energy trying to do so. Vanity will get you nowhere.
Dave Blood

OK so here is the new print i have recently finished. I seem to go through weird phases of buying weird/obscure books, then doing a print based on them. Last year i bought an awesome book in a 2nd hand bookstore all about vintage/collectable hats, and i got obsessed with drawing women in hats, then i bought a book on 1950's fashion (as seen in Sears catalogue) and i drew loads of 50's ladies.

Recently i found a book on vintage and collectable vanities and handbags, and i came up with this.

I am having a hard time finding a half decent scan/print shop, as the scans i get always look a lot more patchy (the shading aint smooth and the colours look funky). once i find a place, i'll get this rescanned as a lot of the lighter tones havent shown through.



So i think there will be 3 prints available soon..... this one,



Pricilla the pilot,



and Youth.

I am hoping to get these all done in the next few weeks so i can take a load to the UK in Aug, so anyone interested (i'll be selling them separately, or as a 3 pack for a reasonable price.)

All hail the cupcake Gods!

ok so looks like someone wanted milo to have a cupcake, as it miraculously fell out of my hand and landed on none other but the very same plain as he was stood! (yeah, i dropped it on the floor).



I'm not sure if that little grin is coz we took off his cone so he would make a mess, or coz he had a cupcake all to himself!







And then he was done.

new stuff makes me smile

Whoever said money can't buy happiness simply didn't know where to go shopping.
-- Bo Derek

OK, so my 6:30pm appointment didnt end up coming coz her baby is sick.... and i finished my previous appointment by 6, so i had 2 WHOLE hours of awesomeness so do whatever i wanted! so i nipped out to the star ferry, to vist my obscenely overpriced magazine lady, bought june's issue of skin deep along with some atrocious American tattoo magazines that get worse and worse every time i buy them, but i dont have much choice really. why does HK not get any half decent tattoo magazines? the japanese ones can be good, but i like to read magazines, not just scrutinize pictures of tattoos that are an inch big..... BOO.......:(

ok, so next stop my favorite little coffee den which i havent been to since i moved and no longer take the star ferry to work no more. they have all sorts of new goodies, nice new pasta salads, and these ADORABLE lil' cupcakes. i wish i took a pic next to something so u could see how teeny tiny they were. too cute!



then off to harbor city, to blow some more dough! so first stop the Benefit counter, to stock up on some war paint. I love Benefit, and they have a Beneblog now too, (i know this as they had awesome flyers soaked in perfume with pink robots on them) whats more eye catching than a pink robot? nothing me thinks!

so then off to Page One bookstore, i cant go into a Page One and not spend a fortune. It's my nemesis and my best friend....

Here's SOME of what i bought, (how friggin' sweet are those notebooks by the way) I am freakily obsessed with stationary/note books/stuff i know i dont need but want....and Hong Kong is full of that kinda stuff!



oh, and i found this....... never heard about it, but looks like it could either be AWESOME or complete toss. we'll see....



I especially like the section on the back which reads;
"Jane Austin is the author of Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Mansfield Park, and other masterpieces of English Literature. Seth Grahame-Smith once took a class in English Literature. He lives in Los Angeles"

Then off to Marks n Sparks to stock up on food..... They have the most incredible frozen food, and seeing as we don't normally eat dinner til 2am, it's nice to have stuff that doesnt need preparing.

So all in all, an awesome shopping spree that should have never happened, coz i'm trying to save money for my trip to England next month. oh well.......

Just finished up at the shop for the day, and here's the last piece i did. It would have been fun, if my customer wasn't acting like he was in so much pain he was going to die from new kinda scratching the surface external implosion disease. Nevermind, he sat still enough (in between the 10 or so breaks, bless him!) Stuff like this always upsets me to do in Black n grey, coz i am very very very favorable to colour. lots of colour. nevermind, i couldn't get a great photo coz he had humungous pores by the time i was done.

pills for the pills for the pils

So, Milo came back in the early hours of the morning, he has a slight infection, apparently nothing that a few pills and regular hot/cold compress' cant fix. he's on 3 different antibiotics at the moment, as well as his pain meds. it's not easy getting a dog as small as him to eat so many pills i tell ya! it's a week to the day since all this shit happened and the vet was shocked to see that he's actually put ON weight! we've been having to feed him so much more, coz he'll keep leaving his pills/picking them out/getting them stuck to the cone round his head etc etc!

Anyways, i've been so lax with uploading pics of recent work, and to be honest i haven't got much to post at the mo, got some nice pieces coming up, but for now, here's this lil' guy.



Hopefully tomorrow i will have a new print to post, i actually finished it last week, but then i got caught up in all this hoo-ha and havent had a minute to get it sorted on the computer.

ok, bed time, it's half four in the morning, and even though we r in the middle of a typhoon signal 9, looks like i'll be going to work tomorrow!

normal is as normal does....

so, hectic hectic week. since the whole Milo ordeal, i kinda slacked off with any design work, and it's been hard not letting work pile up and get on top of me. but, alas, i managed to keep up with everything that needed doing.

ok, just as i was writing that....we realised milo had a huge lump on one side where his stitches are, so now ross has rushed him back off to the vet. it's 4am, so i wont have any news til tomorrow.

i might as well finish what i was gonna blog, so here's one from earlier today



looks like she's just done what i wanna do to the dogs that attacked my little guy.

the vet said he thinks the swelling should be normal, but if we were worried, better safe than sorry, and obviously we r worried. i cant remember what it feels like not to be worried!

if i get any news, i'll post it.

thanks again to everyone who's helped out and come to visit the little guy.

hopefully a better blog tomorrow. a happier blog. til then

Milo's recent pics.

So we got him back from the vets today. all his drainage tubes are out and he is looking much MUCH better. obviously still in a lot of pain, and has a lot of mending to do, but i'm just so happy to have him back. here are some pics taken today. not for the faint hearted, but i just wanted to show how much damage was done by my neighbors dogs, who didnt get any repercussions .







Thanks to everyone who gave us their well wishes. Anyone who wants to come visit him is welcome to come by the studio.

there must be a way of controlling worrying about things you cant control.

so i have had the worst week ever. i hate posting blogs like this, but i know a lot of regulars at the studio have grown to know and love him, so here goes....

long story short, my dog, my best friend, Milo was brutally attacked by 4 village dogs on saturday night.
he has undergone surgery, and i am relieved and happy to say that he is expected back home on wednesday. he's very battered and bruised, has about 12 punture wounds and currently has about 6 tubes draining the fluid from his body.

oh, and the AFCD decided that the best thing to do was to release a warning to the lady who looks after the dogs who made the attack. just a fucking warning. they didnt get taken away.

i miss him.

i really dont have much else to blog about, well, thats a lie, i could go on forever about this, and the neighbors who have made my life a living hell recently but i just wanted to post the news about Milo for anyone who was worried about him.

Here's a few pics from happier times.

I know where i wanna go, but I just dont know, no I just dont know how to get there.....

OK so yesterday ( my day of rest) didnt turn out to be a day of rest at all! I decided we'd go to the beach. I didnt wanna go to just any old beach, i wanted to go to this one beach i heard about, pretty quiet, couple bars, a few restaurants, pretty chilled.
So, we got up early, got all the supplies, got a cab to where we thought we'd be dropped off pretty close......and then WE WALKED A VERY VERY LONG TIME!

we had no idea where we were going, we pretty much knew we didnt get dropped off where we asked, but i figured we'd just keep going. Ross wanted to turn back, but as we had no phone signal and we were on top of some mountain in the middle of nowhere, there was no going back! well, no where to go back to.

so we finally found a signpost, informing us that there would be no more rubbish bins ahead (which really confused me coz i'd been carrying some empty drink bottles forever and there no bins anywhere!)
ok so seeing as we were about to pass out from heat stroke, we sat down, ate what little food we'd brought, and came to realise we had nothing with any sugar in it, (i know alcohol dehydrates you, but i settled for a bottle of cider, coz i figured cider has fruit, and fruit has sugar... plus i just fancied a bevvie) so we kind of decided this was the day we were going to die. (what didnt help was the missing persons report poster stuck to the signpost).
so, we kept walking, and walking.......... we basically raped our feet coz we were both in flip flops.

after fighting off the creepy crawlies, and avoiding the man eating spiders,



finally, i saw this



i figured it looked like a beach to me, so we went in that direction.

about 20 mins later, we arived here(as beautiful as it looks, it was infested with frogs, and i have the biggest BIGGEST phobia of frogs ever imaginable so i pretty much ran, (ok i lied, i wasn't running, i was exhausted and my feet were fucked by this point) but i did my best to get outta there asap!)



bout 10 mins after my worst nightmare, and just as the sound of the frogs dies down, i reached my destination. it was most definately not where i was trying to go, but i didnt care, coz it was way way way better! I couldnt believe my luck!



There were still a few hours of sunlight to be had, and it turned out to be an awesome day off.



it was like a lame version of that film "the beach" only better coz the beach wasnt inhabited with loads of hippies! the place was pretty much desterted and we found out that for a VERY UNREASONABLE price (we had to literally count all our money, including coins to pay for it) we could get a speed boat back to semi civilization.

i took some pics of the speed boat too, but they are all outta focus. it was a pretty sweet ride though!
good times.

It's not that we don't get along....it's just that you are always wrong.

A wise old owl sat on an oak; The more he saw the less he spoke; The less he spoke the more he heard; Why aren't we like that wise old bird?

OK, so today was a nice change. Today i had a customer who pretty much just wanted a tattoo by me coz she like my work. No stupid restrictions, no stooopid subject matter, and no stoooooooopid colour choices. All she wanted was a bird, holding a heart, and not too big.

EASY!

I loved dong this piece, it took me all of about 10 mins to design, and i've been looking forward to it FOREVER! I wish i had more customers like her! Albeit we alsost had a brief lapse in consciousness, we trekked on and i really like the finished product! (so did she by the way!)



Tomorrow is a much needed day off, and i have no plans. NO PLANS! They are the best plans EVER!