Halloween! (part 2)

In the real spirit of Halloween, I am apparently cursed this whole week.

Maybe it's because Todd usually gets hit with the majority of hilariously bad luck, but since he's not here this week, it falls into my lap instead.
It's way funnier when it's happening to someone else, so please hurry back Todd.

I did do this Halloween themed tattoo today:



Tomorrow, Ann is hosting a scary movie night, and hopefully I can hand off my hex to one of the other attendees, and be done with it.

She responded earlier this week to the "Aircraft Safety Card" blog post by sending me a picture of one that caught her attention.
What is up with that purple tuxed out charachter?



I do hope that you all did better than I did for Halloween.
Meryl said we even ran out of candy for the trick-or-treaters early.
Man...

Halloween!

Oh my goodness.
Yesterday, Mischief Night, (which should be a National Holiday, but is pretty much just a East Coast thing, I guess) kicked my ass.

I had two customers cancel their appointments fifteen minutes before they were supposed to show up. A lot of sitting around was done after that.
Then, I went home and got served legal papers, saying that someone else held the rights to the title of our house, and that I had to go to court, or else.
What?
I know.

Pumpkin carving?
Not last night.
Getting together a costume for Halloween?
Nope.

However, when I woke up today and started trying to get answers and figure stuff out, things started getting better.
Turns out, there was a big mistake at some law firm, and a misplaced number made a big mess out of everything, and we're actually free of all legal action now, since it wasn't even our property that was ever in question.
Mischief indeed.

I was so distracted, though.
My Halloween kind of fell apart.
I'm not wearing a costume, or even the tie for "Not Casual Friday".

The good news today, though, is that the little dead squirrel's ghost is haunting our yard, and still chewing up the pumpkin.

Happy Halloween!

More of Jessica's Ink: Halloween Post

I have featured a lot of Jessica's work before. The previous post here will link you back to earlier posts.

This seemed an appropriate piece for Halloween. It is on the other side of the leg that features Beetlejuice holding a pumpkin. You can see the pumpkin in the photo.

The image is of a child in a ghost costume holding a rock and a paper sack. It's based on a scene from "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown". A bunch of kids are comparing their goodies and Charlie reaches into his bag and sadly proclaims "I got a rock."


Happy Halloween everyone! And thanks to Jessica for sharing her ink!!

Here's a little "I got a rock" bonus:

Charlie Honors The Birth of His Youngest Son

A cold and dreary day drove me underground on Tuesday, as I spent some of my lunch hour inkspotting, and meeting some new tattoos.

Since it was Tat-Tuesday, it only seemed fitting that I met a father and son, Amtrakking from Florida up to Boston, who had four tattoos apiece.

I met Charlie first, who had a tiger on his forearm. However, he offered up this piece on his right bicep instead:


As a parent with child-inspired ink, I certainly appreciated this tattoo which honors the birth of his youngest son, Derry.

He wanted to do a tribute, but didn't want to do a portrait, which is a popular method for doing so. Instead, he went for the footprints, name and birth date.

Whereas a portrait is a snapshot in time, footprints and/or hand prints are a record of your child's beginning, and a literal imprint of part of their flesh on one's own. There's something remarkable about the historical record contained therein, like the door jamb in the family home that displays the height-marks of the child, growing over the years.

This piece was inked by "Old School" at AK's N Chevrolets in Hollywood, Florida.


I can't find an active link for the shop, and it appears as it was renamed Almost Famous 2 Tattoos (not to be confused with Almost Famous Tattoos in Miami).

Check back in the coming days to see the tattoo offered up by Charlie's older son Jason, that ties in to this piece as well.

Thanks to Charlie for sharing his little piece of family history here on Tattoosday!

And now for something a little different....

Not quite 'pin-up', I admit, but the cute expression is rendered so well, I had to include it. By Hector Cedillo.

For Your Safety

Adam flies a lot.
Russia, Iceland, Hawaii, Japan.
141 nights this year (so far) all in the same kind of hotel.

When you spend that much time on a plane, you actually read (and get into) the "aircraft safety card".
Some people collect them.
After spending days looking for the perfect one, I can definitely appreciate whatever illustration subgenre they might fit into, and had a lot of fun on this tattoo.

Ear Ear!

I adore these cute, behind the ear micro pinups from Ben Grillo. How small?!

Hemorrhage: Ryan's Derek Hess Piece is Bloody Awesome

I technically didn't meet Ryan, but he did respond to a flier I passed out. I gave it to his girlfriend, we're guessing around 34th Street in Manhattan, she passed it to him, and he e-mailed me the following photo:


Initially, all he told me was "It's a Derek Hess piece. It's my blood around it in the ... photo. It was done by Nick [Males] @ Silk City Tattoos".

Of course, I know inquiring minds would want to know more, so I asked him for more specifics.

"It's a piece of art that Derek Hess did [it's entitled "Hemorrhage"].
I have the print on my wall in my room, among others by him...this is just my favorite one. My girlfriend was getting her garter done on her leg and I had asked [Nick] if he could do it. He said yeah, so when she went for her second sitting, I got mine done. I think it took about 3 hours, theres a lot of detail in it. The black didn't hurt much but the blood was the worst part, non-stop pain with little to no breaks. A lot of fun."

Work by Nick at Silk City Tattoo has appeared on the blog previously here.

Thanks to Ryan for sharing his body art here with us on Tattoosday!

Just burn away the cold.

I know, I know.
It's been a while.
Things have been kind of hectic lately.


But currently we have Adam in town from NYC, and we've been having a great time.
He's been here a few times or more, knows his way around town, and even showed me a couple dope spots.
We decided tonight that since it was a Monday night and only 35 degrees outside, we should probably invite a few of our mutual MPLS friends over for a fire, vegan cookies, apple cider, and dog bites.



It was only Friday night Steve told me he didn't believe me Shamira was a monster.
Monday night, he was convinced.



Dear dead little Squirrel,
Oh You,
Who until recently lightly nibbled on just one of my pumpkins daily,
Left nuts in my mailbox,
and taunted both my wife and my dog by hanging onto the window screens.
Was it was the upcoming winter,
or the fact that I removed the screens in Meryl's room and replaced them with storm windows?
I gave you a proper garbage can burial and know that Thursday,
which is pick up day,
you will go to a Squirrel Heaven of sorts.
There will be others, of course, but none quite like you.

Eryn's Yarn Skull

I had seen Eryn before in the vicinity of 39th and Broadway and wanted to ask her about her tattoos. When I finally got the opportunity, she rolled up her right sleeve to reveal this incredible tattoo:


Eryn is a professional knitter and works with yarn on a daily basis (see some of her artsy stuff here). A friend of her designed this piece for as an homage to her vocation, although Eryn admits it exemplifies her "dorkitude".


This skull, capped with yarn, boasts knitting needle crossbones:

It's a brilliant piece and was inked by Alex Vidaud at Nautilus Tattoo in Hartford, Connecticut.

Thanks to Eryn for sharing her awesome ink with us here at Tattoosday!

Vegas, Baby, Vegas

Just got back from Vegas, so what better way to start back on the blog than with two from one of Vegas' finest, Jime Litwalk, who inexplicably works for Hart & Huntington.

An Interlude: Third Time's a Charm

Last week I had a bizarre lunchtime walk on Thursday. I met a woman outside of Macy*s who had an interesting neck tattoo. She seemed like a willing participant until the older woman standing with her kept repeating that what I was doing was "weird". The tattooed woman began to appear uncomfortable, so I bowed out gracefully, handing her a flier and moving on.

A while later I stopped another woman with a really cool pin-up on her arm. She said I'd stopped her before and thanked me, but wasn't interested. I vaguely remembered her after the fact, but couldn't pinpoint when or where I may have met her before.

Inkspotting can be streaky, and I considered quitting for the day, but I was determined to give it one more try. It was then that I met Melanie. In fairness to her, and to give her tattoo the spotlight it deserves, her ink is posted below (here).

Melanie's Traditional Revolvers

As I mentioned above (here), Melanie crossed my path on a day last week when I had been having some bad luck with inkspotting.

However, when I saw her on 34th Street across from Macy*s, I had to talk to her about her tattoos.

What caught my eye first was her chest piece, two traditional Sailor Jerry designs, including a near replica of the neck piece sported by Buddy Nielsen of Senses Fail.

She told me an artist named Kenny up in Kingston, New York had inked the chest piece, but instead of photographing that, she offered up her stomach piece instead:


The reason for her offering this other piece is that it was tattooed by the artist she is currently working with, Cookie, at Pop's Tattoo Emporium in Kingston.

Melanie got her first tattoo at sixteen and fell in love with the traditional style. When I asked her how many she had, she had the typical response of the heavily-inked: she wasn't sure.

The guns and roses along the waistline are a traditional motif and part of her desire for ink is to fill in space, to keep working with the body's canvas. The sheriff's badge exemplifies this, as she noted it was added as an afterthought.

The "City of Sin" identification on the badge is consistent with the piece's theme, and it artistically brings the whole tattoo together, centering the focus at the ends of the gun barrels, and providing a stronger sense of balance in the design.

Thanks so much to Melanie for sharing her traditional holsters with us here on Tattoosday!

Jessica's Back, Sharing Tattoos 51 and 52

I met Jessica back in June, prior to a Pearl Jam concert, in front of Madison Square Garden. She is an artist in her own right, doing a lot of the work her self, using her own kit and mirrors. Check out the original post here. I followed up with a post of more of her work here. I had a third post planned, as she had sent me some more photos of new work at the end of July.

I recently reconnected with her via e-mail and she responded with follow-up photos of the July pics, plus a whole bunch of others she has worked on since.

I am easily overloaded by too much information so I am going to try and space Jessica's work out over time and give her work the attention it deserves.

I'm going to start looking at the two pieces Jessica sent me back in July:




At the time, she advised me that she had "just finished starting [tattoo] #51 (Beetlejuice holding a jack o' lantern which I've wanted a really long time." She had just had "session one of a dragon started by Joe Matisa from il Bacio Tattoo in Trenton...he'll finish coloring it in after i get back from my vacation...".

So that was then, this is now.....




Jessica expanded a little more:

Beetlejuice is on my right leg. [I] always loved the movie and show. I've said if I ever got married, it would be awesome to wear Lydia's red dress, dress as Lydia and find me a Beetlejuice groom! and to have a big Tim Burton-style costume ball reception. Fall is my favorite time of the year. The leaves. The weather. All the spooky hayrides and haunted houses... Halloween!!!

[As mentioned above,] Joe Matisa of il Bacio Tattoo in Trenton, NJ did my dragon. That's on the left leg. It's a total custom freehand design he came up with. All I came up with was the awesome color scheme. The rest was the amazing Joe's work. I plan to put an Ed Hardy dragon next to it myself, which shall be my most ambitious idea to tackle so far....

Thanks again to Jessica for sharing her awesome work with us here on Tattoosday!

And you can send me dead flowers every morning

October 7th I posted a sketch of dying flowers and mentioned how I wasn't exactly overwhelmed with dope projects lately.

Today, I did that very sketch on Camden as a tattoo, and I was almost overwhelmed by all the dope projects thrown at me.




We had some of Identity Tattoo's favorites walking through the door today, starting before we opened, and ending only well after we closed.
I did consultations and drawing-on sessions, tattoos and even a touch-up.

The timing was key.
I needed an influx of awesomeness today.
I was not in the mood for any awesome-sucking shit leeches.

Representing Levittown

This isn't the first Long Island tattoo here on this blog (see Ian Jones' post here), but it is the first specifically marking one place on Long Island.

This tattoo belongs to Dave, who told me that he and about 8 or 9 friends share the exact same piece, "geographically correct".

There's not much to this piece other than that it is an homage to his home in Levittown, a hamlet in the Town of Hempstead located on Long Island in Nassau County, New York. If one is not familiar with the place, it's worth a perusal of their wikipedia page here. The historical significance of Levittown as one of the first planned suburbs is generally undisputed.

Dave's friends had their hometown tribute inked at Skin Deep Tattoo in Levittown itself. Dave's piece was done at East Coast Tattoo & Body Piercing in Bethpage which, he informed me, has relocated to Reno, Nevada.

I have a deep respect for geographic tattoos, as they say much about a person, and their permanent presence on the body means that the place journeys with the individual, even after that person has moved on to other locales.

Thanks to Dave for sharing his Levittown tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Jerome Sports a Dark Tower Tattoo

I spotted Jerome at the corner of 31st and 7th Avenue talking with a friend.

He offered up the piece above (one of his nine tattoos) with the disclaimer that the top end had to be redone, due to some unfortunate ink running.

Regardless of the small imperfection, it's a pretty sweet tattoo.

The piece is based on the artwork featured on the spines of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series.

Jerome was quick to point out, it is not a Guns N' Roses tattoo, which it often is mistaken for. The artwork in question, for example, it is seen at the base of the spine of the sixth book in the series, below:

I have not read the books in which The Gunslinger is a major character, but I know that fans of the series are fierce in their love of the novels.

This was inked by Jon Jon at Cutting Edge Body Arts in Manhattan. Work from Cutting Edge has appeared before on Tattoosday here.

Thanks again to Jerome for sharing his ink with us here on Tattoosday!

Jesse's Religious Experience

Religious imagery is among the most popular of themes in tattoo art. There is, to the shrinking minority of people who don't like tattoos, a greater level of acceptance of Christian-themed body art.

[Jewish tattoos are coming along, but the majority of Jews have fundamental issues with ink on Jews. Islamic tattoos are less common, and I can't speak to their acceptance. Eastern religious tattoos may be the most popular of religious ink, but there is a greater understang of body art when it comes to Hindu and Buddhist themes. But I digress.]

I generally avoid talking to people about full sleeves, but when I started talking to Jesse while we were browsing the books at the Chelsea Salvation Army store, it was clear that his right sleeve, which continued onto his chest, was the most important work he had.


Jesse's ink is a reflection of his faith. It is inspired by religious images that he has come across while visiting churches in Europe. He couldn't give me the specific locations of the art which inspired his work (Rome, Paris), but I'd be happy to hear from readers who may recognize the
work.
Aside from the obvious depictions of the Virgin Mary and Jesus, Jesse also pulled up his shirt to show me the most recent of his ten tattoos, which was the extension of his sleeve into his chest:


All of this work was done by Mike Pastore at Masterpiece Tattoo in Staten Island, New York. Work from Masterpiece has appeared previously here.

Thanks to Jesse for sharing his tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

John Paul's Gorilla Tattoo Recalls the Soviet Regime

On Monday, I met John Paul in Herald Square at 34th Street, after spotting a flourish of color on his inner bicep.

He was more than happy to show me this wonderful tattoo above.

John Paul explained that it is based on a prison tattoo from a Soviet Union gulag. The artwork represents a criticism of the regime of the U.S.S.R., depicting it, not as the common Russian bear, but as the brute gorilla. It is ham-fisted and out of control, with the symbolic hammer and sickle at the ready:


John Paul told me he is fascinated with the historic aspect of the former Soviet Union and the criticism of the regime as depicted in art, especially body art. Here's a great source if you are likewise interested in learning more about Russian prison tattoos:

The piece is incomplete in that one may notice the space below the gorilla has a banner that has yet to be filled out. John Paul said the original idea was to have the letters "FTW" for "Fuck the World" inked there, but he was not willing to have that permanently inked there. He is still deciding what to ultimately fill in the space.

This was tattooed about a year ago by Adam Warmerdam in Los Angeles. Adam is a free-lance tattoo artist in Southern California. It is one of four of John Paul's tattoos.

Thanks to John Paul for sharing this fascinating tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Pumpkin. Pumpkin. Pumpkin

My sister snuck a picture of me walking off with a pumpkin from our outting on Sunday... I did a pumpkin sketch on Monday.... and I did a rotting pumpkin tattoo today.
Now, I don't know about tomorrow, but I have another pumpkin tattoo to do on Friday.

Wikipedia tells us that the "traditional American pumpkin is the Connecticut Field variety".
So good.

Two Hebranks, One State

My sister Kelly came out to Minnesota for a 3 day visit, and we packed it full of autumn-time fun.
On Sunday, we drove to Taylors falls, about an hour Northeast of the city. The colorfully dying leaves and amazingly warm temperature made for a perfect day trip.


There's not really any falls anymore, apparently.
There was a giant spinning root beer mug and a town library of roughly the same size.
We took a paddle steamer, Mark Twain style, down the St Croix a little ways, and then back.






We stopped at an apple orchard that had tasty apples, and very friendly goats.



We found this 15 acre lot that was full of pumpkins and a trailer parked out front that was letting you pick them. I'm still not convinced it was their pumpkins to sell. But we pulled a metal wagon into the lot and picked up some pumpkins for our house and Identity Tattoo.
At home we cooked up dinner and Meryl made two apple crisps from the days' spoils.