No Tattoo Photos.

So yeah, tattooed a large lettering piece on Juliana today, and then a sick biker 'death angel' on John, neither of which I can show you, because our studio camera has no batteries, and well, I lost the charger. I obviously cannot be trusted with nice things (or so my mom used to tell me when I was a kid), so as a result, you'll just have to take my word for the fact that both pieces came out flawlessly awesome.
I do however have this picture laying around, a painting done for Miguel, a tattooer in the area:

Older Painting

A lot of people comment on this piece that I've had hung on the studio wall for a while now, so I figured joe public who lurks but doesn't come to the studio, might like to see it too.
On another note, and I stress this every year... If you have large pieces to be finished, you might want to start thinking about booking now, rather than wait until the spring, when ever single person delves into a panic about not having their piece finished for summer. It could mean the difference between a month's wait for an appointment, or three.

The Cottage

So, I've spent the past three days out at a house in the middle of nowhere hanging out and painting. Sunday night Andrew came up for two days, and layed down some hilarious paintings with me. Sometimes it helps, when you can't come up with anything interesting to draw, to draw the downright offensive, or politically humorous... Both of which I think we captured with these:
Sadly the photos are taken with an iphone, which, as cool as it may be, tattooers need to learn, take shit pictures.



And I found this one laying around, I did it a while ago, and lost it amongst thousands of saved files I have on my camera.

Save Our Ship

Silvano came in this weekend to get this message in a bottle tattooed on his leg. It was a fun piece, and this guy seriously has a tattoo on him from each and every one of my favourite local artists. I kept joking with him about how 'I hadn't made any mistakes on it yet', and for someone who doesn't know me, he took the jokes really well.
Dude sat there with this unimpressed, blank look on his face that I'd expect from an NFL star watching high school football.... Completely unfazed.

Just because...

Just because I don't ever post pics of him, and he does deserve the fame... Ladies, Gentlemen, ma dawg.

Dragon(fly)

So, the weather here is getting colder, and the trek to work is getting harder every day. It always amazes me that people still manage to come out in this weather, to our quiet little studio, tucked away in the far corner of an old fashioned Montreal office building in a neighborhood of town that not a whole hell of a lot of people want to go to (and in a lot of cases, spend their whole lives living here, without ever going to). But alas, I'm lucky enough to have friends and clients like Ali, who show up in the dead of winter and get tattooed. This is what she ended up with:

Sugar Sugar

Now, though I do like doing them, most people ever faced with having to draw a sugar skull know that it's nearly impossible to make them look original, or have them deviate from the formula used by numerous horrible tattooers over the past few years.
Just recently Julian (who also has a girl/rose piece I did a while back) asked me to tattoo one on the inside of his arm, and well, with a piece like that on the outside, I couldn't just stick him with a normal, run of the mill one.... So, here's the end result:

Paint Junks

Sorry for the few days off, I just picked up a Macbook Air (Which is awesome in case anyone cares), and I've been trying to get everything switched over before updating all my photos etc etc.
I've been overworking myself lately, 2 appointments a day, plus drawings at night, is getting to be a bit much. Anyways, the productivity will be posted very soon I promise.
In the meantime, here's an old eagle painting I did for someone down in DC a while back.

Dear America...

Are your kids really so fucking stupid that they can't handle a kinder egg without killing themselves?
THE GREAT AMERICAN KINDER EGG SEIZURE.

Snowboarding

So, much to some of your shock, I do actually have other interests than tattooing. Not many mind you, but some.
One of these said interests, is snowboarding. A sport I was once quite good at, and gradually, age, and work, took their toll (Not to mention not having a driver's license).
Buuuut, today, Bromont, to which I hold a season's pass, had almost a foot of fresh snow, and I, Michelle, Andy, and Shamus, were there to enjoy it. I ride a board far too short for these sorts of conditions, but the feeling of launching, without caring how or where you land, is what it's all about.
I'm going to bed now.
Oh yeah, this picture is from New Years Eve, but well, I had to prove that I don't make this shit up.

Girls girls girls

Got to do this piece yesterday, a late Christmas gift from his very generous girlfriend. I really do wish I got to do more girl faces, so seriously, If you want to get a girl tattoo, please get in touch with me!!.
Anyways, this took somewhere around the three hour mark, which is a long time for me, but sometimes the attention to detail is worth showing up for dinner arrangements a little late.

Cookie Monsters & Out of Towners

So, first things first... I just realized people can comment on these things, which is both interesting and confusing to my technological illiteracy.
But really, the reason you are probably reading this, some tattoos I've done:
I was visited by Heather from Massachusetts yesterday, who got this moth tattooed. She made me nervous, both because she has a rad tattoo on her back from Mike Shea, and because in two days, has an appointment to get tattooed by Ian Dana. Both of whom are solid tattooers, and as for me, I just cross my fingers and hope for the best.
Then today, I got to finish this Cookie Monster on Marilyn, and as I'm sure it's no secret, I have a certain fondness for tattooing cartoon/comic/video game characters, so it was a good time, and I'm really happy with how it came out.
In other news, a hobo wearing a top hat pushed ahead of me in line at Tim Horton's while I was waiting for coffee. I was already about to start laughing, when the guy behind me started full on yelling at his woman about 'getting deals on cookies' which full on cracked me up. Who the fuck does that? And who's crazier, that dude, or the entitled hobo in formal attire?

Catching Up.

So, a lot of you have probably seen this stuff already as some of it's been posted on my facebook page but I'll post it anyways. I wish I had a ton of new shit to post, but a lot of stuff (much like this in progress piece) is larger, multi session work that is waiting to be finished.

My Triumphant Return!

So, I'm sure most of you have noticed I took a few months off from this thing. Problem is, I get busy with work, travel, etc etc, and days turn to weeks turn to months, and then I find myself not even wanting to bother because I've missed so much.
Anyways, I did some traveling, went around the continent almost two times in two weeks. Hit Edmonton, Calgary, NY, detoured to Houston for a night (hence the photo of me with a f**king PALM TREE! San Francisco, North Carolina, Pittsburgh and back. It was great
The Alberta trip was rad, flew to Edmonton to see my friends Danny and Shawn at Ink Machine, then my boy (Dan pictured in his corner)& I drove to Calgary to meet up with Bill Byers (the passed out drunk in the photo) and do their tattoo convention. Great weekend, met Gerry Kramer & Cody from Tattoo Zoo in Victoria, and ate veggie dogs at Tubby Dog every single night.
After flying home, Len (pictured coddling the bottle) who has recently moved into the studio with me) and I toured the US for a week, visiting tattoo conventions, and flying all over the place. I think the craziest thing was waking up at one point, having entirely forgotten what plane I was on, where it was going, or what state I might be above.
Either way, the blog is back online, and I'll keep in rolling from here, I promise (kind of).