"For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing."
Simon Wiesenthal

Lately I have felt some kind of extreme social responsibility, and although this quote is overly-epic, and on the brink of cheese, I think it is spot on. Sometimes I have to really ask myself if what I'm doing has an impact, and what kind, positive or negative. I suppose all I can do to make a positive mark in my occupation is to treat people kindly and fairly, and to do my best work on every tattoo.
I thank God for this job everyday, and don't take it for granted, there's nothing I'd rather be doing. The only way to "repay" Him in the slightest is to make the most of it.

That's all.

The Old Man and the Sea.

This is somewhat of a dream project for me to land, everything about it is great; a cool concept, a simple idea that can be carried out without too much going on in the tattoo, a good area to work on, great subject matter. These are drawings for what will be Josh's forearm piece, based on, of course "the old man and the sea" by Hemmingway. I know this guys reads a lot and has a lot of respect for classic literature, so I feel a great duty to do this thing justice. I went through a lot of research and preliminary drawings, the ones that made the cut can be seen here, as well as the final drawing. Totally unrelated, I added a sketch for a tattoo I get to do down the road, which I'm really stoked about. I haven't gotten to do a shark yet.

On a different note, I had something really unfortunate happpen the other day, I dropped my portable hard drive and sent all my tattoo photos and drawings i had scanned to oblivion, not to mention my family and friend photos. On top of that, I can't scan without it(long story), so therefore I have to take photos of drawings instead. The quality therefore suffers, but I dont feel too bad, considering the amount of "followers" on the blog. I know theres a bunch of other crap i wanted to say but, as usual, I have forgotten it.

Downtime and the holidays

It seems the last two months have been pretty bleak as far as walk-ins and new clients go. This is always a slow time of year, as people don't really think of getting new work in the winter as much as the summer, and they are spending any extra cash on gifts for others, traveling, and holiday party expenses. Because of this,many a morning have been spent at LFS trudging through facebook and my favorite GIJOE forum, or (if my level of motivation is high enough)drawing, trying to pass the time in any way possible. Every once in a while, during busy season, it's nice to have a little down time like this in order to catch your breath, but I'd have to say , it's getting old. Furthermore, I feel as if I am constantly gaining insight in tattooing technique and that my skill set has improved a lot since I started. I told Joel that "I feel like I'm doing my best work, but no one is around to get it.", to which he agreed and said he knows exactly how I feel. To add to this, I have been sick for about a month, and last week I dropped my portable hard drive, and lost every photo of any tattoo that I've ever been proud of, not to mention my wife's photos of us and friends and family. Woe, woe is me lol. I just realized that this post is becoming a bit of a pity-party , so i will say, despite all this, I have gotten to tattoo some really cool stuff, and have more down the pipe. I just really need something to get out of this slump, though. I'll be doing another session on my Dawn's side piece, which we're both excited about, and duder Pat will be getting a start on a horse head tattoo from me, so hopefully that'll give me a little kick-start for the new year. On with the pics, i suppose. . .

Robert wanted " a sugar skull with red waves(like blood) and a black rose" And I was extremely happy to oblige. So here's the two sketches for that, as well as the finished product, though it's a horrible photo.

Also started this project on Alex. He wanted a David and Goliath, as depicted in the bible. Yes, David did behead Goliath after he was defeated. Many people don't realize that's part of the story, i'm not just doing it so there can be a ton of fun gore thrown in haha. It was tough to fit all this in on a relatively small spot, but after simplifying it, it think it worked well enough. The second session should tighten up the piece nicely. I included alternate sketches for this tattoo as well.