fun with lettering

made up these fellas for the Serendipity Farms craft show. we had a great time and met some really outstanding and creative people from our locale. Thanks Jamie!!!

have a fantastic holiday everyone!

a sign of the season

here is my latest sign labor, just got myself some new brushes for xmas, so i can't wait to dig in!

apologies for the saral marks, those get erased, natch.

big thanks to Amber for the pigments and orange-based non-toxic turps! my feet are warmer and my roomates are happier!

Friday the 13th!!!!!

here are our posters for the upcoming Friday the 13th art show! two-color edition of 37 cut into MDF plywood (my new favorite material, officially replacing tortillas). Check out the 'news' section at www.oldetowntattoos.com for more info....

Also i am excited to announce the addition of Dave 'Mutha****in' Sinor to our crew!!!!!! welcome dude! show him love here and here.

battery-powered hummingbird

this fine fellow gets tattooed every year around (and for) his birthday. i ran into him at a local music store and we set a date for this year's tattoo event. everything went really smoothly, he already had a design that had been drawn up by an artist from San Diego ready to go and everything...

so he shows up the day of his appointment on time and ready to go and while he's filling out the paperworks, the power goes out in our whole quadrant of downtown. being that the primary energy source responsible for modern tattooing is electricity, this was a bit of a problem.... fast forward two hours and the damned power is still out, but we have set up an alternate energy source. just as i hook up the battery and get the ol' machines buzzing, the juice comes back on! after all the waiting we decided that this tattoo was meant to be battery-powered and did it that way. viva dissimilar metals!!!

also, had a great time talking music and gear!!! if you're on the central coast, get thee down to

Music Unlimited

(831) 372-5893

425 Alvarado St!!! buy local, save lives!

hummingbird con passionflower

this is a first tattoo (in two sittings) on a tough lil' cookie, inaugurating her 18th year on our blue gem of a planet. put yer best foot forward miss Z!

party shark

try not to get those hump day blues, folks, it's just a hop, skip and a jump 'til the weekend, when you can cut'er loose and party like this toothy fellow!!! had a great time tattooin' and talking music, thanks lady!

holy diver!

in progress zinger on an all around great dude

listen to Poor Bailey, everyday. also buy their records. also brush twice a day. you don't want your breath to stink do you? if you don't listen to Poor Bailey everyday, your breath will prolly stink.

nothing's sacred

at least that's the word around the campfire...
did this super fun take on a couple of traditional motifs friday on our buddy and new tattooer (lightin' up the AOTTP on fridays), Jaime Carillo (here for his blog).

happy belated halloween III- the flash sheet

watched the vincent price movie 'Pit and the Pendulum' and painted this sheet of thrillers. spoooky....

red team go!!!

put these fun fellas on local badass tattooer Kenny Curtis (clicking for the tattoos), who is an all around great guy and has some of the funniest tattoos known to man. it was a pleasure and an honor!

puttin' on the ritz

if 'the ritz' is meant to mean awesome folky foot peacock, then we're definitely puttin' it on.

karashishi

awesome chinese lion half-sleeve on a great guy. two sittings so far....

a face only a mother couldn't love

are you having as much fun as this skelertun? if not, i can't fault you, i mean, look at this guy!!!

while you were sleeping...

the romance of tragedy

tasty morsel made just for you...

sweet dreams

two sittings for this bad mamajama... without a doubt the absolute coolest dreamcatcher i have ever done. yes, even cooler than the cherry creek one with the wolf head.

this is the perfect size and placement for a dreamcatcher also. accept no substitutions!!!

cannot quit listening to the RDP/ Looking for an answer split 10"....give Six Weeks Records all of your money

the space must flow

i love sci-fi and i make tattoos...

get some.

helping, not hurting

had a really odd day today,

it was a sweltering 80 degrees in our beach town (which only happens in sept/oct and january, oddly enough) and we had a guest artist arrive (click here to check out Ryan Rogers).... while i was doing the morning cleaning, there were some folks who showed up early to ask some questions....one of them was a fella who got jumped real bad a few months ago and ended up in our parking lot coughing up blood, we called an ambulance and cleaned him up a little bit while the paramedics were in route... apparently when he woke up in the hospital, the attending staff had illustrated to him the proximity of himself to 'the other side' the night before. he almost died from blood loss. judging from the amount of blood we found, i'd say that's the skinny on it....

he (and his social worker) asked if we removed tattoos (we don't) and i sent them to the county to see about gang tattoo removal programs (cause the tattoos he had were gang-related and on his face and hands, making a job search REALLY hard)....as we were saying our goodbyes, he explained to me that growing up in jail and in the hood, he was always taught (and thought) that white people were jerks that don't give a shit about you... he thanked me for saving his life and showing him that people are just people regardless of your color or lack thereof. if that wasn't cool enough, he told me that i was a 'hero man, really a hero'....that was a profound first.... i don't feel like a hero for being a decent, caring human, but if that inspires someone to a better life, i think that's pretty great...

you gonna eat that?

here's a little leftover morsel from the 4th of July art show we took part in at Eights and Aces Tattoo in Santa Cruz. the theme was independence...

also, just finished the Collected Essex County by Jeff Lemire (click here for solemn genius) which is a beautiful slice of life based in rural Canada. if you like comix, give this man your money.

flashy b-day

feo be gettin' older! it was great to see you man!

through the fire, through the snow

here we follow pooh and piglet through the snowy reaches of ashdown forest...while piglet dressed up right for the occasion, it would appear that pooh forgot his pants somewheres!

on the wife of one of my favorite customers, she sat like a rock through all those little lines.

happynisms art show sneak peak

we got an email last month from a Belgian Urban Artist named Monk (click here for his facebook) who had a really fun premise for a collaborative art show... he would provide illustrations of people on watercolor paper and have tattooers from all over, well, put tattoos on'em! here's how mine turned out. check out Erin Honest's blog to see her offering as well!

moving on

a couple of fun-filled hours into these guys... it's like, work it out dudes...y'know?

ps- the 'new' despise you split crushes all.

a decade of 9-11

it has been ten years since September 11th, 2001. you undoubtedly already know this.

everything about that day, for the lack of a better term, sucks.

many lives were senselessly lost on that day and many more have been deliberately destroyed since. it's not my place to say what is right or wrong, but a lot of people are dead.

fuck that.

it's a beard

had a cancellation of epic proportions yesterday and felt like doing some tattooing.

a very good friend of mine with a highly refined and sophisticated sense of humor requested that i add a skull rock to his collection.

these tattoos start with a simple skull, with your choice of number of eyes as well as a list of accoutrement from which to choose 3. your skull rock will also be numbered in a different language (Portuguese for this one) he chose a martini glass, a blunt and a monocle. this is how it shaped up...

on a more serious note, here are a few 'in progress' pix from a sleeve that i'm working on. cartoony style stuff doesn't come along very often, but it sure is a hoot....

in progress

started shading and coloring yesterday....here's your up to the minute in progress shot with color study below for reference.

kissin' hands and shakin' babies

the most important piece of anyone's shameless self-promotion arsenal has to be the business card (american psycho anyone?)... being marginally infatuated with art and making stuff, i have made my own business cards in the past and have taken up the practice again.



 i took over the shop on an off day and made it my own personal print studio.

these are linocut prints, an edition of 784 on 3 colors of paper, sepia ink, yeah buddy....

orange....

green......

and some brown, too!
if anyone is interested i also have an edition of 10 uncut proof sheets on white, 140lb hot press watercolor paper, signed and numbered, of course. 20bux each or awesome trade.

afternoon delight

painted and hung this fella (and lady) recently. the American Traditional take on Japanese tattoo motifs is easily my favorite mode of tattoo art. its readability appeals to my troglodyte western mind, breaking intensely detailed designs down to simpler shapes and larger fields of black, effectively translating a whole backpiece of badass into a strong and dynamic one-point. cliff raven, paul rogers, heck, most old-timers had some really fantastic versions of these guys. check'em out!!!

fizzy pig-based beverage

today's offering is a healed picture! healed pictures are most exciting, especially with tattoos that approach a portrait-like effect, which this certainly did... this is the mascot from an album by that one band with the crazy bass player guy that does the big New Years show in SF every year...

i am happy with the outcome.

dirty feet and flies

It is great to be back on the coast! We went camping with a bunch of good timin' people on the icy Kern river this weekend and enjoyed lots of sun, dirt, and freezing natural water slides!!!

This tattoo seemed an appropriate post after a camping trip, because, well, sometimes you gotta poop in a bucket. In fact sometimes things get so rustic that you gotta pee on a turd, like my wonderful girlfriend did on the scenic hiway 1.... it went something like this...

what an exhilarating week! made lots and lots of tattoos and drawings and even found time to get a little somethin' myself! Just a couple of the finished projects rendered....

some real pretty script on our favorite assistant brewmaster, keep that arm outta the fermenter!

and this tough so and so sat through this whole tattoo, just short of 4 hours! for those of you who have yet to get this part of your torso tattooed, it doesn't feel that great. this fella gets a 10 out 10.

August is looking like it's gonna be a fantastic month!!!