even nails cower in fear

truly the toughest thing posted on the internet to date. easily the toughest thing post-internet as well.... might as well stake a claim!

even the crossbones are bleeding! what? do you not have blood?

not front

i'm back on top of the 365! fell off painting and documentation for almost a week now! it's been a hell of a week down at the ol' tattoo shop. check out my efforts...

first, a tattoo on Jaime, the newbie over at Kenny Curtis Tattoo, nice and witchy....

and the new 365's...
i oni have eyes for you

 acrylic, watercolor, and gen-U-wine Acme coffee and moonshine

 Amebix plus shine equals ugly

intention

i've been admiring a small cherry tree in bloom for the last few days that grows in one of the yards on my walk to work... being a tattooer, you tend to see things with a different eye, cherry blossoms (sakura) being an image commonly taken for granted like hearts, eagles, and banners....seeing this tree in a more stoned, focused light led me to ask the tattoo gods for a customer that appreciated and asked for a better cherry blossom.... check out what i received....

behold a pale whale

giant ups to CJ for sitting through this whole tattoo, i know it had to feel like sticking yer arm in a toaster oven, but it sure is fun to look at!!!!

and further down the nautical road or strait as it were....

it's a sign!

i have recently fallen completely in love with signs and the pugnacious craft of sign painting, a trade as hard to enter and master as tattooing! here are a couple of my swings at the medium, still sussing out material and techniques... all respect due to all sign painters, these were gifts to people.

and a couple more of those 365's that you love so much, these were done sort of late at night, so....

and gosh! it must be your birthday! here's a tattoo too! this kid is in the military and realized after pledging 6 years that the US military was entirely responsible for the eradication/ decimation/ genocide of the native american peoples (well, the disease scourge that the military brought helped too...) so he got this tattoo as a sort of posthumous reparation.

shake, shake, shake

here's a couple more 365's for everybody's perusal... the seahorse is a design for one of the counter helpers here at the shop and the fishes are purely medicinal.

also owls are good fun! i was lucky enough to dodge the hipster owl bullet, so it's still quite fun to knock one or two up every now and again.

another beautiful day on planet earth, time to paint!!!

truckin'

i work at a great shop. i work at a shop so great, people who don't even work here get badass tattoos of our name!!!!

also, here's some new 365's

i'm trying to be more spontaneous with this project, rather than painting multiples a day to make up for slacking or being busy, the color schemes are a dead giveaway. enjoy!!!

eat, sleep, breathe

TATTOOS! this lyre bird was the last tattoo of a 15 hour shift, squeezed in between a 5 hour tribal and sunrise, in honor of sailor jerry's 100th birthday.....

this tattoo looks suspiciously reminiscent of the old Picture Machine flash, Pat (Martiniuk, the picture machine) and Jerry were contemporaries with Jerry being the elder of the two. The bird's head, tail structure, and the 'pinwheel' style flowers all scream picture machine. Also of note is Pat's trademark color composition, which is rumoured to be a result of Pat paying local neighborhood kids to color his flash for him.

there isn't much said about Pat in Jerry's histories and the little there is is laced with disdain for his associations with Lyle Tuttle. Pat worked with Lyle at his 7th St. studio in San Francisco before opening Picture Machine in 1976. whether Jerry had an affinity for Pat's beautiful and economical style or simply saw money in the design is unknown.... if anyone has a picture of this on PM flash, lemme know. until then, it's the ol' chicken and the egg...

365 project 2011

myself and my colleagues at Olde Town are doing the 365 project this year (1 painting a day for three hundred sixty five days), i will update this pretty regularly, but here's my first 13.

Happy 100th birthday to Sailor Jerry!!!