kylegrey

Another great collection by the look of things Avery ! Perfect sizing on that Eagle ,i've attached another along the same lines by Bert Krak ,think the solitary Eagle is super strong .
So many good Eagles but my favourite piece of Eagle art is Scott Sylvias picture .This is just crying out for a back to adopt it .
I love Chad Koeplingers birds too Lochlan especially his talons which often are supersized .

Heres my favourite praying hands complete with brass knuckles from Chuey Quintanar

Another great collection by the look of things Avery ! Perfect sizing on that Eagle ,i've attached another along the same lines by Bert Krak ,think the solitary Eagle is super strong .
So many good Eagles but my favourite piece of Eagle art is Scott Sylvias picture .This is just crying out for a back to adopt it .
I love Chad Koeplingers birds too Lochlan especially his talons which often are supersized .

Today on twitter Morgwn Pennypacker ( @FTWSKILLS ) from Love Hate Tattoo Shop in Miami posted this cool thirty year old Ed Hardy backpiece a customer walked in with that made me miss and think of the awesomeness in this thread.

www.xedtattoo.comSarah don't know if hes up and coming but Xed Le Head is youngish and awesome

here's the back of my legs by Scott. there's some stretch marks from when I couldn't walk for 4 months and my legs shrunk down

Jensen's stuff seems even stronger to this day .
Hooper for me is outstanding .
Would also say Jack Rudy but i'll give him a rest and go for Chuey Quintanar also from Tattooland .

OMG IMO FTW = what you said first

I've been digging black and grey renditions of the ROA also lately -heres another
Oh also saw a pic of Freddy Corbin tattooing shirtless ;damn if i had that ROA backpiece i wouldn't even own a shirt .

Heres the Tim Lehi warrior i meant to post above .

The Frisco Skin one was a huge inspiration on me when I first started getting tattooed. A lot of the work I get is "weird" (especially by the standards that were in place in 1990) and I'd walk into shops, barely 18 and ask for really odd stuff. Most of them were polite to me, but.... they didn't get it.
To have Higgs saying that it's ok to get things that people consider stupid and that it works anyway... it just opened my eyes to what I was missing. That there were people out there who were roughly my age who were into weird comics and art and all that shit AND who tattooed it. After that, I just had to be patient and find the right tattooer. Which is a good lesson when you're young and you just want to be tattooed. Patience is hard found sometimes.

One down. LOTS to go!

I have thought long and hard about this and have changed my approach from time to time. I tend to be a workaholic, and I have made a general rule to keep work at work and spend my days off doing things other then tattoo related drawing. I try and clear the visual tattoo clutter out of my head by spending time with family, going to a museum, seeing a movie or show, or just going for a walk/hike or getting out on my bike. I feel like this approach has recharged my intentions and inspiration more then when i use to spend every waking moment searching for reference and thinking about my clients for the upcoming week.
I try and have one day out of a work week (Wednesday for me, which is my Monday) where i sit down and knock out as many drawings for clients as I can. If that means coming in to the shop at 9am I'll do that. No music, no clients, no one else there yet. I just get out my references and start knocking out appointment drawings in order of priority. I find my brain and hand really respond to that kind of intention to just sit down and draw rather then trying to cram drawing time in between appointments and walk ins. And for those kind of appointments I try and have it all work out and ok'd so when appointment time comes i can just sit down and tattoo.
I also got a really good tip from one of my other tattoo buddies to draw tiny. Like with a mechanical pencil to start with. Really little...like 1" x 2" no matter how big the tattoo is. Just to rough out a thumbnail of how i want everything to fit compositionally. and then once i like it in mini form I'll blow up that thumbnail and start working that way. It saves me so much time and energy. I'm not fully rendering things out that the client wants me to completely change. I show them the little guy and explain it to them and if they are into the idea i render it out.
Also I started having a day once a week were me and 4 other tattooers meet up and draw and paint for ourselves. No talking about tattoos, or work and the images can be whatever we want. We all just bring a bunch of supplies and see what happens. It's been great for inspiration and productivity.
Mario I think redrawing is okay if you don't drive it into the ground. I think artists need to tap into their intuition and go with what feels natural. I can always see it in my head and just try and get it down on paper. But i also always ask the imput of my co-workers "what looks weird? what doesn't work? how would you approach this?"
okay i feel like i'm rambling now........

This is from Jeff Rassier's blog. I rarely use the word brilliant, but I think that it is appropriate here.

Heres a different take on the classic by incredible Japanese artist Hiroshi Hirakawa .Hes just joined the staff at three-tides Osaka, i'm not sure of his role perhaps someone can shed some light ?

same here. met stewart 6/7 yrs ago when i got tattooed by him, we finally got together 4 years ago and i'll happily spend the rest of my days with him. he's pretty awesome and we work together so well. i havent, up to this point, met many couple tattooers who work in the same shop and usually when i explain our situation people raise an eyebrow. i love the way its worked out and i thank my lucky stars every day. tattooing is so awesome.

One down, one to go:

By Tim Lehi of Black Heart Tattoo, SF. Scott stopped by to watch me cringe, and Juan refused to buy me a cupcake.

Those Lieber sailor girl acetates are damn good.
On another note about the source of references and influences, last time Lehi tattooed me I asked him if he liked Wido de Marval's tattooing (he works with Leu in Switzerland). Lehi said he'd never heard of him. I asked him whose Japanese-derivative tattooing he paid attention to. He said "No one's, really, I just look at the old Japanese stuff. That's what all these tattooers are trying to do, anyway." Reminds me of the Mike Malone letter to Keith Underwood that was published in TAM a few months ago. Malone adminished Underwood to "Look Look Look" at how Jerry executed his flash. He emphasized Jerry's formulaic approach to drawing archetypal images. Same thing as Lehi looking at Yoshitoshi, Kuniyoshi, or Horiyoshi II. I'd guess that Chris Conn's work, as distinct from someone like Jerry's as it might seem, relies on a very similar formula.

Boyer's photos make a strong argument. Guy named Jim LaPorte sold his extensive Lieber collection a couple years ago, and the pin-up sheet two photos above was $1600. A chunk of dough, yes, but a very fair price, considering the obvious influence Lieber had on Jerry, who's sheets go for three times as much. If anyone's interested in LaPorte's high-quality book of his collection, I can pass on his email. It goes for $250, I think, but it's sizeable, and fucking dope. Brooks turned my bud Kyle on to it, and we swooped on what we could and couldn't afford. Brooks got a couple great sheets. The Scott Harrison fish girl tattoo above is on SBoyer, and is flash from the Lieber sheet I went into more dumb debt for. My bud Kyle saw a picture of that Harrison/Lieber piece and said "That tattoo is perfect." Fucking strong.
Back to girls: There's tons of good girl head stuff that leans more towards the realistic, too. Sboyer just turned me on to Jose Lopez. Very impressive. My blind ass was also just made aware of how good Lenherr's girl busts are, as well. Jason Brooks does excellent girl/rose heads. I fully agree that Uzi's a very good tattooer, too.
Conn is obviously outstanding. I slid ass first into a pile of sugar when I got that Rock of Ages (pictured under the ROA thread) from him on my thigh in 2003. I was just getting my feet wet as a collector, and luckily picked up on how good he was when I flipped through his book at Temple the previous year. One thing that's impressive about his art is that it appeals to people who're new to looking at tattoo art (like me in 2002), but continues to reveal deeper layers when viewed by a more experienced eye. That's when tattooing truly becomes "art", in my opinion. The apex of this dynamic is reached when staring at a Van Gogh, Kawanabe Kyosai, Soga Shohaku, or Kano Hogai painting or print. Fuck, every time I look at the Van Gogh print on my wall at home I get tractor-beamed into some aspect of his holistic vision that I never noticed before. Hokusai, too. Hell, I can ogle Mike Malone's shit all day, as well. He was real into Soga Shohaku and Kano Hogai. Go figure.
Speaking of traditional tattooing that is true art, look at Richard Stell's tattooing. I was beyond dumb-lucky enough to get a couple tattoos from Mike Malone when he was around, and wish I had done the same with Ed Hardy and Higgs when they were tattooing. To people who dig my Malone tattoos (and covet the experience of getting tattooed by a dude like that), I say get tattooed by Stell. Eddy Deutsche is tattooing in L.A, too. He's another one who's tattooing is true art.

PEACOCKS, portraits, long stemmed thorny roses with a banner in the middle and a name, "east l.a. christmas trees" (a college of four girls, two vertical, two horizantal), names, head shots, skulls, grim reapers, spiderwebs, pachuco crosses, gypsies, wizards, L.A. logos in all black, aztec stuff, charra girls, old english, traditional roses, dice, weedleaves, car club logos, misfits skulls, lowrides, cholas, gun barrells (beware of owner), la pieta, jesus portraits, religious stuff, psycho city blocks (big 3D block letters), laughnowcrylater, area codes, face tattoos, gangster shit, anything done single needle, spiders, pharoes horses, winged stuff, rosaries on wrists or feet, girls with long, feathered out hair, castles, prison towers, barbed wire, old school gang stuff, jailhouse tattoos, old homemade, handpoked stuff.
There is a motif of a dude kissing his hyna. No name for it but people who have been around know whats up; everyone has seen it at some time or another:


yeah.
all day.
ALL DAY:

Not into diamonds or fuckin umbrellas, cup cakes, cherries, ICP clowns, Mike Devries superrealism or birdcages or weird rosespanthercoffins with spiderwebs and pretend cholo writing in the background. No cartoony Joe Cap, No dia de low muertos newjack neochicano Mike Giant BULLSHIT. No Nikko Hurtado, Roman Abeigo, Bandon Bond Neuma machine portrait crap. My favorite tattoos is neighborhood stuff from the late 60's to the mid 80's. I will never ever get tired of looking at it. It's what I thought was dope as a kid, and what I think is dope to this very day.

Someone who i feel deserves recognition in this thread as his lady heads really define a generation is black and grey virtuoso Jack Rudy.His pretty doll-faced girls are so sweet yet savage at the same time upholding Tattoolands mantra "often imitated never duplicated " Particulary i love his big haired 80's girls which considing the period can hardly be remembered for it's style ,look better to this day .

my dachshund lucy and bert grimm.