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Sometimes I'll come up with a design and feel it's basically the right solution for a custom piece. So I'll send it to my customer to get their thoughts on it (I value the opinion of the person getting the tattoo - first and foremost, it's going on your body, forever. And secondly, I view this as a collaboration, and customers are usually right, and offer valuable perspective where I can feel a little stuck in one viewpoint) and go from there. Other times I'll have a few idea

Developing some ink drawing techniques for tattoo design using chinese calligraphy brushes and fountain pen

A memorial portrait for Joe - we were doing two cat portraits. I managed to get a nice photo, as this one had a chance to settle down and become less inflamed while I was working on the other. The same could not be said of the second tattoo, which needed a bit of time.

Beth asked me to design this tattoo for her undercut, in the style I've been developing inspired by 'fine line realism'. A couple of years ago I took a short online course presented by Ferran Torre, and learned some basics about this style. It's usually recognisable by its use of Classical imagery and slightly mystical-feeling diagrams, with elements relating to ancient Greek astronomy, astrology, Classical art and literature, or mathematics and geometry. I wanted to take ins

This is a cover up for an unfinished and very faded rose tattoo - an irish hare for my good friend C. It worked out beautifully, and we were able to use some of the grey shading on the old tattoo to add some natural-feeling dimensionality to the hare. I just added some shading over the top, and to define the drawing a bit more. I drew the hare on paper with pen and ink, and added some ink wash with a brush, as I wanted a spontaneous and naturally intricate feeling. We needed