Finished another practice piece and I'm learning more and more each time.  I love how the counter blending turned out and only hope to improve.  Again, I don't think the practice skin (piece of rubber) directly mimics real skin so I believe the shading would be much smoother on the body.  I will probably use a thicker needle on the outline for future pieces, since the stencil doesn't erase well.  All in all, I'm pleased with the outcome and looking forward to my next piece!  Finished the outline of the drawing last night.  Hopefully I can finish the practice skin by the end of the week.

Did a couple different styles of wings on some practice skin over the last couple of days.  The skin's not that great at holding the ink and I can't even wipe away the stencil.  I guess you get what you pay for.  Speaking of getting what you pay for, these wings are my original designs taken from pictures of sculpture from our trip to the Seattle Art Museum.  The Picasso Exhibit was pretty awesome, by the way.

I finally put up the hannya mask that my wife got me for my birthday, I believe last year.  Vanishing Tattoo gives a good description of the hannya meaning, including that "In Japan, the Hannya mask is a popular good luck motif, and, like other terrifying icons, is believed to ward off evil spirits from the home."  I included the hannya on my business card design, which you can see at the top of the page.  Hopefully it will ward off evil customers.

I enjoyed working on these Americana designs from some of the flash that I have and also appreciate getting to make my station feel like MY station (click thumbnails to enlarge).  I'll definitely need to start filling up some of the blank space on the walls... but all in due time.

I wanted to do something special to christen my very own work station at the shop, so I decided to tattoo myself to commemorate this special occasion!  Much more pain to come from shading and color, but at least the line work is in.

The station's set up and ready for business and I found my business card holder that I got on Haight Street, San Francisco!  Come on in!!

Today I did my first tattoo at my own station... but on practice skin.  Even though it wasn't on real skin, it as a good experience and I learned a lot from it.  Check out the outcome!

Left:  needles and ink on practice skin

Right: pen and colored pencil on paper

The process of creating my business card:  rough sketch, outline with added flowers, trace, black and gray render, color, resize, add banner, cut and paste using photoshop, upload and size.

Here's to the start of a new year and a new career pursuit!  Along with all that's going on in the shop, I'm starting this website to share my progress and art.  It's time to get this thing going!  Come get tattooed!!