Koi Carp tattoo with Cherry Blossom

Just finished this very pretty little koi and sakura tattoo on Kerry's ankle. Whilst colour tattoos will always be my first love, the longer I tattoo the more I appreciate black and grey work. As with a lot of things in tattooing - it's really pretty easy to do up a a certain level of proficiency - and insanely difficult to do well!! I'm becoming obsessed with how dark backgrounds should be relative to foregrounds (or vice versa!) - and how to contrast areas of great detail with very simple areas or negative spaces. Fascinating stuff. The tattooing voyage continues....

Sakura Geisha tattoo design in monochrome

Today was a day for red and grey tattoos - using sumi (charcoal) grey Japanese ink which settles down over time to become a beautiful silvery grey...

First up was a phoenix design - running from waist down to thigh. The softer plumage and the tail feathers are monchrome - the wings and body deep red.

Then came a Japanese style koi design - a pale speckled fish against a traditional looking dark background of water/wind - this time the red was in the form of mottled red maple (momiji) leaves overhanging and floating on the water.

As much as I love working in colour, I'll never get tired of working in monochrome too - I especially love the way these tattoos age and actually improve with time...

3 day escape to Ben Nevis

Both of us have been working crazy hard in recent history - so we had kept this past weekend sacred - no band gigs, no tattoos, no nothing (which wasn't easy cos everyone seemed to want us to do something that weekend) - and we took off to the Highlands camping.

Which in itself is pretty amazing - cos camping isn't something we generally (for that read ever)do - the only time we've put the tent up previously was the one time we didn't stay in a hotel when Paul played the Americana Festival.
This camping trip was dreamed up when we were in Japan in April - we were standing looking out over Lake Chuzenji and talking about how beautiful Scotland is and how we should really make more of an effort to get out and see our own country... ...so we are! And we're not bad 'campers' (!) either, we've discovered.

It did us the power of good just to stop for those 3 days - I'm now back tattooing away again.

Today I drew the background for a Japanese chest piece - it's the last section of a half bodysuit I've been working on over the last year or so - the main features of which are koi and sakura - definitely some cool pics of that to come. Then I traced a leg for a huge coverup featuring more koi and sakura in shades of blue - very Art Deco and stylised for that one.

This afternoon I started the daisy legpiece with Art Deco writing - a photo of that one after the next (final) session.

Super Sushi!

Eek! Been too busy to keep up with my new-found blogging hobby....

Saturday morning involved colouring in the tail of a dragon that goes from knee to armpit - that one's been on the go for a while! Then had someone come in to check their design I'd drawn - cherry blossom (no really) and bamboo to go up her side - all A-OK so now booked in. Very Pretty.

Then came a consultation for more koi carp - a guy from Kent who wants koi and flowers surrounding his calf - should be beautiful but have to behave and add it to the end of the drawing list!!

Sat evening was spent with my gorgeous hubby at a birthday party for my pal Radio 1/Scotland DJ Vic Galloway - his lovely partner Lexi had invited us all round for sushi (height of civilisation - she'd made loads and it was fantastic!) at their flat before Vic DJ'd the night away at a local bar.

Sunday was one of those 'do the million things you never get time to do' days - the ones that normal people seem to do all the time...

And finally today was a full-on drawing day to try and catch up - two flowery legs and yet more (blue) koi - started designing a coverup with them.

Bored yet?

I am with the sound of my own typing so off to get on with it. Over and out.