These roads, too hard to walk

With the things you've been saying, I don't even want to talk

hey guys, had a few appointments cancel and seeing as its expected to rain up to 4 inches today , whoa, i figured id have some free time for a post.

After time and time again of checking jinxi's blog and seeing what i read as posts saying 'quit your job and be happy' i quit my job a while back. monday is my last day at my current shop and im proud to say i will be now working with my friend Jason Solomon at a brand new shop he is opening in the morningside area of sioux city! 'addictive tattoo' kinda got a nice ring to it eh?

its a brand new shop and ill be working with people ive known, worked with, and gotten along with for quite a while. im really looking forward to it. Im sure ill be posting a ton of photos when im all in and set up, but right now walls and floors are all torn up and its a bit of a mess. but with an opening date of oct its being taken care up in a pretty swift manner!

along with the new shop im starting to compile work for my new printed/ bound / updated portfolio to print at the beggining of the comming year. i havnt updated anything not online in quite some time so its diffinantly over due.

so, with that said. hers some photos and rambling of whats been up :)



i've been trying to put almost double the amount of prep time i normaly would into my tattoos lately trying to push them a little further even if i dont like the idea, or its sorta simple. if i can behappy with a simple tattoo that i dont like then im sure to like my larger more involved work that comes from it. sadly enough it makes it preety heart breaking when you do all that work only to have them want you to trace there scribble and tattoo it on them verbatum. like the stenciled skull/waves/ pirate ship above that didnt happen at all.

but it made a cool photo,so oh well. its not my arm.



that being said some people are awesome, like my client Fish. here is a piece of hers in progress :)



epic sunsets make my happy for my drives home, and make me wonder with beauty like this how any one can question a divine being being involved. but i still love you even if you do question or disagree. :)



on the note of good looking things...haha. sarah has been putting up with me for an offical 1 year so i took her out for the evening. you cant see much in this blurry photo but we look preety snazzy. trust me, haha



we went to a preety fancy restraunt with an epic sounding menue, like the cheese and blue crab dip above. but over all it was preety bland. i was preety bummed out at the lack of really any flavor. id rather have bad tasteing food then non tasting food. but at least my view from my side of the table was good.



the next day my best friend Audi had her fashion runway show as part of Omaha Fashion Week. you should good it, or check out audis etsy pages on my side bar.
i figured a sundried tomato bagel with vegi cream cheese and capers couldnt be a bad way to start the day off.



i helped her get her garments from her giant studio to the venue/backstage. this is just a glimpse of some of it on the racks. so amazing! her work is always inspireing.



and picked up my ticket, how offical is that!



after getting everything to were it needed to be i met up with sarah and headed to California taco, as seen on tv's dinners, drive inns, and dives! for a little pre fashion madness dinner. their re-fried beans are soooooooo good!



sarah prefers the potato ole type dish.



getting ready to go!
honestly so inspired and rilled up by her show that ive dusted off my machines and sketch books and am diving back into designing garments. hopefully ill be productive and have my own show at O.F.W. 2011!



sarah and i, post show. you can see the dress shes wearing better over on her blog. located on my side bar under sarah baker doing crafty things. she designed and knit the entire thing!



Audi and I, homies for life!

all excited for sewing and creating i headed home.



along the way my brother sent me a picture of his growing baby girl, and his growing fall beard. both preety awesome.



when i got to work i turned around to see a whole string of stock model A's cruising down the street. i didnt get a good look but one of them had a flyer on it. im asuming its part of some sort of orginized drive. the model A's clubs will occasionaly have a drive across the state or even just the local area's. some have a scavenger hunt set up, some just cruising and others are poker runs. preety great either way to see them out putting around.



once inside i saw that our spread in savage magazine was framed up on the lobby wall.preety snazzy if i do say so myself.



mike stoped in and i got a healled shot of his owl, and did a few teeny touch ups on the roses.



i also threw on another diamond for him, gotta have the bling i suppose.



he ran home to grab something and got in a minor car incident but he and his g/f were fine and she sat threw her second sitting on her koi. its a little distorted in this photo because of the way shes standing. but for only having one teeny other tattoo shes seems to be sitting like a champ! really looking forward to seeing this one finished.



last sunday was down right brisk at around 40 degrees so before work i loaded a couple cords of wood onto the front porch and told my dad i expected a fire in the fireplace when i got off work. i was not disapointed!



this week i also started tearing down painting supplies in my studio and re-setting up for the next year or so of sewing madness! it took me nearly an hour to un pack stored fabric, and i even lost about half of it in a basement flood a few years ago :O here is my new shelf i built out of a giant oak door that is original to the house i live in, and my pre existing shelving units. it ended up creating a little cave hide out under neath also.



here is Buster testing the cave out. looks like it passes inspection.



it took a while but i unpacked my zippers, nearly 1000 if not more of them! im always welcome to yardage of fabric, piping, zippers, buttons, skulls and sea shells as tips. heck i keep them all on the same shelves as seen above!



moving all the stuff around i ended up taking over the ajecent hallway to store paintings so i would have room for dress forms etc in the future.



just stacken em up, haha. you can see i also will accept spools of thread as a tip.



figured after that we needed to relax a bit, so we started digging out old matchbox car tracks and launchers and putting them together.



and then about an entire delivery pizza later anda jug of coke we started connecting them together, awesomeness!

Sorry, lifes been busy

yeah i know, thats no excuse. but honestly its just been nuts and when i do get a chance to sit down i want to do just that. sit down.

non the less i had a minute and thought id through up a new post for ya'll.

first off some tattoo stuff.



started this giant koi/ cover up project on tyson.



and did this flash based bulldog on a 65 year old that bench presses 450 lbs and has 3 purple hearts! would have liked to do some more line sculpting, but its still 65 year old skin no matter how strong he is. maybe later down the road...

on a process note, here is a tattoo i started the other day on my freind kate. i was trying to keep track of time spent on the prep for the tattoo as alot of great tattoo artist talk about having spent nearly as much prep time as tattooing time on some of their pieces.

this is a great example of that! all in all this tattoo took 3 1/2 hours to draw and the exact same amount of time to tattoo what we've gotten so far!



now this didnt take that whole amount of time. it did take a while though, i took the positioning of over the traps from shoulder blade to chest. along with the large amount of text as a challange so i did spend alot of time trying to find a way to have it look the best it could. in that photo you can see that the lettering actualy reads backwards and upside down for a portion.

my thinking was as it drapes over the person they are only going to be able to read one side at a time, and the back side they will have to walk around to read so when applied to the person it reads correctly front to back, as wall as from the proper angle.



a couple lettering style changes,change in images, and a change in position later we have hit out 3 1/2 hour mark with something we could both live with.



and 3 1/2 hours of tattooing this is what we have! im going to go back in and add some black and grey background later on i think. but overall we both liked the piece.



a long drive home in the dark i decided to grill some brats as the oven is still on our 'to be replaced with a working item' list. im a little new to grilling brats, and i did these in the dark to top it! but they turned out perfect! life goal met!



these fish tacos however made me super ill :P and not in a good way :(

after all of this was labor day weekend!



you know what that means!



watching fireworks while listening to neil diamond!



making grilled cheese with bacon and my mom!



with chipotle cheese!



and smoking bbq with my dad!



with fruit!



yumm, smoke



parade time!



with mom and sarah!



and firetrucks!

haha, was a good time :)

ive got some cool tattoos that ive been taking process photos for to post after a few more sittings, and a few fun painting projects as well. im just waiting to have more progress made before posting... well and some time :)

hope your last week or so have been rad as well :)



oh, and i totaly got a new job at a rad tattoo studio! ill post more about that in the next post as well! talk about a cliff hanger! haha

it gets tough, but we've picked up a lot of things along the way

ever notice your 'days off' are busyier then your normal days?

yeah me to. i spent most of it drawing tattoos that will behappening in the next few days. hopefully they turn out as rad as the drawings did.

here's one for a sugar skull coming up this saturday.



the rest im going to wait till ive at least got the line work done so i can show some progress/process.

but what i can show you is my finished painting of shawn i started last week.



its sorta lose but i like it. and it officaly caps my self set quota of paintings to have finished before having my own show. so now planing for that begins! hopefully i can figure something out and have a show the first friday of november in lincoln nebraska down town. i just have to find a space big enough for my stuff.

oddly enough most of what ive painted the last bunch of months has end up preety obviously paired. totaly not intentional either. i guess i just paint in twos? haha.

you can see the last two sitting together here.



i actualy built that little 'scaffold' to hold more paintings and my studio space is over flowing and ive run out of room to put things.



this photo of the hall way exiting my studio space shows example of that. guess thats a tell sign to have a show.



these two are from a while back, they are actualy the only two that have 'titles' other then just the name of who i was painting. i like to call them vanity and smoldering



on non art related notes this is my cheeseburger for the week, $1.50 for a burger fries and soda at the grocery store. it was the special of the day :) typicaly on my days off i eat either a box of mac and cheese or a good burger. as we are still stove-less and i dont feel like boiling water on a grill its been burgers lately.



and not related to anything at all, this bitchen camaro showed up in blazing barbie pink the other night full of bleach blond sororiety girls at the shop and i couldnt help by chuckle and take a photo for ya'll.



and i guess thats about it!