🌷 Feb 2023 🌷

Patreon launch, colour swatching designs, astrology flash, recent tattoos, pondering fandoms as inspo and reflections on time away from tattooing!

Hey all,

Writing to you mid week, mid afternoon with some tattoo related thoughts and updates. I took December off and found myself getting back to a very slow start in January. Thankfully February seems to be picking up again, I currently have two spots left for the month and am also booking for March.

(Availability: Next week, Monday Feb 13th at 12:00 and the last day of the month Tuesday Feb 28th at 12:00 - Book here)

During my time away from tattooing I did some deep reflecting and realized the entirety of my 2022 went to work. Tattooing in the 2020’s has been demanding on me in new ways, and I found myself in a deep burn out. Having to prioritize work came at the cost of putting a lot of my life on the back burner. (I’m sure a lot of you can relate!) And I’m grateful to say that the past two months have given me the flexibility to reconnect with my creativity and work on my personal life in small and big ways.

This week I launched a Patreon in hopes of slowly building up a platform to share and expand other aspects of my creative practice! (Shout out to my first two Patreons, hi and thank you!)
My dream here is to cultivate a digital space where you can engage with the behind the scenes of my art stuffs. Should it go well it could also help support me in doing new things! Like starting an online store, making the studio space more accessible, taking continuing studies classes at Emily Carr to enhance my skill set and writing a book, making comics, painting and diving into new mediums.
If you want to support me directly in all that tips on BuyMeACoffee are always welcome and greatly appreciated as well. (You can do so anonymously too!)

Recently, I finally got around to making and sharing some colour swatching designs! They are made to sample how different shades of colour inks settle into and saturate with your skin. They are free for BIPOC with paid sessions for other tattoos!

I’ve been really enjoying making astrology themed flash in 2023! I am suspicious of my ability to put them out consistently as the type of neurodivergent person who traditionally ends up with many blank months in my planners as I dip in and out of shared reality haha! But so far it’s only month two of the year and I already have sheets for Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces! Claimed out of these designs so far are the stack of books for Capricorn, the woman sitting on stairs for Aquarius and the hands spilling water for Pisces. Everything else is available. So far I’ve been aiming to publish the designs a little bit before their seasons hit to give you sun signs and astrological appreciators time to claim a spot.

Here are some tattoos recent tattoos I’ve done as well! I got to finish a big thigh piece for a wonderful client Kailey, which we had been working on at spoonie pace since the previous summer. It felt soooo good to finish it!

A client Che, recently invited me to tattoo medicine for them which was such a special thing to do! I did my best to honour the sacred plant by keeping it’s presence in my mind creating it with them. I had a lot of fun doing a full wrap piece for her and mixing shades of green to find that perfect tone. Thank you Che!

I also got to start off the year with tattooing a pomegranate as part of a trade with a very dear friend of mine! We’ve been working on a sleeve over the years of rotting fruit and it felt special both for friendship and the pomegranate’s important symbolism in Judaism. Pictured below as well is a tattoo I gave myself earlier in January too, over my shin which was previously covered in Psoriasis. I’m currently six plus months in remission from extremely severe designation with the illness and tattooing over the area felt intensely important as an act of reclamation.

In other news, I was considering doing some fan flash for my favourite stop motion film, Blood Tea and Red String but recently decided against it. After reading an interveiw with the films creator Christiane Cegavske where she implied it lacked intentional symbolism. I may return to it but want to take into greater consideration from who and what the work borrows as cultural origins are worth honouring.

Related, I recently I began a custom piece with a friend and client based on Buffy the Vampire Slayer which is very nostalgic for me! It has me considering the joys of tattooing fandoms and favourite media. I was raised by a single student who spent a lot of time studying the metaphorical value of monsters in literature, so vampires and cryptids are especially sentimental for me.
This is encouragement to bring your favourite book, movie, RPG or media inspired tattoo ideas to me! Even if it’s something I’m not familiar with, I’ll likely be excited to engage that universe with you to create some forever art. Except Harry Potter, JK ROFLing can go fuck herself.

Other than that I’ve been pondering researching and learning graywashing techniques to build on my special style of stippling and exploring different needles to learn whip shading. My hope is to eventually be able to combine all those elements into how I shade designs.

Some projects I’d love to do this spring in terms of custom and freehand work include abstract designs, warped/illegible text, still life’s of altars and dot work only designs! I will try to make an updated cheat sheet for ideas soon too. I’d also really love to continue doing shadow flash. I’m excited to see what comes of that project and who it resonates with.

Hope to see you all soon,

Bug