|
||
|
|
||
INKEDblog takes you beneath the skin of today's tattoo culture. Our mission is to celebrate tattooing as a modern art form which incorporates art, fashion, style, and pop culture. While paying homage and respect to the past, we look to present a contemporary take on the present and future of skin art.
Home / Email this post
Monday Mar 27, 2006
Every BODY Has a Story: The Huge Dragon Tattoo
"I used to work with Matt Reed from Tiger Lilly Tattoo. He and I were friends and he wanted me to finish up a piece for him. I didn’t really feel like finishing it, and kept putting it off. In the meantime, we got this book on traditional Japanese tattoos. Not Kanji, but full body pieces, huge stuff.
I saw these two dragons that were really amazing. I told Matt offhandedly that a combination of these two dragons would be a really cool tattoo. When I saw him the next day, I couldn’t believe it. He staggered through the door, his eyes blood-shot and wild, and his hair standing on end. I think he was actually wearing the same clothes as the day before, too.
In his hand, he had a gigantic sheet of butcher paper all rolled up. “I got it”, he croaked, “I got your dragon”.
He had spent most of the night before drawing out this dragon. When he unrolled the paper, the damn thing was enormous! It would have covered more than fifty percent of my body! I don’t think Matt had ever done anything that big before, and he was really enthusiastic.
He told me to relax. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I can finish the whole outline in six hours”.
Six hours? That seemed crazy, but who knew? Matt was a seasoned tattoo artist. I figured it might take seven or eight, but at the eleventh hour, Matt sighed and said the outline would probably be done in another three hours. I lost it.
Well I lost it, but then I came back. And back. And back. It’s been about six years now, and I still have one session left…"
| 
© Electric Artists Inc. All rights reserved.
