Tapping one out for science

I know, i know, nobody is interested in what makes my dick twitch... i 'll show you anyways. this is so awesome



for real!!!
nerdgasm!!!

you find the part 2 to this here :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYRQpcJVQx8&feature=related



i need to go there and see it!


in case you ask yourself what it actually is going to do:




While i am at it. i might as well share my new desktop image.


wait wait, i am wanna give this the right outfit.
First search and download the following song:

"Sol Om On" of the album "The Place Where the Black Stars Hang" from "Lustmord"

turn on music


and behold

the saturnian eclipse! (this is a real photo made by the casini spacecraft and not by an artist)


i think i stared at it for more than 10 minutes... And i had that song on by accident but it gave me goosebumps. But i grew up on 2001 - A Space Odyssey... guess i am biased.

However.

enjoy!
M

What i read and/or listen to in audioform

Richard Dawkins is awesome here is the guy that can put the stuff in my brain in more nice words...







Go get his Book!

The God Delusion


Also check out this guy!

Christopher Hitchens!!
more pithy and a bit more sweaty, cigaretty and all that. But non the less intellectual

and his book

God is not great

Both of those titles are very offensive. They are however written very nicely and frame religion quite nicely.

Check it out!

I got audiobooks of both of those. This is the stuff i am listening to when i am tattooing.

Oh and just for a good laugh,

here some stuff from the believers. Cracked me up.


Yeah who exactly is the deluted one...

good question. Maybe the one that hears voices in his head... i don't know.

rofl

oh yeah and for all americans, there is a new piece of bullshit coming into the theaters around your neck of the woods.

Expelled

More fundamentalist science bashing. Nothing new to me but i am afraid it will seed more hate and fear amongst those that don't know better and those that are already into that kind of bananas... such a shame.

http://www.expelledexposed.com

you all take care and keep your thoughts free from bullshit,
M

WU6

Updates! All pics clickable for full size!

Marker sketch and after the first coloring session. underwater biostuff. Fun!!

Coverup stuff! Gonna be a huge phoenix piece, full back + back of legs, some frontal stuff and arms. Exciting!

cheesy old dragon got pwnd by flowers.

more views as we go... We might do some work on the amsterdam convention...





















More underwater stuff. Octopus fun!





















Gnarly Fist!

Cute snowflake

some sketching for a sleeve i started...

Apprentices and those that think about starting to tattoo!!

If you are a client or regular tattoo fan or artist you might as well ignore this post.

This is the deal. I am getting an assload of emails from you guys about advice for starters and so on. I am always happy to answer them since i did the exact same thing when i started out.
But i have limited time so i want to give a condensed version of things that seem to be consistent in my replies.

I wont ever give technical advice to anyone over the email. Advice on how to start is something that is vital in my mind. And with the right mindset you can go really far, really fast. And if anyone can get to the point i am at earlier and faster than i did, we have advancement going on which is good for the industry. So this is my justification for even writing this.

Here goes:

Before You Even Think About Getting an Apprenticeship:

• Draw your fingers of and only measure your stuff against the best you can find that blows your mind. Analyze it, copy it, try to understand how and why it is what it is and why it works.
  

• At some point where you are starting to feel more secure and can do stuff on paper, start reading books on perspective, technical drawing, color theory and shading techniques.

• Draw a lot from reference and try to do realistic renderings before you even try to do anything crazy or fancy. Never start at the tip but always at the foundation.
  This is pretty global advice so just remember it and check against it if you are not sure where to start.
  

• Get a sketchbook and use it! Through shapes on paper and forget about any lines. SKETCH. Don't do line-drawings.
  Sketching is loosening up and that is very very important if you want to be a good artist with an own style. You develop line-drawings from sketches, not the other way around. Whenever you see awesome flowing, dynamic stuff, it most likely started out as a conceptual sketch that looked like a mess.

• Once you are ready and fleshed out some good motor skills between your arm/wrist/hand/finger/pencil/paper setup, start making a walk in tattoo related flash set and set it up to be a portofolio.
  Include a few of your nicest sketches, those can be freaky and crazy. Sketches reveal more about your character and where you want to go with your stuff. But make sure you have mostly nicely rendered and colored drawings that look finished and clean. You need to show that you can draw simple and small tattoos that everyone can like.

Once you have all that, get out and find someone how wants to teach you about tattooing. Don't try in your kitchen. At least don't do it for long. You are putting people in danger by working in such an environment and you have to learn what "working clean and hygienic" even means so don't get cocky about that.

Hygiene is where a good apprenticeship starts and where a long and successful career can end.

Technically, you wont learn anything good by yourself and if you are doing it for too long you will have trouble getting rid of bad habits and that will slow you down big time. So spend your time drawing on paper and skin and study tattoos with your eyes and your pencil or marker or whatever the hell you use for drawing, as long as you can take before you touch a machine!

If your neighbor is coming to you with a deep nasty cut, you don't suture him up yourself but take him to the doc. Treat tattooing with the same respect for the same reasons!


About Ego:

• Crush it. You don't need it at this point and not for a long time. Be humble and never be satisfied with what you do.

Most important thing that needs to really stick in your head(!!):

• If your drawings are not better than the usual flash (and not the worst flash you can find but the nice stuff) DO NOT TATTOO THEM.
  Really there is nothing wrong with using flash right of the wall or for reference or for puzzling a piece together.
  

• You don't learn drawing on skin. Learn drawing, than tattooing!
  If you cant do that, at least make sure that you split those two things up until you can draw good enough to make your stuff worthy to be tattooed. Learn to appreciate the responsebility you have and dont give a fuck about what clients say about their own tattoos. They are always happy with what they got. They are the worst critics! The exception to this of course is if you fucked up so bad that even a fresh new tattooee is pissed off. Lots of homework there.
  

• If you ask people what they think of your stuff, listen to anyone who has something bad to say and think about it. Take your time with that. Don't listen to people that have only good things to say, they have no idea what to look for or try to be nice, or both.
  Nothing to gain from that apart from a bloated ego that will hold you back.
  Think about it, whenever someone tells you anything that might piss you off, that person makes quite a leap and effort. It always simple and short to be nice but being honest and confronting sucks 90% of the time and takes a lot longer if you want to be good about it. So, if someone makes that kinda effort, don't whine, don't bitch. Swallow and say "thank you".
  

• Many kids wanna start tattooing without ever having to do a tribal or name or anything. You need to find all this exciting and see it as a challenge. Every tattoo can be fantastic no matter how stupid the customer or the idea... You are the one to make it supercool. if you can't, you have found your homework. Some find out that they love doing tribal and start doing it really freaking good. There surely are not enough people how really enjoy that kind of stuff and that is a real pity.
  However denying tattoos because you find them stupid is a superpower that you have to earn! And at this point, do everything you can get your hands on as good as you can!
  

thats it.


The fact that an apprentice can go on the Internet and find something like this might piss some people off. I sure hope someone finds it and takes it to heart. It is for sure one of the hardest ways to do it. No matter if you read it here or live it up by yourself. It's going to be tough as shit.
If you really go by these few tips you can become a really good tattoo-artist instead of a mediocre tattooer.
Make up your mind about what you want to be.

I have not added anything to make this easier to read. No pictures, no bullshit. I already paragraphed it nicely so it is readable at all. But i was really close to just making it a solid block of letters so that only the most dedicated take the time to tear it apart.
If you are starting out as an apprentice, in your kitchen or wherever and feel offended by what i wrote here, fuck you! Go draw! You didn't get it.
(getting this all the time so just making sure ;) )

I live by those guidelines myself and like to be taken the piss out of and doing it to those that need it. If you feel i need any piss taken out of myself, go right ahead.
Defending and debating my points and beliefs is my most beloved hobby. If i cant defend them properly they gotta suck, right?
In which case i am happy to move on without them. I just need good convincing.
It's a system that has worked for me so far. Having no emotional attachments to my own beliefs and conclusions that is.

enough from me again,
take care
M

Interview with Yours Truly.

TattooNow features a brandnew Interview with me.
Turned out to be quite a long one, too.

go here to check it out!


I will do another post on here soon! Keep forgetting my camera in the shop. Busy, busy, busy.


M

WU5 (Milan) and some Hardcore tattooing stuf

Just back from Milan! I had loads of fun again and met some really awesome people. Some of which i still hope will find my myspace page!
I did not do a hell of a lot. Instead I had more time to run around and catch up with friends and came back with full batteries.
I also need a smaller camera to take with me so i can actually make some pictures of the places i go. Would be nice...

Again, clicking on pictures in this post will show them to you in whatever size i saved them. but always a lot bigger than seen here.

So, here is what i did that weekend.

I was staying with Tim Kern and i have some shots of him tattooing late on the last day in our hotel room (all good in case you wonder. We bring our tattoo setups to be able to work in a convention environment so a hotel room is actually preferable)

Tattooing some 6 hours on some poor guys neck.














taking photos (hand tattoo by Nick Baxter)

And the result!

Check out Tims stuff here http://tribulationtattoo.com/

Today i did something naughty. It was fun and weird in the same moment. Gave me a bit of a tickle. I went on with my dragon front piece...

See that nipple? Offending little bastards. Like salamis flying through the scene.

So we took care of it.
It is perfectly ok to tattoo the damn things if one doesn't go completely nuts on them and drills them into oblivion.
They heal pretty fast and hold color just fine if tattooed right.

A few buttock clenching moments later we had them rendered nicely.



and solid, too.




So far so good.

M

WU4: Creating new stuff and some Work Update

Since i didn't really go into detail about how i like to build up a design from start to finish on my site, i thought it might be cool to do that here.

Normally the first step is a consultation with the client and me in which we go over the subject matter. We talk about size, budget and afterthoughts. I make a quick, non-binding sketch, which normally doesn't look anything like what it is going to be but that way i build myself a bridge to remember what we talked about.

After that we make appointments (as many as needed so we keep the momentum and get stuff done) and i take a deposit.

Sometimes i take a bodymap or a couple of photos. Sometimes i feel that i need to go further than that and sacrifice a few hours to make a more elaborate drawing on the body with markers. Which is a lot of fun, so lets see some pics of that process.


This is after about 30 minutes of doodling. Looks like nothing at all.



Next step is to transfer this from 3D to 2D using sticky plastic film. The stuff you used in school to protect your books with.


I will do a lot of clean up work, a little value study and make up my mind about colors and depth, after that I make a line drawing for the stencil.
That process normally will take a few hours.

Here the finished stencil. Still hard to figure out what it's gonna look like for anyone but me... So i normally keep babbling about how it's gonna look and what i am gonna do. Gobbledygook mostly.

On this piece i have been a bit overambitious and we did not get to finish the coloring. It's a foot and feet hurt when tattooed. A lot to be quite honest. So i am pretty happy with my customer for what we accomplished that day. I think we worked around 4 hours on this.
sounds a lot but there is lots of fine rendering in there and in order to stay in the skin, esp on a foot, requires hard work and time t get it solid.
Click on the pics if you find them too small to look at...








The idea was to make some wild underwater biostuff. This is actually going to be a whole lower leg wraparound with a Science Fiction theme so i am pretty stoked about this whole project.








Last saturday i did this one. Doing this drawing took around 3 hours (i think). Lots of work still to do with it. there are a few things that need tuning and it needs a bit more consistency in the subjects. Lots of detail coming in the tattoo of course. It also is an underwater biomech theme. i am doing a lot of underwater stuff lately. So this will have barnacles and sealive textures all over it. Some bioluminescence and other gimmiks should make it crazy enough.



Update:

A few asked about what i was greasing up on the last blog entry since the picture only showed me and my customer but not the actual piece.
So here is what we did that day. Still lots of work to do. More black needed and some linework for the cherryblossoms to make them pop.
The koi is going to be a white one and still needs scales and the water needs some more flow cleanup.

I think regarding on how many hours are put into it now, we have done a lot.

We were joking around about me feeling like this guy.---->

More news:


I have feature spreading over a few pages in this months issue of the German Tätowiermagazin.
Check it out. German skills will help you to read one more of my rants!
Not so bad actually. Pretty happy how it turned out.
Bit bummed that they didn't make me look like an ass like they promised to do... guess i need something to complain about after all. Uh wait, yep, they gave up my oooold oold website for contact, www.toetagtattoo.com
shame on you TM!
Just kidding,
Good episode anyways. Seeing my old Friend Ikker (who's studio was the very first place i ever put needles into peoples skin) on the first 2 pages with his hogheadbelly was kinda funny.
Another nice feature about a good friend of mine from the B52 in Berlin who is doing some pretty hot graphic style biomech.

Parallel to this i had a little surprise leafing through this month issue of Hollands Tattoo Planet where they give me a bit of praise for my website.

Much appreciated! thx mags.

Thats it from me for now.
have a good week!