About a month ago, a client came to me with some photos of his two daughters. He wanted a portrait tattoo of them, which was to be his first tattoo, and said he wanted to convey himself watching over them by adding a keyhole to the design.

One of the photos had the two girls together, but one was conveniently higher than the other. I was able to do some photoshopping and rotate the image a bit so that it more naturally fit with the keyhole concept. I wasn’t sure about the idea at first but I think the end result perfectly represented what he was looking for.

Eventually we will probably hard-line the keyhole and fancy up the outside a bit. But for now…

I love doing creepy tattoos this time of year. What better time to do a tattoo of Jack Skellington?

A good client of mine brought this image in and I knew I had to do it. I wanted to do it in color, but he has mostly black and gray tattoos, so that’s how he wanted it. I think that ended up adding to the creepiness of it. Sometimes clients know best!

A few weeks ago I got to participate at the 17th Annual North Carolina Tattoo Convention, here in Greensboro, NC! I shared a booth with Sam King, who also works at Golden Spiral, and we had an amazing time. It was a great turnout as over 80 artists participated this year!

On the first day, Friday, I tattooed a new client of mine Rebekah Payne. She’s really into meditation, so she brought me a reference of a painting she found based on that subject. I was very excited to do this piece because I loved the color scheme and detail! We spent about 8 and a half hours on the piece and STILL didn’t finish, but it was close enough. I ended up winning 3rd place for color tattoo of the day!

On Saturday, I tattooed a good client of mine named Brooke Bloom. We’re working on an entire right leg sleeve based on the movie “Goonies”. We started with the character One-Eyed Willie a few weeks prior, and on this day we added Sloth to the front of her thigh. We spent around 8 hours on it and ended up winning 1st place for Black and Grey Tattoo of the Day!

It was an amazing experience and I can’t wait to attend my next convention!

Well, yesterday was ridiculous! My Lions made a historical comeback versus Dallas, my Tigers beat the Yankees to even their series 1-1, and new episodes of Dexter and Breaking Bad completed an awesome day.

Coming up this week, I get to start a large thigh piece based on carrousel animals, finish a juniper tree on a guy’s ribs, a large, colored, Pixar-style anime piece, and a bunch of other projects. I’m very much looking forward to each and every one of these!

About a year ago, Golden Spiral’s piercer Ryan Lawrence told me he wanted a tattoo of the girl on the Deftones’ “Around the Fur” album. Being a fan of the Deftones and an even bigger fan of the girl, I was pretty excited! But as always, days go by, weeks go by, months go by, and finally, last weekend, we got around to her. We came in on a Sunday and after a massive brunch at Cafe Europa, we spent 8.5 hours tattooing her. Probably the most fun I’ve ever had doing a tattoo.