Thrive Road Trip and Miscellany

Generally I try to find an awesome tattooer that I get along with in my own town and give them all my business for as long as I live there... but last weekend I traveled specifically for a tattoo for the first time.

I guess I'm getting to be a bit of a "collector" as there are several far-flung people on my list now that I would love to get tattooed by someday...

Actually, I always meant to go to this place when I lived closer but never quite made it...

So, the place is Thrive Studio in Cambridge, ON. I got tattooed by Chris Anthon whilst my lovely niece got tattooed by Bryan Simms. Except for all the pain and cursing under my breath, it was a totally great time. Andy Gibson, their apprentice, was there too and they pretty much did an improv-comedy show while tattooing. How our tattoos aren't a big mess from all the laughing, I'm not sure.

Here's a peek - but I'm bruised and scabby right now so no point in showing off the whole thing yet. You can already tell how awesome it is from this shot though...

My niece got the Stoney St. Clair mermaid (that I re-painted and wrote about earlier here) but I don't have a picture of it.

Originally we were both going to get the mermaid but two things happened: 1) I saw this seahorse flash that Chris painted on his FB and I immediately fell in love with it and knew I had to have it, and 2) I got to thinking about mermaids and how what a mermaid does is be extremely pretty, sing beautifully (I can't sing and am only borderline feminine), and lure poor sailors to their deaths*... and that's just not what I aspire to in life.

So, despite the fantastic tits, I opted out of the mermaid. I was mostly into the tail and scales anyway - and the seahorse has both.

(Also, I was born in the year of the horse - which doesn't really mean anything to me at all except that it makes me have a certain fondness for horses that I wouldn't have otherwise because I wasn't raised around "horse-people".)

(And I like to swim.)

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This is a random picture of a fence near Thrive. I liked the acorns.


This is my little collection of old letterpress letters. I don't have a letterpress but I just use these like stamps sometimes. Why did I post this picture?


Because I used these stamps on the tab of this thank-you-card I made for Chris Anthon.

The creature (demon? monster?) is based, but not copied exactly, from Amund Dietzel.

And if you pull his tongue...


He says, "U R RAD!"

... which I thought was pretty awesome...

Unfortunately I get so nervous and awkward about giving people stuff like this that I have no memory of whether it appeared that the recipient liked my offering...

..but I enjoyed making it and I think it must be obvious that it was heart-felt... and that's good enough for me.

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OK. Time for bed.

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* My niece is young and good-looking in a way I never was and has a killer voice to boot - so the mermaid goes better on her. I'm not saying she aspires to kill sailors or anything - the mermaid just works on her in the same way I think the seahorse works on me.

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Perk Up

Since I have an illustration due tomorrow morning that isn't yet finished, this seemed like a good time to fart around doing other (unnecessary) drawings and projects around the house... and then to blog about it.

So here is some flash*: some copied from Bert Grimm, some inspired by, and some just my own.

I'll let you sort out what's what. It's all about loving coffee...

(It is, in fact, coloured with coffee too!)

Here it is with my favourite mug and the coffee I was drinking and painting with:

* Not sure if this is done yet... might need to add something to the bottom to balance the squishiness of the top. Also, the lettering is a big mess - but I'm trying to not be super-anal about these things. The pressure of perfection can cause me to stop doing anything at all so I'm attempting to work faster (and letting myself be looser and messier than my ego wants me to be).

Thanks fer perusing!

painting and thrifting

Watched the Ontario election debates and (re)painted this (from Bert Grimm flash). Will do some other stuff around it later. They always tell artists (writers usually) to do "what they know"... and I know I love coffee...

The debate put me in a bad, cynical mood but finding cool, old stuff at thrift stores puts me in a good mood. It's my version of retail therapy. I wish I wasn't so addicted to it actually - I may need to take a break from it.

But in the meantime... some cool finds:

Old hiking bag - $2

(I hung it on the door that goes out the apartment to hold all my grocery-shopping bags)

A genuine Walnut humidor with engraved initials and plaque - $3,

(Paraphrase: To T.W.B for good work in the Ontario Electrical Utilities from his "Manufacturing Friends", 1955)

A suede and fine needlepoint clutch - $1.

Thought: I think maybe part of the reason I like collecting old stuff might have to do with the seeming lack of heritage/family heirlooms in the house that I grew up in. Even as a child I always craved heirlooms...

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Grimm Reaper

I'm struggling today with some kind of cold virus so it was OK to not do "real work". Instead I played around with this flash sheet (mostly re-drawn from Bert Grimm flash). Slowly but surely I'm getting better but I still have much to figure out about working with the ink - especially in the large black areas.

I also finished a quilt today that was mostly completed two years ago but never top-stitched. I had been planning to top-stitch it all by hand but it was obviously not happening and I really wanted to start using the thing - so today I sewed all over it with the Juki and it's finished. I'll try to post pictures tomorrow.

Not bad progress for a "sick day".

U.S.N. gal based on Bert Grimm

Here's a piece of paper I'm painting on these days.

The "v" from a couple days ago, the U.S.N. lady from this morning.

(I didn't stain the paper this time - it's just the bad lighting in the picture that makes it look aged.)

This girl is based on the flash of Bert Grimm (which you can see in the photo below - from the Book Vintage Tattoos).

I wasn't trying to make her look exactly the same - if so, I would have traced her (and I would have painted her in blue). I was curious to see what happened if I drew the same elements without trying to duplicate them precisely. I allowed myself to draw the way I normally draw.

I like the look of the original more. Mine looks a bit "Disney-fied". The eyes too large. The hair overly cartoony. The lines so "flowy". The original is rougher around the edges. It's just... well... it's "cooler".

But I think it's better for me to do it the way that comes naturally and not try too hard to push it to look like something else.

If you do something enough, it will start to look more like what's in your mind eventually... but it will get to that stage gradually, through effort and trial and error. Meaning you will end up with a look that is influenced and molded by the things you like (i.e. what you look at and aspire towards) yet it will be your own thing because it has had time to percolate or be channeled through you.

It is interesting to see how different the two ladies look actually, considering they contain the same "ingredients". Something I draw will probably never look especially rough, crude, or "cool"... because that's not how my brain/eyes/hands work... or who I am as a person.

Anyway, I think it is more important for me to develop a body of work and to see progress over time than to get hung up on one or two images - as "precious" as they may be at the beginning - when they are so few in number...

Ummm... don't know how or why I got off on that tangent. Ah well...

Lesson learned today:

The only answer to dissatisfaction with your artwork is making more artwork.

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victory flash

I repainted this Bert Grimm flash this morning.

I wish I hadn't painted the leaves green. I don't like the leaves at all actually. I made them the shape of the original but I wish I drew them in a way that felt a little more natural to me... I'm learning though... getting more used to the spit-shading.

The original is really loosely drawn, messy in fact. I tried to be messy and loose but my brain wouldn't really allow it to happen... maybe I should've thrown a bottle of ink all over it like what happened last time I painted...

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