Skin & Bone is a combination gallery and tattoo studio. The gallery will exhibit art and ethnographic handicrafts related to tattooing, while the studio will have Colin Dale tattooing alongside various guest artists throughout the year. Through his years of travelling and tattooing around the world Colin has had the pleasure to meet and work alongside a wide range of tattoo artists and experts working in ethnographic and other specialized styles. Amongst these friends, we have hand-tattooists from Borneo, Polynesia and Japan as well as some of the world's leading artists in Blackwork and Dotwork coming to visit. Check the homepage http://www.skinandbone.dk/ to see some of the work



Thursday, 20 September 2012

Icelandic Tattoo Convention 2012

The convention was situated just across the street from the National Museum... so what better way to spend the morning :-)

Figure of Thor holding his hammer Mjolner
Some scholars argue that the hammer is actually a cross, as a blending of christian symbols began infultrating the older pagan beliefs
    
The famous Wolf Cross (or Hammer)
a christian symbol with very clear Asa loyalties 

 A version of the Galdrabok... a tome of Icelandic magic.
The use of these types of spells continued well into the 20th Century and are also popular tattoo motifs today 

A little Elfin magic :-)

 A petroglyph of a man snowshoeing, formed to fit the contours of the foot

Thor's Hammer with Ægers Hjelm from the Galdrabok for protection and courage 


Custom Dragon on Guðrún Finnsdóttir
The tail ends in a spiral on the elbow joint while one of the scales does the same on the wrist bone
Took about 9 hours by hand in one shot... her first tattoo!
Guðrún returned on Sunday to say Hej and thanks for the tattoo.
Svanur and Andreas (the organizers) convinced her to enter her tattoo in the "Best of Show" competition.
I was very happy that she was willing to show it off, but I really didn't expect anything to come of it.
My friend Alex of Rites of Passage told me many years ago that... "an ornamental piece can (could) never win best of show". He never meant it as a comment against tribal work, which he has always shown a respect for... but rather as a comment on tattooing in general these days. I was glad we could prove them wrong in Malmö shortly afterwards, but I never thought for a moment that I could do it again... especially with a hand tattooed piece :-)
A very fitting end to a tattoo convention in Iceland




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