Hand tattooing... in the studio and on the road

Here's a little mix match of some things I've been doing by hand the last few weeks.

Some finished, some started, some continued... some from the studio and some from the road

The highlight of this month was the Frankfurt Tattoo Convention which thanks to Matthias Reuss had the largest collection of Traditional and Hand Tattooists attending this side of London or Florence. It was great seeing so many old friends and working together on one stage :-) 

Enjoy!

Lars and I just received our new Swasticks from Bealze Bub. Quite happy with the design... thick as a grip, but the new stainless steel is thinner and lighter than the older brass models. As an extra bonus, Loki also got one custom engraved with his name as a birthday present  Thanks B! We expect great things from him

Start of a Haida Thunderbird

Wing feathers will go onto the anterior deltoids and tail onto the solar plexus

Done using traditional hand tools

 Rory Keating did a quick guest spot at my stage at the Frankfurt Convention

We're trying to turn him to the Darkside :-)

A little layered petroglyph thigh piece done on the first day of the Frankfurt Tattoo Convention

(with a little help from Rory Keating) 

Had the honour of doing a little bound rune on Dirk Boris... editor of Tatöwier Magazine in Germany 

Added a couple bird's heads to Moshe's Haida backpiece at the Frankfurt Tattoo Convention

(The wings and polynesian are not my work)

We plan to extend the wings with a little dotwork and maybe add a few tails feathers to tie it all together at some point.

All my work was tattooed using traditional hand tools

And continued on Sabine's leg sleeve which we will be adding some figures and patterns in the negative bands

 Finished up fellow Viking tattooist Jesper Mann's chest piece.

Jesper designed this Viking Owl himself so I am just the craftsman and promised him not to post photos of the whole piece... but here is some detail.

If you see Jesper, be sure to get him to strip for you :-)

 I did this Carbon Atom last year using only soot as pigment. Now we continued on the other forearm with a DNA string framed with a rune text

 Added onto Mads Petersen's forearm with this rendition of Yggdrasil the World Tree