sugar skulls and elephants

Its been a hectic few weeks! Ive been busy at home and at work painting , drawing , and doing some work that makes me feel like a really lucky man .
  I had the great honour of tattooing a wonderful man a couple of weeks ago , with a portrait of his daughter . My client was given weeks , possibly days to live as cancer was working into his brain . His last wish was to have a portrait of his little girl tattooed on his chest . Now - i know this sounds amazingly sad , but i wanted to share it as i feel truly blessed and humbled to have been the artist that tattooed his portrait for him , and here she is :

I feel this was probably the most important and worthwhile tattoo i'll ever do , but who knows what the future holds ?

I've been working hard on artwork for the 2012 Bournemouth Tattoo Convention , and i'm not going to spoil the surprise but you'll be able to see it at this years show and from then on adorning the promotional material for the show .

I've had some lovely pieces to tattoo on some lovely people , which is how we come to the title of the blog ! Thanks to Jamie from doncaster - he came and sat 2 full days tattooing back to back , and never whimpered once . Ill be finishing this one at liverpool convention all being well !

this piece was done from black and white photo reference , and there was no sugar skull make up in the originals - so it was callenging but amazingly satisfying to tattoo !

I'll finish with my other favourite piece from the last few weeks , the cute baby elephant that was the final piece in a half sleeve of wildlife .

thanks for reading guys - I'm still getting used to this blog thing , but I'll try and keep it interesting !!!