Sep 14, 2009 in For Sale, Music, My Work
Dear friends,
One of my bands, Happily Ever After, have released our 3 song ep entitled Deep Inside, including the songs “Frustrated,” “The Kill,” and “But Tonight” on iTunes, Amazon.com, and Emusic.com that you can purchase now for less than $3. You should get it and give it a listen and let me know what you think. I would be very grateful.
X
Michael
Sep 05, 2009 in Art, My Work, Tattoo
When Paul was in high school he spent 3 months in Pushkino, Russia, (studying microbiology of all things!), and brought back an impressive collection of some really beautiful Russian folk art, including a set of the most beautiful matryoshka dolls i have ever seen.
They sit proudly on our mantle, and have given Mike Donahue’s youngest son hours of fun. Whenever they come over, the first thing he does is pull down the dolls and take them to the couch so he can open each one and put them back together again.
When it came time to decide what the next element in Paul’s sleeve would be, he thought about his fondest memories and remembered Russia. Then he thought about the dolls and how they represent a complex nature, not only because each doll contains another doll, but also because each one is a beautiful floral artwork within a simple depiction of a person. It may be that it represents his complexities, as well as his awareness of the complexity of others. We are not what we may appear to be.
I ordered special ink for this tattoo because he wanted the colors to be as bright as possible. I found a set of 3 fluorescent colors that happened to be the colors in the doll, (a pink, an orange, and a red.) However, when i started to apply the red, i quickly realized that it just did not want to stick in the skin. The pink was even worse. Plus, i couldn’t see the pink for the redness of the skin beneath. Since this is only my second color tattoo, it’s possible i just don’t know how to work with such an ink.
I quickly made the decision to lightly color the whole tattoo rather than make more of a bloody mess trying to get these stubborn colors in. In 2 weeks, after it fully heals, i will re-color the whole tattoo again to evenly deepen all the tones and bring out the super bright colors. And then, if necessary, i’ll do it again 2 weeks later. (Which will be so much fun for Paul, since the red part close to his elbow was almost unbearably painful!) =( Sorry babe!
Sep 02, 2009 in My Work, Tattoo
Om, Aum, the sound that holds the universe together, representing all things and people, past, present, and future. Found in both Buddhism and Hinduism and reminding us that we are all one and connected, it is a spiritual tattoo.
I was nervous to do this because i have never done a color tattoo on a person before, but i found that it is actually easier in some ways than the black and gray work i did on myself and Ruben, because it’s just a matter of working the color in until it is intense enough without tearing up the skin too much, and using the feathering and hatching techniques i learned from my good friend Mike Donahue to blend the colors. There are 10 colors in this tattoo, and took about 5 hours, including time it took to mix some of the colors. It looks like it may need a bit of touching up after it heals.
Paul chose the colors himself. The color choice represents not only his favorite color, orange, but also the warm colors he looks best in. After this heals, I’ll go back in and touch up the outline so it will look really clean and crisp. I started by trying out an 8 round shader, but then switched to a 7 mag and was much happier with the color application. The inks are Intenze, Skin Candy, and Kuro Sumi, ordered from Element tattoo supply and Joker tattoo supply.
