Michael DeMatty

Here’s a little treat.

Christian’s family lovingly calls her “Cri Cri” after this Mexican nursery rhyme cricket. She brought me 3 images of him and said she wanted all 3 of them down her forearm in the only space left. I copied the character illustrations exactly, but i tied it all together by placing each one on a leaf, surrounded each one with blue, and added music notes.

Steven contacted me with an idea for 2 watch faces representing his 2 daughters. He wanted the dates and times they were born, and later came up with the idea of 2 swallows. Then he wanted his daughters to choose the colors of the swallows. At first i was apprehensive about that. After all, swallows are the color they are. But i kept an open mind. One daughter wanted bright green, and the other wanted green and red like a zombie.

Three months ago, one of my sisters came for a visit. She told me pretty last minute that she wanted a tattoo. She wanted it to have a skull, (for life,) a snake, (for stransformation,) and 4 butterflies, (for her children.) She arrived at my house and i frantically began drawing. I knew i wouldn’t have time to design the entire thing to my own satisfaction, so i took a huge leap of faith in myself, and designed just part of it, (on the left.) I told her to trust me.

A couple weeks ago she contacted me and said she wanted to come for another visit and get more work done on her arm. For 2 days i worked on a design incorporating the missing snake into the existing design, using Tibetan and Japanese art as inspiration and adding a lotus because i know she loves Asian art as much as i do. I showed her the design and she was ecstatic!

After 4 hours of tattooing, she had reached her threshold and was hungry, so we still need a 3rd session before it’s complete, probably the middle of May.