TattooSnob.com

No more bitching that we post people that Americans could not possibly get tattooed by!

Anabi has an upcoming guest spot here in the States–at Crimson Torch Tattoo Collective in Eugene, OR (Joshua Carlton’s new shop) in April, acutally. If you’d like to get tattooed by him while he’s in town, you can email him with the following info:

• What you would like to get tattooed (you can attach some examples)
• Which style (realistic, cartoon, painterly)
• Colour or B&W
• Placement on your body and approximately size
• Your budget (if any)
• A contact telephone number and link to your profile on FB

Tattoo by Anabi in Szczecin, Poland

Since moving to Oregon, we haven’t heard much from Joshua Carlton, but clearly he’s still doing his thing. In case you haven’t heard, you can find Mr. Carlton at The Parlour Tattoo in Eugene, OR.

Tattoo by Joshua Carlton at The Parlour Tattoo in Eugene, OR

I feel old making a refernence to Budweiser’s Spuds MacKenzie advertising campaign, but it’s still the first thing I think of when I see a bull terrier.

Tattoo by Joshua Carlton at The Great American Tattoo Company in Indianapolis, IN

An entire leg sleeve of skulls is no laughing matter – and not an easy one to blog about, either. I’ll just let the bearer do the talkin’:

Kind of funny looking at my leg now compared with the original concept of what it was going to be. It started about 3 ½ years ago with the announcement that I was going to be a father. At that time I had a few tattoos, but not a major collector in any way. When I found out my son was going to be born a Leo, the search was on for an artist to do a realistic lion cub. I did tons of research, finally stumbled across Mike Devries‘ work and was totally sold–I contacted him right away to set up an appointment.

Luckily, he was booked out almost a year. I say that because if I had jumped the gun on the lion tattoo, it would have been a major mistake–my son wound up being a Virgo instead.

Since I already had the sitting lined up, I started thinking about what else to do and then it hit me, a skull! I have always loved skulls as far back as I can remember. I wasn’t sure if DeVries would be into it since all the work of his I had seen involved people and animal portraits. I contacted him about the change of plans and the rest, as they say, is history.

Since doing so much research initially, I had compiled a “tattoo dream team list.” I talked with my wife about the idea of continuing the skull theme. She was completely supportive and told me to go for it. I immediately started contacting the artists on my list. Many of them not only were interested in the project, but actually moved me up in line on their waiting lists just to be part of it.

The following, in order, are all the artists who contributed: Mike DeVries, Carlos Torres, Jeff Gogue, Nikko Hurtado, Robert Hernandez, Bugs, Jason Butcher, Joshua Carlton, Carlos Rojas, Aric Taylor, Shawn Barber, Bob Tyrrell, Stefano Alcantara, and FAT.

Each artist was given complete freedom to tattoo anything they wanted as long as it was a skull. It was so much fun to see what the guys would come up with. Some did exactly what you’d expect based on their respective styles, and others took it in totally different directions than anticipated.

After having such a wonderful experience with this project, I have  started an arm sleeve with the same concept. So far the contributing artists are Phil Garcia, Goethe and Jeff Ensminger. Time to get that “tattoo dream team list” out and start making some calls!

If you’re reading this, I’m going to strongly urge you to stop what you’re doing. You won’t be able to truly appreciate this piece if you don’t see it in full size–it’s like a collector’s dream come true, right?

Salvador Dali tattoo by: Stefano Alcantara at Last Rites Tattoo in New York City, NY
Pablo Picasso tattoo by: Joshua Carlton at The Great American Tattoo Company in Indianapolis, IN
M.C. Escher tattoo by: Zhivko Baychev in Prague, Czech Republic

It’s always hard describing a tattoo like this because I never feel like words do it justice. The detail in this piece below is little mind boggling.

A closer picture of the blood covered mouth and teeth is after the jump. Be prepared to be awed.

Tattoo by: Joshua Carlton at The Great American Tattoo Company in Indianapolis, IN

Paintings by: Joshua Carlton & Charlie Immer

Tomorrow night, two solo exhibitions will be opening at the Last Rites Gallery. Joshua Carlton and Charlie Immer will be the featured shows for the month of June. Gallery one will feature “Beautiful Death” by Joshua Carlton, while gallery two features “Peeled” by Charlie Immer.

The opening festivities kick off at 7pm, and are open to the public throughout the month of June for no charge.

If you’ve ever flipped through Joshua Carlton‘s portfolio, you’ll stop a few times “Is this real?”

This tattoo below is a great example is one of those mind baffling pieces.

Tattoo by: Joshua Carlton at The Great American Tattoo Company in Indianapolis, IN

As most of you probably know, this past weekend was the Detroit Motor City Tattoo Expo. This year marked the 15th anniversary of the show, and despite the bad weather – the turnout was great. The artist turn out was nothing short than stellar, and the floor was packed all weekend.

As always, I brought out my camera and tried to capture some of the quality work that surrounded me. I snapped entirely too many pictures to post on here, so I’m just going to post the cream of the crop. Please remember, my photography skills are amateur at best.

If you’re interested in seeing all of the mediocre pictures I took, become a fan of Tattoo Snob on Facebook. All of the pictures from this past weekend are posted in the albums.

Instead of posting a list of people you should follow today, I’m going to go out on a limb and do something different for this post. Below is a list of tattoo artists that have Twitter accounts, but don’t use them.

Consider this my wish list. All of these artists took the step to make an account – now let’s just hope they start tweeting.

Mike Devries – The occasional tweet does come out from Mike, but it’s typically a plug and they don’t happen all that often.

Carson Hill – Carson was tweeting on a semi irregular basis, but he hasn’t since the end of November.

Joshua Carlton – Without a single tweet, I’m cautiously optimistic that we’ll see this account start up. I’d love to see what Joshua is up to from day to day.

Paul Booth – The man, the myth, the legend. While Paul doesn’t have one tweet yet, there was a “test” tweet yesterday. I’m taking that as a sign of hope that this account will start tweeting soon.

So why follow them? Well, as I said, I’m cautiously optimistic.

As always, I’ve added all of these users to the appropriate lists. Currently we have lists for Tattoo Artists, Tattoo Shops, Photographers, and Clothing Companies.