so i think my phone was acting a bit screwy the past few days and i couldn’t send myself the pictures i was taking… which means i couldn’t upload them on here… which means you couldn’t see them… so here is a mash-up of the past few days…

so here is a HUGE hand tattoo i did the other day… a straight razor, some brass knuckles, and a banner that reads “i love dad”… pretty sweet little one-shot tattoo on the left hand of the client. i did his right hand a few years back at Guru and here he was to get the other one done! so sweet! the other one was pretty huge too but this one is just gnarly big!! the dude is a pretty big guy as it is and his hands are just as big so i made this thing fit every open space i could get it in! pretty fun!

here is a close-up of a dragon half sleeve i started a few months ago… this time we just shaded the whole thing so obviously there is still color work to be done… took about four hours to shade the whole thing. it’s literally the top of his shoulder by his collar bones to just below his elbow… took a good chunk to knock it all out. definitely looking forward to finishing this one!

here is a close-up of the zombie virgin mary sleever i am working on… i actually worked on this one today… pretty much knocked out the shading on her today… still have quite a bit more to shade… i mean, this is only session number two anyway… definitely a fun one and can’t wait to get more done!

this is a shot of the drawing i did for a client… i was gonna tattoo it this week but he had an unscheduled meeting pop up at his work and he couldn’t miss it. so although we had to push it off about a month, i still had fun drawing the piece… it’s the Naga from buddhism… a snake bodied woman with wings that holds enlightenment in her hands… this piece is for the calf and will lean on to the shin a bit. also, the tail will wrap around his leg and hold a hammer that will eventually be striking a gong. the gong will be added in the space that’s leftover after this main piece. should be pretty epic. gnarly detail though, so it’s gonna be a migraine to outline, hahaha… then again, i’m no stranger to detail… just sayin…

anyway, hope you enjoyed the pics. got a fun one to do tomorrow… stay tuned…

HS,

TURK

these are some feet i worked on last week… i lined them out already a few weeks back and this time, as you can obviously see, i shaded them in… these were fun to do and i think i knocked out the shading on both of them in just under 2 hours but she still didn’t want to color it in… feet tattoos hurt! haha… some people can tough it out, some can’t… no big deal, just means i get to have her in one more time and we always have fun things to talk about!!

here we have some punk-rock hot air balloons floating above a huge and gnarly leg piece we are working on… they’re holding a banner that reads “die die my darling” but we didn’t color that in this run because he is a snowboarder and didn’t want that part of his leg healing while he was “shredding” or whatever it is that those guys do, haha… there is a LOT more to this one but you’re just gonna have to wait…

aaaaaannnnnnnnddd…. i bought this little puppy not too long ago. waited my ten days and picked up my new Ruger LCR .38 special… it’s freaking awesome! i haven’t had a chance to shoot it yet but i will probably go next week! “guns are funs” that’s my motto! haha… don’t worry, i am an NRA life member and have taken many safety classes and have plenty of training… moreover, i have a safe that i keep my guns in and am a very responsible shooter. so don’t go getting your panties in a bunch! hahaha

well i am off to the studio to draw. there were a couple sweet pieces i worked on last week that i forgot to snap pictures of… sorry about that… i will be more on top of it this week i promise! wait till you see some of the goodies i have going on this week!!! and i have a painting i am going to start in a few days too… there will be photo’s of all that…

stay tuned!

TURK

but instead i’m showing you what i did today…

so today i spent just under 5 hours coloring in this beauty… it’s a peacock morph with a skull belly… i took good pics with my good camera but i haven’t posted them to the gallery yet so until then you get these cross-section photos… one of the head, one of the skull in it’s belly, and another of the feathers at the wrist. this is a lower arm piece that is placed on the back of the forearm. he already had an existing piece on his fron forearm so we had to go on the back. though, it does wrap around and almost even frames in the existing piece. there are some more feathers that are silhouetted behind the ones that are in color… you’ll see when you see the whole thing… i am super pumped on this piece! definitely one of my favorite pieces of 2009!

next we have this gem on the inside of the arm… it’s a coffin with a man as a candle inside it. his face is a flame… for some reason my camera deleted the ones of it’s face so you are stuck seeing just this section… its got a skull with wings at the base and some roses… i did a half sleever on him a few months back and this piece, although not connected via subject matter, was tailored to fit the inside arm. we only outlined and shaded it today. took almost 3 hours… or was it just at 3 hours? i don’t remember, really… anyway, even though you can’t see his face as the flame, you can see his wax hands melting on to the skull which is pretty sweet… he has another appointment next month to color it so keep a look out!

off to bed… tomorrow i have a few more to knock out…

nanite!

TURK

so yesterday i did a final session on a full sleeve just touching up some of the blacks and purples making everything really POP! i didn’t take any phone pics because you just wouldn’t see the enormity of it all and well, let’s face it, i just plain ole’ forgot! haha… BUT, there will be shots of it coming up as i asked him to come back in a week or so to get full healed pics. i’ll be taking those with my good camera so you’ll get the whole shibang… i’ll post it here and in the tattoo gallery as soon as i get good shots of it, i promise. there should be an update soon anyway as i have a lot of pics in my memory card that i haven’t dumped out… soon…

the second appointment, however…

this is a shin piece to both sides of the calf of two pin-up girls in a graveyard… one of the pin-ups is a zombie, and she has a skull in her hand and a knife in the other. the other has day of the dead style make up and is just standing there looking pretty, hahaha… the client already had an existing piece on the back of her calf and initially asked only for two pin-up girls (a zombie and a day of the dead looking one) on the sides of her shin, but i kinda took the liberty of creating a full scene with it… i mean, if you’re looking to fill up your body, why just get the girls and then ask me to create filler later? i just thought it would be rad to knock it all out in one scene… she definitely agreed! this is just the line-work, turns out the shin hurts a bit, hahaha… we have shading in a few weeks, so that will be a blast! that’s when the contrast really comes out! looking forward to it for sure!

sorry the last pic is a bit blurry. i tried to get better ones but my phone was being a jerk… thanks for looking!

HS,

TURK

so today, for my first appointment, i did the final session on this lower half sleeve. this was the third session. one session to line, one to shade, and then this one to color… you don’t get the whole thing in this picture, but it’s a male angel with a laurel in its hair and a pencil behind his ear… he also has a set of brass knuckles in his hand and is clutching a bandanna… not show in the photo, aside from his wings, is a banner at the wrist with the client’s sons name and birth date.

the symbolism here is that his son, portrayed as the angel, is saving him from his past life of gangs and fighting… thus, the angel carrying away these items in the piece… as we talked today we shared some crazy stories about our pasts and how things are so much different now… he attributes his 180 to the birth of his son… what a great way to show that… super stoked on this one.

it took about 3 hours to color everything… maybe more.. hard to tell because i had a consult show up early so we took a break so i could clear that up and then an unscheduled consult showed up after that and so we had to take another break!!! even with all these breaks, he sat through the whole thing without a hitch! awesome guy…

i finished off my day off with this chest piece… all we had to do was color the heart and thorny thingies… the wings were colored in the session prior to this one… i think this as the fourth session? i can’t remember… anyway, i really like this one a lot! i modeled the wings after the Death character from HellBoy II… i mean, i didn’t steal them outright, but i definitely had them in mind when i was drawing this one… also, i mixed the order of the eyes and made them slightly asymmetrical… some of them are human eyes and some are goat-like which i thought was pretty fun as well! not too much fun for the client though as he was in some pretty good pain! especially around that solar-plexus area… yikes! mine hurt like hell too so i know what he was going through!! there will be flames at the top coming out of the aorta and the other un-capped arteries but that’s a ways away… so for now you just have to deal with it this way…

finished my day off with a Rubio’s burrito and the UFC ultimate finale i had recorded a few days earlier… now i’m gonna shower and sack out early so i can get into my studio and make a line drawing of one of my appointments before they show up… zombie pin up girls, oh yeah!!!stay tuned!

HS,

TURK

so today i finished one of the first pieces i started at my new studio… it’s a day of the dead style sugar skull with some waves behind it and banners that read “juntos tenemos sentido” which translates into “together we make sense”… now, that would make more sense to you if i had a picture of his wife’s tattoo that i started back when i started this one… it’s the female version of what he has, basically… and hers reads the same thing, so together they have matching tattoos that read “together we make sense”… does that make sense? hahaha… anyway, this one has a ton of detail and took a good solid three, to three and a half hours to color…

here’s a little bit of a closer shot so you can see the detail… this is why it took three hours and some change… had to work around all the curlies and color in all the little flowers and leaves and squigglies and so on… all that detail makes these sugar skulls a bit difficult to do but hot damn they look good when they’re done!

my second appointment for the day was two big fluffy pink bows on the back/upper thighs… came out good, took about an hour and fifteen minutes for the first one and roughly forty minutes for the second… at her request however, i’m not allowed to post it here or on twitter for some reason (some clients are weird)… but i was allowed to get some photo’s on my good camera and when i update the tattoo gallery i will add that picture, so stay tuned… i’ll actually be updating the tattoo gallery pretty soon with some pics of the sugar skull (right above what you’re reading) and some of the stuff from yesterday and a few weeks back…

blah blah blah, i’m tired… i ramble when i’m tired… think i’m gonna hit the sack and try to get up early and eat eggs! mmmmm…

HS,

TURK

well yesterday was a fun day! finished up two pieces i started a while back… just some color sessions on a few pieces that you guys might have never seen unless you follow me on twitter… (shameless plug, i know… button is on the left, hahhaha)… anyway, the first of the pieces i worked on was this sweet upper-back piece. it’s a memorial to her aunt that passed from cancer… we did a traditional style sparrow with the specific color ribbon that coincides with the type of cancer she had in its beak… surrounded by budded and bloomed tulips and her name at the base… i think it took about two and a half or three hours to color, i don’t remember… definitely a fun one to tattoo… shame it had to be under these circumstances…

for the second appointment of the day i did another tribute piece… this one is a bit more unique being that it’s a zombie heart being held by two zombie hands… a banner that reads “mom” and the best part (in my opinion) is the TCB rosary!! i remember him telling me his mom was a huge Elvis fan… we outlined and shaded this piece about four or five months back and due to our schedules we couldn’t get to it until now. still, i think it turned out pretty well… definitely a rad dude to tattoo… we talked about comics and horror movies and vampires… NOT the gay twilight bullshit… hahaha anyway, like i said about the above piece, this was definitely a fun piece to do but unfortunate it had to be under these circumstances… what a great way to replace your old negative feelings with a new positive experience, yeah?

that’s all for this one…

gotta upload and write about what i did today now…

HS,

turk

so i colored these monsters on one of my oldest clients (in how long i’ve known her, not how old she is)… we did a whole sleeve on her other arm (pictures coming) but on this arm she has a bunch of random stuff. there was this “alley” of skin that was open and we couldn’t decide what to do… so i just took out some markers and sketched out these guys! i think they’re pretty awesome! we colored them in this time and there’s a dracula guy, too, that we’ll color in later… it’s on the inside of her arm, so she’s not looking forward to it, hahaha…

i also shaded this hourglass with wings… there are banners that read “time flies” but i only took a close up of this section… hard to get the whole thing as it wraps around his arm for part of it… besides, you’ll just have to wait until the thing is colored and i add the completed photo to the tattoo gallery. it’s gonna be sweet!

anyway, thanks for lookin! i have some drawings to do today so i will probably post pics of those tonight… and maybe some random shots from the studio? hmmm… guess you’ll have to wait and see…

HS,

turk