Just TeeJay's Blog

Tattoo Update – More Skulls than Usual

•May 31, 2015 • Leave a Comment

Was asked to make this little tattoo for a very special young lady’s first tattoo. We drew this on to her specifications and she did great. I suspect it won’t be long before she is looking to get another.

Figure drawing.

Practicing.

Nice to work in other mediums. Great to hang out with such driven and talented people. Another little tattoo for a wonderful young lady. A memorial/tribute piece for a Grandparent. Got some slightly better photos of Jean’s Heart locket tattoo healed up.

Covered up a Memorial Tattoo that I did around 1994 with the same sentiment – just larger. The lettering was too small in the original tattoo. Plus the piece was no where big enough for the size of his arm. Much better now and will hold up better with sun exposure.

Eric. Eric always comes up with fun stuff for me… and is completely understanding when I have brain lapses. Drew this the day of his appointment because I forgot what we were doing and drew the wrong thing.

Mostly healed photos of the background on Bernie’s leg. There will be more to come to fill in the leg further and add more color to this one so his legs are more balanced.

Rob’s second session on his Mountain Riding Unicyclist tattoo. The knight is healed here and what we got done on the dragon is all fresh.

Matthew’s last session and last tattoo before he and his family head for their Grand Adventures points West. I wish them all the best. There are lots of great people in Seattle.
This piece is based on the work of a woman who is on Deviant Art as Zarathus and on some other media s Static Creature. I don’t know what her name is. There were so many amazing details in the original art that I just couldn’t get into a tattoo this scale. I tried to get the overall feel in there – but still tried to pack as many details as possible. The staff was an addition from a drawing that Matthew did a long time ago. (High school maybe?)
Thank you for everything and I hope the Left Coast does right by you and your family.

Another shot at a healed photo of this Samurai Skull tattoo. Perhaps I would do better if the window wasn’t behind him. duh. Filler Skull and Cross bones tattoo. This was an impromptu choice based on a sign that Joey has in his work area. I do like doing stuff like this a lot – takes the trust of the client that those scribbles will turn out to be a nice tattoo. Healed photo of the Misfits (Crimson Ghost) skull. Started this nice little tattoo on Casey to tie in his sleeves. Obviously we have a bit to go yet on this one.

Short session to start on Ted’s chest. More details to come and her hand will be there also. Once that is finished there will be a companion piece for the other side and a small center piece. I’m leaning towards spider – but we will see what works best.

Very excited about this half sleeve for Justin. This is his first tattoo and he sat great. Can’t wait to work on this again. This one will actually extend on to his chest panel as well. Lots of fidldly bits and little details which will be tied in with great sunset colors. Stay tuned.

Thank you to everyone for your support and understanding with me after my last post. This week has been hard interspersed with horrible. Being home is hardest without him here. I’m sorry that I haven’t responded to all of you – but it is still super emotional for me to talk about and I don’t like to be that upset in public.

Posted in Figure Drawing, tattoo, TeeJay, White Tiger Tattoo
Tags: Cherry Blossom tattoo, cherry blossoms, cute giraffe tattoo, dragon tattoo, female jester tattoo, female joker tattoo, figure drawing, giraffe tattoo, heart locket tattoo, moth tattoo, moths tattoo, mountain unicycle tattoo, ouroboros tattoo, samurai skull tattoo, skull and cross bones tattoo, underwater tattoo

For the Love of Toby

•May 27, 2015 • 9 Comments

If you have spent much time with me you have heard about Toby already.

If you have not the short version is that Toby was a street urchin that I found hanging by his neck on a fence.

I was told not to expect him to live. (I actually didn’t think he was alive when I found him) He was malnourished, dehydrated and weighed less than a pound. I refused to believe that. I could not believe that the Universe would have let me find him there like that only to let him die on me afterwards.

He needed injections to get fluid into him. He was too weak to stand up or eat – but still ornery enough to try and hiss at anyone who tried to touch him. I had to pry his mouth open and put tuna juice on his tongue to get him to eat. When he was well enough to walk around I had to wash his bum for him after he used the box. (Teigan also helped with the kitten bathing.)

He was my kind of freak.

We bonded. I don’t expect you to understand how much. Suffice it to say that my head was Toby’s favorite place to be – and when he couldn’t swing that, my lap or my pillow would do in a pinch. He waited for me at the door every night after work. He supervised my drawings and homework. He walked through my paint palettes. When I went out of town he would pace the house and sometimes cry trying to figure out where I went. In the very very deepest darkest parts of my depression when I could convince myself that the whole world would be better off without me, I could never convince myself that Toby would be. I knew that I meant as much to him as he did to me and he would be lost without me.

He left last night. Suddenly. He had been sick.. He had two surgeries to remove lumps that turned out to be cancer. I thought we had another year or two together. Turns out that we did not. Paul and I were with him when he took his last breath and I held him all night last night. I am devastated beyond words.

I hope that everyone gets to experience this kind of unconditional love at some point in their life.

Posted in Uncategorized

Hell City / Wet Paint Project 2015

•May 4, 2015 • 2 Comments

Another Hell City has come and gone. I am super grateful to be able to attend as a part of the Wet Paint Project group.

I definitely look forward to the time painting, time spent with friends, being inspired and learning new things. I didn’t have any definite plans this year for anything that I wanted to paint for sure. So I brought a few empty canvases and one small painting that I had started previously.

I thought he looked a little bit like he was escaping a fire (too calmly) so I opted to tone down the background. Also I didn’t like the positioning of the further arm so I tried another position for that. Would like to go back into it again, but I think some of the problems have been corrected.

The AC Moore near the shop in Greece is closing, so they have a lot of things on sale. When I was in there poking around I had found these black canvases and decided to give them a go. Over all I like the idea of the dark starting point – but these particular ones were very poorly stretched. I wouldn’t buy these again – but will want to play more with starting on the dark.

Overall I am pretty happy with this one so far – would like to go back into it and even up the background and tweak some more things – but overall it’s going where I would like it to.

Saturday I started another one. Some things that I really like about it and some things that I couldn’t get comfortable with all day.

I quit working early on Saturday so I could attend a Wacom seminar that Guy Aitchison was teaching. Was a useful experience and I picked up some tips on shortcuts and some other ways to use photoshop that I knew how to do, but hadn’t tried in that particular application. It’s always nice to pick up new things.

The seminar ran longer than I thought it was going to – so by the time I got finished up I went to eat with Paul and decided not to return the paint room that night.

When I got back to the room and had some time to look at it, I realized I didn’t like the day’s painting nearly as much as the original sketch. I brought it into Procreate on the iPad and trying moving the head and body around a little bit and liked the effect better. Gave me something to shoot for.

Sunday morning we did a little bit more exploring in downtown Columbus. There are a lot of things that I really like about Columbus and it made me understand why people like to live in the city. I don’t think I will be moving any time soon, but I think next time we come out to Clolumbus I will try to stay a little longer.

I had thought about doing a painting on Sunday of something else from Alice in Wonderland. There were pansies growing all over the place and I thought it would be nice to use them for reference for the flowers that talk to Alice. As is turns out I didn’t, but it’s another idea to keep on the back burner and get back to.

Instead I started out Sunday by wiping a good chunk of what I had done on Saturday off of the canvas.

I’m happier with it, but it still doesn’t have the character that I am looking for in the face. I will keep playing with it – the overall positioning works for me now so the rest is detail stuff.

Hell City is one of if not the premier convention in the Country. There were amazing tattoos being made all weekend in every style imaginable from some of the world’s best tattoo artists. I saw some old friends and met some new ones. Sold some art work to some wonderful people. Learned some new things. Got reminded of some things I needed to be reminded of. Got invited to Venice. Found some inspiration. Started a couple of paintings that have good solid potential.

I am so honored to be able to be a part of this weekend and look forward to future events. Thanks to everyone who contributed to the this weekend being awesome.

Posted in Art, drawing, Oil painting, painting, TeeJay, Travel
Tags: Columbus, Flying critter, Hell City, Merbunny at night painting, The Wet Paint Project

Still Making Stuff

•April 30, 2015 • Leave a Comment

Paul and I are getting ready to leave for Hell City where I will be participating in the Wet Paint Project again. I realized that I still had a few photos I hadn’t posted from this week and didn’t want them to get lost in the Hell City post(s).

So here is some of what I have been up to.

Did another session on Chas’ arm. His has a theme. It involves skulls and hats 🙂 You would be surprised how many combinations of that we have come up with so far. Going to run out of room before we run out of ideas.

Bernie came in to have some filler work done on his leg. I did the other tattoos here and now it is time to add some brighter colors to balance out with the other leg. There is more to come on this one as well. Bernie takes great care of his tattoos and I should be able to get some better photos next session.

Doing everything last minute I realized that I didn’t have anything to give people that had the address for my prints on wood. It isn’t easy to find me on the site without the direct link. (which is here if you are interested) So I went off to Staple’s to try and find some of those little business cards that you can feed into your printer and then tear apart. I found these first and figured stickers are way more fun than cards anyhow. I was actually giddy realizing that I could make stickers of ANYTHING! This could get to be a problem. I do so love stickers.

Figure Drawing was decidedly meh this week. I wasn’t happy with anything – just parts… but parts is better than nothing. So I will continue to practice and perhaps someday I will feel like I know what I am doing with this (or at least find a medium that I like working with).

Off to finish packing and hit the road. Hope to see some of you in Columbus!!!

Posted in drawing, Figure Drawing, tattoo, TeeJay
Tags: charcoal, death's head moth, death's head moth tattoo, figure drawing, moth tattoo, samurai skull tattoo, skull tattoo

Tattoo Update April 24th, 2015

•April 22, 2015 • Leave a Comment

Sorry, just not feeling creative with titles.

I made this sun and moon piece for Miss Jessica. She had these all over her room when she was little. Her Grandma used to buy them for her. She opted to go with black and grey with just a touch of color for this tattoo. This piece is on the front of her shoulder and I really like the placement that she chose. It’s feminine and easy to conceal for work if she chooses.

I always like to do a second session on color portraits. There is tweaking and pushing and pulling that can help increase the contrast and tie the tattoo in better. Rachel was nice enough to come back in so I do a little tweaking on this one of her daughter as a sugar skull (and with purple hair… apparently her daughter reminds her periodically “but mommy, I have brown hair”) The hair needed a little more oomph and the pink on the shirt needed to be gone over. The only other thing I did was add a couple more eyelashes to her right eye.

Two days before Rachel’s appointment I had an appointment with someone else for their free second session on their color portrait. He chose to no call and no show. I am hoping that means that he is super thrilled with the way that it healed and didn’t think it could possibly look any better – but I am still disappointed. Even if it didn’t need anything at all it would have been nice to get healed photos. Such is life.

So again, thank you Rachel for coming in. It means a lot to me.

Katie had these little strawberries tattooed on her back a long time ago and didn’t feel that they suited her any longer. She said she felt like they looked like an ovaries diagram which I think was really harsh. They weren’t that bad. (I don’t know who made the original tattoo of the strawberries) All of her tattoos since have been either straight black and grey or black and grey with color highlights. So she asked me to design something for her that was asymmetrical, black work and more in keeping with her current tastes. This design could be very easily added on to and I would like to have a little moth in there for the bat to be watching.

Debbie and I have been working on this piece for quite a while and due to the changes in my scheduling she hasn’t been able to make it in for about 4 months. I’ve missed her and was excited to get back into this one.

and for perspective on the entire piece. Here are the photos from the last session. This tattoo now extends from the front of her right shoulder to the back of her left knee.

Skulls. I always say that I don’t get to make enough skull tattoos. Lately that has not been true. Lately I have seen a definite upswing in the skull requests. Especially from women. Honored to make this unusual “friend” tattoo for Melody yesterday. She and some girlfriends all work in radiology fields and all decided to get skull tattoos.

Now I am going to go spend some time contemplating the Universe and trying to figure out what exactly it is that makes me dizzy from time to time and if I am safe to drive 😦 There are definitely some weird situations that arise when one is self employed and can’t have someone else fill in for us at work.

Posted in tattoo, White Tiger Tattoo
Tags: color portrait tattoo, feminine skull tattoo, octopus tattoo, ornamental tattoo, ornate bat tattoo, skull butterfly and rosary tattoo, skull tattoo, sugar skull portrait tattoo, sun and moon tattoo

Going to be a Sleeve

•April 15, 2015 • Leave a Comment

Natasha is one of those folks who swore up and down that she wasn’t getting a sleeve. Up until pretty recently actually.

She just kept asking me to add things here and there to fill in the spaces. With this section she has finally come to terms with the whole thing. We added the magnolias and plum blossoms yesterday. There will be more to come to make it a more cohesive sleeve and tie everything in together – but I am happy with this piece and wanted to share it with you here since Instagram just doesn’t do it justice.

I would like to mention for anyone playing the home game… this would not make a good tattoo on it’s own. While the whites and light pinks have lots of contrast and stand out nicely here – they would not in 20 years. There is not enough contrast between them and the skin to stand the test of time.

This will be addressed with the background and may include strategic linework to make sure that the tattoo will be beautiful for years to come.

Posted in tattoo, TeeJay, White Tiger Tattoo
Tags: feminine tattoo sleeve, girlie sleeve tattoo, magnolia tattoo, magnolias, passion flower tattoo, plum blossom tattoo, plum blossoms

Frank Again

•April 11, 2015 • Leave a Comment

Frank hates getting tattooed about as much or more than I do. Despite that, he keeps coming back and letting me put some of my favorite pieces on him.

He’s even planning on going to Hell City this year to show some of them off. This arm isn’t quite finished, there will be more tie in work between this tattoo and the ones that Joey made on his upper arm – probably some more elements added and eventually brought down on to his hand more.

Got some almost decent photos all by myself this time and wanted to show off where it is at. There are also some more roses on the other side of the arm – but I didn’t get a clear photo of that part this time.

Thanks Frank for letting me make art on you 🙂

I did post this on Instagram, but the crop really didn’t do it justice.

Posted in ny, rochester, tattoo, TeeJay, White Tiger Tattoo
Tags: centipede tattoo, color realism tattoo, skull tattoo, tattoo, woman's face tattoo

In a Black and Grey sort of way

•April 10, 2015 • Leave a Comment

No idea why, but most everything I have been doing lately (outside of medical work) has been in grey tones. Here is some more of them.

Posted in Figure Drawing, tattoo
Tags: 3d lightswitch tattoo, dandelion tattoo, demon in a box, feminine tattoo, heart and key tattoo, Jesus tattoo

Toe Beans!!!

•April 1, 2015 • 1 Comment

I don’t normally post tattoos when they are this early in the process – but I am super excited about this piece.

Kitties!

Normally with cover-ups people are hesitant to go any bigger than the existing piece. This client was super cooperative and actually has decided to go bigger later.

The colors on these kitties are based on her own beloved felines. The orange fluffy one is yet to be colored (obviously) and there will be a third kitty (an adorable tabby) to be added later.

Anyhow, more photos later when she comes back in…

Posted in tattoo, White Tiger Tattoo
Tags: cat lady, cat tattoo, cat tattoo sleeve, kitties, kitty tattoo, tattoo cover-up.

Moving into Spring

•March 31, 2015 • Leave a Comment

I try to focus on what I enjoy about every season and every place that I wind up. This year it really seem like a lot of people are having a particularly hard time with the winter months. Maybe I am just noticing it more this year. Anyhow, if you are one of them….hang in there for a little while longer. Spring is coming. The birds are back, the flowers are starting to come out of the ground and soon we will be fully released from Winter’s grasp.

We are about finished with the Battle of Maldon sleeve. One more session to tighten some things up and add a few more (very light) background elements and this will be another one for the history books.

This was the last sitting for the lower portions of both of John’s arms. I neglected to get photos of the work on his left arm (not sure how that happened) – but will be sure to get both of them (all the way up) when he come back in for healed photos. There is still some stencil hanging around in this picture. So the random purple smear will not be there when everything is said and done.

Figure Drawing. Made it this week and last week. I would have been starting painting class this Monday also – but for a few personal reasons have decided to skip out on this session. All the more reason I have to try and make it to every single Figure Drawing session. For both of these weeks I have gone back to using pencils. I’m more comfortable with them anyhow and I have yet to get the hang of charcoal. While I love the way it looks, I still feel like I am trying to render with a limp rodent. There is no flow or coordination at all. I’ll get back to it – but right now I have enough aggravation in my life. I don’t need to add to it.

(there is charcoal in this one… and not surprisingly, I don’t really like it)

Laurie came in for her first tattoo. She has been in the shop so many times with other people supporting their tattoo experiences it was great to finally be able to make one for her as well. She had plans for the next one before we even got started with this one.

So sometimes clients come in with ideas that are just so awesome I am afraid that I won’t be able to do them justice. This is one of those cases. Rob rides mountain unicycles. Yes, you read that right. Not mountain biking, mountain unicycling. I can not begin to fathom the coordination involved in that. I have looked it up on youtube and am completely 100% convinced this is something that I never ever intend to try. That being said, I think it is beyond awesome that there are people out there doing it.

This is the first session. The knight will be facing off a large dragon that will be on his chest and torso.

So there you go, mountain unicycling knight facing a dragon. Pretty happy with it 🙂

Starting another one tonight that I am excited about as well.

It’s a good day. Hope you are enjoying some aspect of it also.

Posted in Art, drawing, Figure Drawing, tattoo, TeeJay
Tags: battle of Maldon, Battle of Maldon tattoo, figure drawing, figure study, girlie tattoo, hummingbird tattoo, mountain unicycle knight tattoo, mountain unicycle tattoo, unicycle tattoo