Just TeeJay's Blog

Detroit Motor City Expo 2010

•March 3, 2010 • Leave a Comment

Some pictures from this weekend:

Did this entire piece on Friday. Nice way to start out the weekend. She sat great and as of today said that it is almost finished peeling.

Mike Skiver posing for some photographer guy

hanging out in the booth with Chris Longo

John hard at work (while I was goofing off apparently)

My last tattoo for the weekend – pretty cool little worm

Lots of pictures of Paul and John (since I had the camera)

On the way home I wanted to stop at the Joseph Brant museum…. as it turns out they are closed on Mondays (go figure). Maybe next time….

All in all it was a great show. Did a bunch of tattoos, saw a bunch of old friends, met a few new ones, won a new tattoo machine in a raffle, got invited to do a guest spot, got some new inks, got some mini canvases for the pint size paintings, and had a great dinner at Fishbones after it was all over. Only downside was the hotel bill – thinking that next year I either need to lay off the room service or stay somewhere else (ouch!)… but all worth it and I’ll definitely be back next year.

Posted in Art, tattoo
Tags: Chris Longo, Detroit, John Shea, Motor City Tattoo Expo, Paul Dill, tattoo, tattoos, teejay

Progression of a design

•February 21, 2010 • 1 Comment

Here is a progression of a design from concept to completion.

James had emailled me regarding some fix up work that he wanted to have done. Since the amount of work needed was going to be less than my minimum sit fee, I asked him if he had any other tattoos that he was thinking of getting in the near future. Suggesting that it would be potentially more cost effective to have them both done at the same time. We arranged a consultation time that worked for both of us.

On the day of the consult James brought in this image as a starting point:

We talked about what had drawn him to this image and what it represented to him and came up with this rough concept sketch of what I would like to do with it:

For his appointment I drew up a more finalized version of image and the line drawings. This is what I showed James when he arrived for his appointment:

Both happy with the concept drawings we went ahead with the tattoo:

Everything came out great (except for the photographs… not doing well with the new camera) and I am hoping to follow this up with healed photos at some time in the future.

Posted in Art, tattoo
Tags: concept, lotus, progression, shoulder, tattoo

New Camera

•February 17, 2010 • Leave a Comment

The new camera arrived today. Not what I thought it was going to be… but it looks like it should work out fine. Here’s what I made today. If she sits again next time like she did today we should finish up next time.

Posted in Art, tattoo
Tags: diver down, in progress, scuba, tattoo, tattoos, teejay, underwater, White Tiger Tattoo

Changes to My Scheduling

•February 15, 2010 • 16 Comments

For some time now I have been feeling overwhelmed. I have tried in the past to cut back on the number of new projects that I am taking on and while it has helped some…. the time has come to do something a bit more drastic.

I apologize in advance to any who may feel slighted. I am not judging you or your tattoo. I am not telling you that there is anything wrong with the style of tattoo that you would like.

What I am doing is cutting back on the projects that I am doing and focusing on a smaller variety of tattoos.

So for the foreseeable future I will be doing:

Portraits and Realistic Work

Custom Celtic Designs

Figurative, Pin-up and Fairies

No Outline Color & Black and Grey Work

Medical Tattooing (Reconstructive)

continuing work on existing clients

I will not be doing:

Reworks and Cover-Ups

Flash

Regular “outline” Tattoos

Small Single Point Tattoos

Japanese style Work

Text or Word based designs

Tribal (still)

Any tattoo pulled off of an existing tattoo on the internet

Anything that is not open for artistic interpretation or improvement

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me and ask. There are a whole bunch of exceptionally talented artists at both of the shops. The time has come for me to step back on my tattooing and pass more projects along to them.

Posted in tattoo
Tags: artist, custom tattooing, tattoo, tattoos, teejay, White Tiger Tattoo

Used to be Birds

•February 14, 2010 • 1 Comment

Still no camera yet (it is in transit). So while I’m waiting for the studio to reach a habitable temperature….

Here’s some dead birds.

Posted in Art
Tags: bird, birds, dead, photographs, photography, photoshop

The Yellow Bird

•February 10, 2010 • Leave a Comment

Here is the photo that I took of the yellow bird. It finishes up the open cage tattoo that I posted on February 4th.

From here on out there won’t be any pictures at all for a little while as I dropped my camera last night. I was able to download the pictures that I took yesterday, but can not take any new ones.

Posted in Art, tattoo
Tags: bird, cage, camera, freedom, tattoo

Done Early Today

•February 9, 2010 • 1 Comment

I finished one of the partially done tattoos from an earlier post. I would like to put up a picture for you to see… but this computer doesn’t talk to my camera. So since I have a bit of time on my hands…. here is the color rough for the bird that I did today

and the line work for part of the tattoo that I will be working on tomorrow:

They actually would work together as well.

Posted in Art, tattoo
Tags: bird, cat, color rough, drawing, line art, tattoo

A Couple More “In Progress”

•February 8, 2010 • 2 Comments

Worked on a couple of pieces on Friday and Saturday that are going to be really cool when they are finished (well, they’re cool now, but not as nice as they will be finished). So here is a sneak peak at some upcoming work!