Today commenced the 3 day "TATTOO EXPO!" And it was awesome to say the least. So many tattoo artists from around the world, Japan, UK, USA, Belgium, NZ etc... I must have spent 3 hours there at least and I think I walked around the entire Hall about 7 times. I'd do my first lap and people were just sitting to get their tattoo stenciled, and then my second lap, the artist would actually be drawing their tattoos on, 3rd lap they'd be tattooing the piece and so on and I saw some of the craziest tattoos you have ever seen. And when I say crazy, I mean crazy as in 'Can't-believe-I'm-witnessing-this-Awesomeness' crazy. It was far beyond inspiring to be there.
I even saw this Tongan tatooist by the name of Carl Cocker who is one-part of the duo that runs KALIA TATTOOS. He was in the middle of tattooing somebody so i left him alone lol.
There were two Japanese stalls that stood out for me. One was an Artist by the name of Masa-Shi who also had another two tatooists tattooing simultaneously at his station. Masa-Shi runs the IV ETERNITY TATTOO parlour in Japan. And the other one was ECCENTRIC SUPER TATTOO lol. I watched Sabado as he drew his design freehand onto his clients abdomen, outlined it with a darker colour and then when I came back round to his stall he was already in the middle of tattooing his piece.
But there was one small stall that I saw that killed me because I wanted to get a tattoo from them SOOO friggin' badly. It was an Indonesian artist by the name of Durga with his shop of the same name. I was going through his tattoo portfolio and I just died. There were heaps of crazy-awesome tattoo artists at the expo with mad skill but I just thought that this was for me. It's funny, recently I've been drawing this hindu goddess by the name of Durga who has 10 arms and in each hand she has a different weapon of some sort and a lotus. She's considered to be like this warrior aspect of the divine mother while manifesting fearlessness and patience and a sense of humour lol. And I've been drawing non stop interpretations of this goddess and then I run into a tattooist of the same name - coincidence? I think so? (not)... Another funny thing is, He did alot of tattoos of this elephant deity called Ganesha, which just so happens to be the child of Durga.
Anyways, back to the expo. What can I say, I thought it was awesome. There were all different stores there, clothes-tattoo magazines-tattoo healing creams/ointments-henna tattoos and these:
This expo runs until this Sunday the 8th so Don't Miss Out. Here are some of the links:
I've added a few pages that I've scanned from my sketchbook onto my Myspace page... It's pretty much where most of my work is at the moment.
