busy busy

 So these aren't in the right order, but I'll just go down the line as per usual.

This was a walkin at No Ka Oi a few days ago... Bad Religion!

 I tattooed these in my last post... They just sent me a photo of them together! So cute!

 This was a man who found me via interwebs and asked me to give him his first tattoo... a memorial for someone special he lost. This one wasn't too big and he was a good sport getting this done!

 This is on one of my regulars... I've tattooed him every week or every other week since I got back in town from Hawaii... I think we have one more session left or two to do the stars and dots fill in and add a few small pieces in the empty spots.

 I wish I had a before picture of this one... he came in with the logos already there, for the exception of the lower right roman numerals... needless to say everything was pretty faded and whatnot so I went ahead and freshened up the whole thing.

 This is the half of a best friend tattoo that walked in on saturday in the city. I didn't attach the other picture but they got the same thing...obviously. gotta love cupcakes!

 This was a walkin as well... she came in with this outlined already...

 I know this photo is horrible and dark BUT we colored in the one flower... this was a difficult one, this was my first squirmer... go me!

 Another fun walkin! Buddha! he brought in the image... hope to do more like this!

 Another walkin at the end of the night saturday... Had fun with this one... and he was a cool dude. On a side note, lonestar is supposed to have 2 r's in his case :)

 This was a walkin on sunday at the Portside studio... this was his first one also.

 This is Heather's calf! She was the cherry blossom branch on the foot from a while back. Well she gave me some ideas to go from and I'm going to have so much fun with this piece! We only did the outline for now, but in a few weeks we will have it filled in.

Have some fun stuff lined up so I'll keep you all posted

The Letter of the Law: Laws for Lettering and Tattoos

I'm taking the time to blog about all text tattoos due to the overwhelming amount of lettering we're doing. We often turn down requests for massive amounts of type & I wanted to spell out our very concrete reason as to why that is. This isn't to discourage anyone from getting tattooed, but rather to look at the broad picture & to help make better tattoo choices.

I realize its a current fad to get scads of text, we see it all the time. And it drives us crazy. Below are bullet points of why.

• TEXT TATTOOS DESTROY THE ART OF TYPOGRAPHY: Just like every other art form, typography has its own rules & limitations. Before computers loaded with hundreds of fonts downloaded for free, typography was a specialized profession, & typographers were very proud crafters of type. Good type is readable because of weight, form, size, leading, tracking, & kerning. Its designed to be read on flat surfaces, with maximum contrast between very dark lettering & very light grounds. 

You, dear tattoo client, are not flat white paper. You're a series of interlocking muscle bands, & you're covered with skin that is anything but white. You are cylindrical, almost every part of you body is long & rounded. But its not rounded evenly, like a pole, each surface is tapered, being much wider at some points & narrower at others. You're also topographical, with some points rising & dipping dramatically. On top of all that, you're also flexible, so unless you've been stuffed by an expert taxidermist, the minute you move, you will morph into even more elastic contorted shapes. When you try to apply text to this living organic medium, the lines waver, the letter size changes, the spacing inside the letter closes up, the spacing between the letters & between the words run together. It looks like crap. And Guttenberg spins in his grave. 

This is why no one has invented billboards for telephone poles or railings, because no one could read it. 

• TEXT TATTOOS FIGHT ANATOMY: The best tattoos, as the Japanese knew hundreds of years ago, work with the body, not fight against it. That's why they would design full sleeves & body suits with total saturation, & to flow with the muscle groups. This is also why some Asian art may seem two dimensional on paper, but the same art on a body springs to life. Your flesh adds the missing third dimension, & its graphic nature is powerful enough to be seen from across the room. Strong. Powerful. Classic. 

Text does the opposite of this. It needs negative space in order to be legible, & since it's read in lines left to right, it needs to be straight, slicing up all that flowing anatomy into ribbons, graphically speaking. It becomes a visual road block, destroying your natural curves. This is why you don't see straight lines or geometric shapes in tattoo flash, every flat surface gets twisted, corkscrewed, & warped. That's not because of all the acid we did in college, its to conform our art with the flow of your physique. If type is snaked along the lines with the muscles, it trashes the leading, & it quickly becomes illegible, & defeats the whole point of getting text. 

• TEXT TATTOOS FIGHT GOOD TATTOOING: Good tattoos use a lot of graphic tricks to fight the fact that tattoos are on a curvy stretchy colored surface that will age for up to sixty to eighty years. Good placement (filling up the spot on the body the right way), design (using symbols & graphic tools to maximize an illustrated message), layout (using the given space to its fullest potential), full contrast (going from 100% black to 100% white), color theory (using a full chroma range & complimenting colors for maximum effects) , & elaborate textures are used to create readable, powerful forms the eye instantly recognizes. Text has none of these tools, it takes every one of these tools out of the hands of the artist. 

At the end of the day, type, no matter how cool the font, is really just skinny tribal, & look how cool all those 80's tribal armbands turned out to be. 

I had a recent client request map coordinates in his chosen font, which I was happy to do, but before his appointment, he complained that the art was 'lacking dimension' & that I should 'work my magic' to prevent this. Well, the fact that I was expelled from Hogwarts has nothing to do with the fact that there is no magic to be worked. Map coordinates are basically a lost algebra problem, its simply a series of numbers & letters, & there isn't anything that's going to change its static, flat, lifeless nature.

• TEXT TATTOOS EAT UP A LOT OF SKIN: A simple phrase or saying of three or four sentences needs a lot of room to fit on you, & be large enough for us to tattoo properly. In order to read something like that, you need to use up an entire pec, or a quarter of your back. That's some serious real estate, tattoo-wise. This is the kind of skin that could be used for the kind of award winning masterpieces that collectors wish they still had open skin for. Instead its now filled up with an old grocery list. Large body surfaces look best with large imagery that fills up every pore of skin, not piled up with dozens of tiny words that leaves the skin 90% empty. 

• TEXT TATTOOS COCK BLOCK OTHER TATTOOS: Well done, well placed tattoos lend themselves to be added on to at later times easily & artistically. Text tattoos do not. This will drive you crazy when you're getting this amazing sleeve done by a master, & then it has to end because years before you wrapped your stereo instructions around the best part of your arm. Trust us, every day we're trying to help people get new tattoos, & have used all the prime cut spots for initials & names, & man, they are not happy. 

• THERE'S NO GALLERY OPENINGS FOR FONTS: No one flies to Paris to visit the amazing lettering exhibit at the Louvre. No one buys an Ozzy t shirt because its a whole shirt full of Helvetica. No one covers their bedroom with liner notes. No one buys an album because of the great spelling on the cover. No one ever got wasted, turned on the black lights, & screamed, 'Damn! Nice kerning!' No one ever laid back looking at clouds in the sky & said, 'Palatino Bold Italic!' The attraction here is art. Art hangs in museums, covers chapel ceilings, jumps off a car or a bus, screams at you from roadside billboards, backs up bands at concerts, sells albums, books, cars, &, well, everything, & is itself sold for millions, collected by rich slobs, & is stolen in famous art heists.

If art screams, text mumbles.

We tell people this all the time. One of the things we used to do was design for the music industry, posters, shirts, album covers,... often we would read the lyrics & listen to the sounds, & create art based on what they were saying, meant, or made us feel. Do the same & you'll be far happier than if you spelled those lyrics out. Unless your mother is the Amazon rain forest & your father is a paper mill. 

No one ever heard of a famous bumper sticker robbery. Which would you rather be, a Picasso, or a post it note? 

• ART IS SUBJECTIVE, TEXT IS NOT: One of the magical things about a good tattoo is that its timeless. 

I know I'm going to sound like a crotchety old fuck for this one, but I am, & kids, you're going to change. As you get older, you will change a lot. And just when you get used to that new person, you'll do it again. This is a good thing. I hope that your life is full & adventurous, & challenges in ways that melts you down & re-crafts you into a strong kickass person the way a master swordmaker folds steel into a katana. No matter who you are at whichever point in time you're currently residing, your tattoo that once meant one thing to you when you got it, now can offer a different interpretation. The same goes for any number of people viewing your tattoo, they will each see something different. A good tattoo will grow with you. 

Text is just about the opposite of this. Words, by their very existence, define. Its why we invented them. Text will lock you in & be far less mercurial than art. There is little to no room for you to play the part of interpreter. Or, if a phrase does offer a number of different meanings, it usually is some gimmicky terrible word play or badly written inspirational saying that belongs on a doily knitted by your grandma, not engraved on your skin. And that definite meaning is not going to travel with you into the future, not the same way fine art does. 

• NO ONE WANTS TO READ YOU: There's been hundreds of times I've seen tattoos that blew my mind, either by how well they were applied, or because of the incredible idea, or both. And I've been sideswiped with that terrible feeling of, man, I wish that was on me, or I wish I had thought of that. (Stealing other people's incredibly well thought out tattoos is criminal, a topic for another blog,...) Never once have I ever read a tattoo that had anywhere near that level of impact. Think about how many people refuse to watch foreign films because they "don't want to READ a movie!" I hate that,... but, in a way, they're right,... reading the dialogue that is also being spoken takes you out of the moment & fights the medium its in. So does trying to read a person, especially as you try to follow along the curves & bends & decipher small letters hiding away in folds & hollows,... it can be a lot of work, & if the payoff is only some trite bumper sticker verbage, then you have some serious tattoo fail.

• YOU FAILED ENGLISH: A lot of people begin their tattoo consultation with, 'Well, I'm no artist, but,...'. And then they bow to our expertise in taking their ideas to levels they didn't think were possible. Not one person ever came in & said, 'Well, I'm no writer,...'. Why not? A vast majority of the requests we get are things written so badly you'd be held back in the third grade for ten years if it was homework instead of a tattoo. Terrible grammar, broken sentences, redundant word usage,... things that should never be on paper, let alone your body. There are plenty of things we will not tattoo, like all white ink tattoos, UV tattoos, or amateur scribblings. It only makes sense that we'd apply the same ethics to screwed up language. Don't ask us to make your English teacher cry. 

Example: I had a girl come in who wanted Lil Wayne lyrics. Now, his writing style is perfect,... for Lil Wayne. Its meant to be shouted from stage at high volumes by him, with everything he represents, backed by his music, in context. And that's great. But as far as grammar is concerned? Its not just a crime, its a homicide.  C'mon now!

• REMEMBER 'A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS'?: Why pay $500 for fifty words when you can get a THOUSAND for the same price? Its just smart economics! 

This would be a good time to talk about adding text to designs. Keep in mind, you're not a t shirt. If the design is praying hands, in front of a cross, with a crown of thorns, wrapped in rosary beads, that also have another cross, with a dove with an olive branch, & a halo, & shining strata & nimbus,... do you REALLY need to add the word 'Faith' to that? You're kinda already beating that point to death there with that Bible bookstore cluster already. Its about as helpful as adding the word 'Tattoo'. Art speaks louder than words, friends. Only add text to a design if it adds, enhances, or totally changes the meaning. Otherwise get out of the way of the art! 

• AMBIGRAMS: SEE ALL THE ABOVE: Ambigrams are words drawn in such a way that they are words even when flipped upside down, sometimes the same word, sometimes another word. People feel they are terribly clever when the two words are antonyms, like the wide spread ambigram that reads LIFE one way, & DEATH when inverted. But graphically speaking, they're the worst of everything I've just been explaining compounded into one big typographical nightmare. So much liberty has to be taken in order to morph the letters into other letters, they're rarely if ever legible at all. And nothing says bad art louder than a visual that needs you to stop & explain what people are looking at & can't read. 

• WE KNOW, ITS CHEAPER: Of course it's cheaper, it's only squiggly lines. But I wouldn't tattoo just lines on you, I would explain that without shading & color, it will look weak, incomplete, an empty coloring book. And that's what we see with a text based tattoo. A budget is a terrible reason to dictate weak tattoo art. Our tattoos are going to be around for a lot longer than your current income level, trust us. Especially when you quit drinking & smoking, & not in a career that  requires name tags. 

• TATTOOING IS OLDER THAN WRITING: This point is a petty matter of pride, but archaeologically speaking, its true. Tattoos are pre-historic. Older than written languages. It could easily be argued that art is a more immediate & powerful communicator than text. Which is why, for thousands of years & hundreds of cultures, tattoos have always centered around visual imagery, not lettering. Or, maybe it's just that tattoo artists in 2900 BC couldn't spell "Bashanhavothjair". Either way,... 

In conclusion,... 

• WE'RE NOT HATING ON TEXT: This is not an attack against lettering. Its an attack against an Internet filled with really really bad tattoos, tattoos that try to make their way into our reputable studio. http://ugliesttattoos.failblog.org/. I would've been a lousy poster artist if not for text, posters are supposed to explain who, when & where. But I never created a poster for any band that was ONLY text. There are plenty of tattoos that have text attached to them that are killer,... Sailor Jerry's famous 'Love Thy Neighbor', 'Poison', 'Man's Ruin', or 'Stewed, Screwed & Tattooed'. Text is fine in brief, powerful bursts, like Born To Lose, Bad Luck, F.T.W. or F.S.S.F. Or on knuckle tattoos, in an eight letter combo. Text tattoos like this work because they fit into what makes good tattoos, they fit on the body part, & are strong ideas that make their point fast & quick. Your English teacher's advice of K.I.S.S., Keep It Simple, Stupid, speaks volumes here. 

The preamble to the US Constitution is NOT a good choice. And we get requests like this every day. If you're tattoo idea is falling into a number of the above criteria, we're going to refuse to do it. We will explain why, of course. And we're happy to try to guide you into taking your idea & translating it into a graphic visual, or a visual graphic. We can do some amazing things with tattooing, but there are still some limits. 

Below, I'm including a series of photos that illustrate my points. I would give credit to the artists, but sadly none was given in the various corners of the Internets© that I found them. 

Great curves, nicely tattooed,... & I still can't read half of it. Imagine how strong this would have been if she had just gone with the images,... 

Like a business card printed on a billboard,...

The 'Wicked' tattoo totally lives up to its name, but with all this fine art on a really fine canvas, why the full menu on the thigh? 

The last place my eye travels to on this photo is the largest part of her body, dead center in the middle of her back. Almost any image at that size would have blown you away,... 

A full forearm, & I still can't read it! (Yes, it's in Italian,... but if I have to ask 'Is that an N or a W?' more than once, I'm out!)

Good idea,... on paper. But you can see what I mean, we're not paper,... the body makes this design even harder to read than it needs to be. Plus imagine this much skin in the hands of a master artist,...

Oh good Lord. Never mind about the worst use of negative space ever. Look how his muscles twist those lines like a Dr. Seuss drawing,... Apologies, Mr. Ashton,... 

Not a lot of type, & still, the letters run together, are different heights, & slope right off the arm. And, is strangely justified to the left margin, which she doesn't have! 

Weird paradox,... as the well done 'Fear God' is strong on the clavicles, but although tattooed clean, the rest is again strangely laid out with bizarre sentence breaks. And curves away from being readable as its sucked into the armpit. And kills a whole pec on lettering small enough to make me fetch my reading glasses. 

Great work, great flow, fun looking stuff, on an even better looking girl, & then bam, right off the road into a railing of static text on her curvy calf. Look how much nicer the other leg is. 

This artist is clearly decent, but even still, under this kind of onslaught, we still have issues with the letters bouncing around at different heights, letters stretching & squashing, strange sentence layouts, & lines flowing in & out of defined abs. Note how little you notice it happening to the IMAGE right next to it, even though the image is doing the exact same thing,... its just so much less noticeable.

Cleanly tattooed, but again, look how the entire thing folds up. And look at the acres of skin it took to get there,... 

Ditto times 1000. God's perfect curves, lanced by strangely justified sentences, tiny fonts,  & rows of skin cutting lines,... she could have been the Birth of Venus, now's she a Chinese take out menu. *sigh*

Again, all photos used for educational purposes. 

Cut & paste this article as you see fit.

Here's to great tattooing! 

Progress For 2012 So Far

Hey guys! I haven't updated this in a long while so I thought I would share some of what I've been up to with you all. 

First off, I got married finally! To my beautiful wife Elise :) 

Work has been good, with loads of great new customers and friends to add to the list. I've also taken up painting in an effort to understand more about what I do as an artist and to progress to bigger and better tattooing. It has been very fun and challenging so far and I am on my way to completing my first proper oil painting, which we will get to later in this post... 

Any way thanks for looking, here's a bit about my latest tattoo work.

This piece was done on an art student from Auckland, She sat for six hours and we managed to pretty much wrap it up in one go. The image was an old painting we had agreed on for the artwork, which I then edited in Photo Shop to get the colors we wanted, simply by playing with the "color levels". This is a great way to work in my opinion as there are so many variations you can choose from.

This piece is a cover up of a fairly gnarly scar the customer had on his arm. It was a very challenging piece but we were both more than happy with the outcome. The scarred skin had practically no pigment in it which made for some super white highlights. On the other hand the black was tricky to get in there nicely but we did get there.

Aiden's front is all but finished now too! This was fun as hell to do, he sat like a rock too, which made things easy :)

I tattooed this on Kieran Keat, the new apprentice at Blue Lotus Tattoo, a couple of weeks back. Its a rad wee piece and his choice of placement was really cool! 

Check out some of his art on the Blue Lotus facebook page if you get a chance- http://www.facebook.com/pages/Blue-Lotus-Tattoo-Studio/164632653569987?ref=ts

Here's my painting so far. The beak and just under it I am happy with, but the rest is a work in progress.. 

In this photo is a SHIT TON of new Alla Prima Inks!!! Along with mine and Clint Jones's sweet Marv Learning Machines.

http://www.facebook.com/allaprimaink

**Note my penis dragon on the wall.. Watch this space for some serious developments in the penis dragon area**

This is a new sleeve I am working on. A statue witch depicts Perseus holding Medusa's decapitated head up while standing on her corpse.. Brutal! Next session we will be doing Perseus's Pegasus in the back ground. I cant wait, I haven't done a tattoo of a horse yet that I can think of.  

Second session on this piece I am doing om my wife's arm. Really stoked with it so far :) the photo does not do this justice.

And finally, I started this hammer head on an awesome new customer the other day. Four hours so far on his guts, didn't phase him one bit! We are looking at doing some more sharks in the back ground soon. I used Alla Prima Inks "Sea Foam" in this piece, mixed with some black to get that dirty tinge.

Well I hope that was insightful and enjoyable to read. If you have any questions or booking enquiries don't hesitate to contact me via email: mattjordantattoo@gmail.com.

Matt Jordan.

moving on

 So I haven't had a chance to post anything since I got back to Philly.... Gonna make this quick.

Working at No Ka Oi today... had a newly engaged couple come get matching wishbones...kinda cute idea right?

 So we finally finished the deer skull... One more mini session to go for small touchups however I'm stoked about how it came out. Had alot of fun with the antlers and got to experiment some more...

The 19 was pretty fun too. It was his first tattoo and he did really well. this image is from a Stephen King novel. I liked tattooing this and hope to see him back soon for a healed pic....

 A walk in at the NJ shop.... star action!

 Added onto Ken's arm the other day, we've been slowly adding designs to fill up his arm, we're almost there!! Farther down on this post there's a horse design that also is on his arm. Loving roses lately!

 Just about done Steve's arm. My first poly.

 Walkin at NJ the other day. Still getting better at this area... so far its my least favorite to tattoo!

An old friend from college came by last week and I got to tattoo this on her! Very stoked to finally tattoo someone that has sort of watched me grow from the beginning. Kudos to Nik for taking one for the team for me!!!! You rule!


Until next time....

TATTOO MACHINE SEMINAR - MONTERREY NL. MEXICO MAR. 16, 2012

TATTOO MACHINE SEMINAR -
PRODUCED BY GODOY MACHINES
AND SUPER FLY TATTOO.

IN SPANISH...

SKINNED ALIVE - A FILM BY BART SARIC - A 'SKATER MADE' FILM

Art Godoy-Bart Saric-Steve Godoy

"It was sometime in 2002, I was busy producing art and skateboarding films. I had just finished a unique skateboard lifestyle film, called “DAZE IN THE LIFE“. In that film I edited a part featuring Eric Dressen skateboarding. The segment follows him to a late night tattoo spot in Los Angeles, where he gets a calf piece by Clay Decker. The films chapter was well received. The details of the tattoo process were visually exposed through the artist’s eye without losing the cultural integrity.

One day not too long after, a dvd sales manager named Tom Allen, approached me to create a tattoo-inspired movie with skateboarding. Kind of like what I did in “DAZE IN THE LIFE”, but full-length. He worked for a distributor that carried my film.

It was pretty much a no brainer. I grew up in the era that dawned the birth of this fusion before anything like that was considered cool at school. You were pretty much a fool. It was taboo in the 1970’s -mid 1980’s for surfers or skateboarders to sport big tatt’s. An outlaw’s detail, if you will.

Tough people had tattoos, back then. People kicking the shit out of other people, shooting them with guns, over tattoos. I’d seen a few things “Pop-Off” while growing up in Los Angeles, as an artist that skateboards and surfs. Expressionist perspectives became clear on the streets. These sub-cultures, along with the music, naturally merged and eventually influenced the way of the lifestyles. Art and sport, a hybrid culture bound only by the limits of the individual’s imagination. All it’s own. Filled with rich and colorful characters.

Originally, I wanted to name the project, “Scarred For Life”. But, a skateboard book already had this title. That’s when Tom offered up the title “Skinned Alive”. Now, there was an older B-type horror movie with the same title. But this project was completely different. It was a documentary based on reality. Professional skateboarding and tattooing unveiled !

All I know is, that if I were committed to diving into these 2 highly respected and diverse lifestyles, I did NOT want to BULLSHIT ! That was my job as a filmmaker.

Bring out the grit and the gristle. The love and the passion that came along with those that pioneered it. It had to star those that were at the forefront of this revolution. This project would not be done without Art and Steve Godoy in it, period.

They are the catalyst in the stories and godfathers to it’s bastard style. Fred Smith, a partner in crime, with their disciples Jason Jessee and Bill Danforth. We needed to feature some of the O.G.’s like Mark Mahoney, Danny Romo and Tim Hendricks, who’ve been slinging the ink to these guys. And those Pro’s that were influenced soon after, Eric Dressen, Jesse Martinez, Neil Heddings and Kyle Yanagimoto.

What “SKINNED ALIVE” did NOT need to be was the saturated and imitated aftermath of mainstream fashion. This was the moment I realized I had to make this film before someone else made it with the wrong people in it. Authenticity is a natural and essential quality in good documentary films. Something that translates with the subject’s in this film. If anyone has the jurisdiction to discuss and educate us about the history and interrelationships of these professional lifestyles, it’s this cast.

They are legend, the footage is classic and the interviews are candid. The editing is colorful and the actions very real. It is a quintessential, first and definitive film of its kind. Check it out ! You won’t be disappointed."

-- Bart Saric 01/11/12