Thank you very much to be part of this book
http://www.monsa.com/en/

London!

Ok, yeah, it may be kind of last minute, as we're leaving tomorrow, but here's that preview i promised you!
Allan has been working lots of late nights to finish these sheets for the convention, so we hope you'll like them.
We will bring his flash from last year too, so whatever he didn't get to tattoo last year is still available too.
There may also be some originals for sale, so come by the booth and check them out.

Enjoy, and see you at the convention!

Uncle Allan London 2013 Flash

Uncle Allan London 2013 Flash

Uncle Allan London 2013 Flash

Some stuff i´ve done last week

Some stuff i did last week

Paradise Tattoo Gathering, III

I flew out to Colorado last week to work at Tribal Rites with Curtis Burgess and Ben Merrell in Fort Collins, 

and then we drove together up to Keystone, CO for the third Paradise Tattoo Gathering

(but only the second time it's been in Colorado).

I'm super jealous of the working relationship those two guys have, 

they really feed off of each other, 

and push each other further, 

while still keeping their unique style. 

I was really inspired being at that shop, 

and I got to do some fun tattoos, 

and also got a tattoo from Curtis as well. 

It's not done, yet, 

so it looks like I'll have to visit again soon. 

The convention was pretty great.

I was super busy and did 4 tattoos in the three days.

Here's two of them, 

I haven't even unpacked or found all the photos I took, 

but I am hoping there are more. 

Thanks to Tribal Rites for having me, 

for Curtis and Ben, and their families for hosting me, 

and to all the people who put on the Paradise show, 

I appreciate all your support tons and tons. 

Some Cover Up from today

Seppuku Tattoo wants YOU!

Ohayo gozaimasu Seppuku Ronin! I apologize for the lack of blogging, but the studio has been consistently slammed. We have been to two Hell City Conventions, a weekend of tattoo seminars, a paint jam at Off The Map, Ali was in Switzerland getting tattooed by Filip Leu, and a host of other events that have kept us all spinning and jet lagged.

I'm bumping my blogs about lettering tattoos and tattoo TV shows, give them a read.

http://seppukutattoo.blogspot.com/2012/02/letter-of-law-laws-for-lettering-and.html

http://seppukutattoo.blogspot.com/2012/04/tv-hammer-party-tonight.html

After a very successful partnership spanning three studios over eight years, Seppuku Tattoo is saying goodbye to Matthew Lukesh at the end of this year. Matt is relocating to Iowa, specifically the Platinum Rose Tattoo Gallery, owned by the extremely talented and handsome Josh Fields. 

In early 2012 we were on a search for new talent which netted us one Ali Chin Chin, and we wrote this blog citing what it was we were looking for.

http://seppukutattoo.blogspot.com/2011/12/help-wanted.html

Matt has some pretty big shoes to fill, so we will be looking at a lot of people. Let me take a few minutes to give you a run down of Seppuku Tattoo, and why it would make a great home for another world class artist or two.

Seppuku began in 2005 and is in its eighth year. We build a new studio in Savannah, Georgia, in an attempt to open in a city that hadn't yet been over run by shops, and also to honor our non compete contracts. Almost immediately we started traveling, attending events and winning awards. Johnny took off to attend the CMJ Music Festival, where he was a guest of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame the very first week we opened our doors. The first month we were open, we crashed the Prick Magazine Tattoo Party at the Jinx in Savannah, and Johnny took the shop's first award for Best Small Color. The Savannah shop was set up as a gallery, and hosted a series of art shows that included Jeral Tidwell, Johnny Crap, Rob Schwager, Brian Morris, Jason Goad, author Paul Grushkin, Brian Ewing, Stainboy, Jason Cooper, and of course Jeff Wood. Now free from being dictated to by our former owners, we expanded our art, began studying painting techniques again, and incorporating fine art theory into the tattooing. Matt's paintings transformed dramatically. They had formerly been based on tattoo flash styled imagery, and shot forward into proper fine art. Matt's tattoos likewise took giant leaps forward, especially being able to experiment in way we had been forbidden to do before. For example, we were never allowed to tattoo color portraits. Now Matt is known internationally for his brand of realism, having clients travel from as far away as Amsterdam. Not to be outdone, Johnny found himself being asked to paint the cover of Skin & Ink Magazine in December 2009. We would be onstage painting in the Wet Paint Projects at Hell City and at the Mad Hatter's conventions, and at closed door all day Paint Jams at Keith Ciaramello's Kustom Kulture Gallery.

Seppuku worked hard to be included in the very ethnocentric Savannah society. We hosted a number of late night fetish balls and sponsored a number of live concerts. We were at the Trustee's Theatre with Paul Grushkin as he presented his coffee table sized tour de force, 'The Art of Modern Rock', to an audience of hundreds. We held a poster show with a number of the book's artists at the Jinx. The studio participated in art shows in Charleston, including a number of poster shows, and the Munny Show. We held book signings, participated in art shows, and Johnny even performed a Halloween wedding at the studio. For all our efforts, and how well received each event was, we felt that Savannah was just not for us, and we moved home after a five year run.

Seppuku attended a number of conventions, particularly proud to be invited to the ones run by our peers, like Durb Morrison's Hell City Tattoo Expos, and Billy Easton's Richmond Tattoo Convention. Normally we are the kind of people that scoff at awards, but on the other hand, it is fun to take an award from a show surrounded by so many peers. Or taking nearly every award, like we did at the Savannah Harley Davidson Haunted Coast Run. We also received a sizable amount of attention from the magazines, notably Skin & Ink, International Tattoo Arts, Tattoo Society, Tattoo Energy, Tattoo Savage, Tattoo Revue, all the Outlaw Biker publications, and a number of Best Of issues. Matt is published in books from the Publishers of Bizarre Magazine, including 'The World's Most Incredible Tattoos'. Both Johnny and Matt appear in 'Cranial Visions', and other artist compilation books. Johnny and Matt also are quoted in Chris Dingwell's book, 'Inside Out'. Johnny's introduction to the book is actually cited by a number of book reviews. 

Johnny continued to move in his former worlds, attending a number of events as a poster artist for Drowning Creek studios. In addition to the Rock Hall Show in Cleveland, he also attended the TRPS Festival in Golden Gate State Park in 2008, and Stainboy Reinel's book signing and poster show in Orlando, The Living Dead Dolls Show in NYC, and a CBGB's Benefit Art Show just prior to their closing. He's been published in a stack of books about rock art, has artwork that appears in Guitar Hero 3, had a poster turned into a DVD for the All American Rejects, and created a poster for Hot Topic's GH promotions. His first paying writing gig was for an article on the release of the 'Art of Modern Rock' book. Johnny is sent photos of people tattooing his posters on them from as far away as South Africa. 

Seppuku has had the honor of hosting great guest artists, including Josh Fields, Dee Dee Seruga, and the aforementioned Chris Dingwell. We've had a number of tattooists & poster artists travel to receive work from us. We also hosted the multi talented Dingwell teaching his 'Painting Without Fear' seminar at the studio for a closed door all day event. Each Seppuku artist is dedicated to getting work from great tattooists as part of the learning process. Some of the artists we've collected from include Filip Leu, Horiyoshi 3, Bugs, Jeff Gogue, Paul Booth, Sean Herman, Josh Duffy, Nick Baxter, Joe Capobianco, Chris O'Donnell, Tomo, Josh Fields, and Ivana Belakova. Ali and Johnny are committed to traveling overseas to continue their collections. 

Seppuku is in Bloomingdale, NJ. We chose the locale for two main reasons; legality, as its still illegal to tattoo in portions of NJ, and the fact that's its not near anyone else, almost an impossibility in this day and age. Although in a sleepy town in the hills, we're right off several main highways, and only 30 minutes outside of NYC. We enjoy being able to attend art shows, gallery openings, conventions, seminars, as well as everything else New York offers, but come home to lakes, rivers, and great hiking. 

In the future, we plan on continuing as we always have, creating great art in all mediums, and creating a great space to get tattooed in. We plan on doing more things outside our doors, as our space isn't quite the art gallery the old joint was. We plan on continuing traveling, both as tourists, collectors, and as tattooists. We will continue to abide by the bushi code of honor, loyalty and trust. We will be enemies of the status quo and killers of mediocrity. We have great plans for the studio, and great plans require great artists. 

If you're tired of walking the demon road of meifumado as an assassin for hire, there can be no better place to call home than Seppuku Tattoo. All qualified ronin, please contact Johnny Thief at johnny@seppukutattoo.com. Domo arigato gozaimasu!

A little Wednesday update from Berlin

Hi there!
No real news today.
Well, there's always some news, right?

We're still working on our travel schedule, and finding out if we'll be home in November, or if we'll go to Japan.
Hopefully we'll find out this week, and i'll be posting about it here, of course.
A lot of people have requested appointments in November, so if you're one of them, keep an eye on the blog in the next few weeks.

But London in September is confirmed, and Uncle Allan will be working at the convention next to mr. Chriss Dettmer, doing flash on walk-ups as he's done the previous couple of years.
So no need to write us about booking an appointment at the convention, just show up, form a line if there's more than one of you, and see if there's anything you like.
I'll be posting sneak peeks of the flash he'll have available at the convention, assuming he doesn't finsih at the last minute, of course.

Wendy (wendy_p@live.com.au) and Matthew (matthewgordon@live.com.au) will not be going to London this year, so if you want to get work done by either of them that weekend, they'll be right here in Berlin, ready to tattoo you.
And if you wanna know about their availability on some other dates, just send me an email and i'll check it out.
Below are  few designs with no owners yet, but of course custom work of (almost) all styles and sizes is always an option too!

Oh, and we're actually adding another convention appearance to the calendar soon, so check back to see which convention it is.
Maybe it's near you!?

Our new web shop has had a great start (thank you all for that!) and some items have sold out already and others will soon, so take a look and see if there's something there you just can't live without.
We're working on a few new prints that will hopefully be added soon, and we also just finished setting up our screen printing area, so as soon as we have time to sit down and figure that shit out, expect homemade stuff to be added too!

Instaspam!

Design by Matthew Gordon

Design by Wendy Pham

Fun little Uncle Allan tattoo, just because!

Not THAT snobby, apparently.

TattooSnob is back!
I'm stoked.
It was (and now is, again) such a good tattoo blog,
run by such good people.
They've always been very kind to me,
and I have gotten lots of attention over the years from them having posted my work.
So when they told me that they were coming back,
and were looking for a few people to do art for a rotating banner at the top of the page,
I, of course, said 'yes'.

But, also, of course, I waited till the last minute to do it,
and found myself the day it was due in Massachusetts,
doing a guest spot at Off the Map,
and staying with the ever accommodating Amy and Jaime.
I borrowed some watercolor paints from Jaime,
and didn't go to bed until 3 or 4am.

Go visit them,
and click the refresh button till it pops up.
I'm honored they asked me,
and happy to help in any tiny way I can.
Thanks to TattooSnob for getting em to do a painting,
and thanks to Amy and Jaime for always being such big helps.

Flying foxes.

I am becoming obsessed with vegetarian monsters. 

(in fact, i just stopped working on this blog post and bought the domain name violentvegetarians.com.

but, like most of my other 22 domain names, 

i have no idea what i'll do with it)

I have a Kirin (Qilin) tabori tattoo from Japan,

I love hippos, and every other angry vegetarian out there. 

Fruit bats are so dope. 

They have creepy wings made of skin,

sharp teeth,

and some are the biggest bats in the world. 

Ben had some time, 

an open calf, 

and no idea what he wanted. 

I was stoked to do this fruit bat hanging in an orange tree. 

Just a little bit.

I don't change my mind very often. 

I usually react poorly to change. 

I have habits and schedules and comfort zones, 

and they only get more ingrained as I get older.

But here's a flip-flop I can admit to. 

I used to be so opposed to adding touches of color to black and grey tattoos, 

but at some point I changed my mind, 

and now I love it. 

Not for every tattoo, 

(and not ever "just some blue in the eye"),

but for all the pieces that show just how much I tattoo like a girl,

a couple flowers or a ribbon or something in color 

adds an extra little bit that I'm pretty into. 

I was happy to do some finishing touches on this today.

Most of it is healed.