Been wanting to get some new ink for a while, and had decided on a black and white portrait of baby Cash. Having seen too many baby-portrait-tattoos-gone-wrong pics (see below), I’ve been researching portrait tattoo artists for a while.
I hope this tattoo artist really just sucked, rather than this guy having really ugly kids.
At some point, early on in this tattoo, the person had to know that the artist was tattooing a picture of a zombie baby, rather than his baby…right?
I found an artist, Holly Ellis from Idle Hands Tattoo studio whose portfolio of work I really liked. Unfortunately, her studio is in San Fransico, CA.
My last tattoo was done by an artist in Northridge, CA (Mike DeVries), and required three trips out to California over the course of a year and a half to finally finish it, so I was hoping to find an artist much closer to home for my next tattoo.
Luckily for me, I found out that Holly was attending the Star of Texas Tattoo and Art Revival, which was held here in Austin last month. So I set up an appointment with her, brought her a picture of Cash, and she drew up the art work and was able to knock out this 5″ x 7″ tattoo on my right-upper pec in about 3 hours:
The picture on the right is the image I gave the artist to work with, and the resulting tattoo on the right.
And a bit bigger image showing the placement of the tattoo:
Needless to say, but I was quite relieved with how well this turned out.
Pretty happy with how well it turned out. I’m planning on a full sleeve, connecting to this chest piece, of black-and-white portrait work (Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings will be next).
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Waylon and Willie and the boys!
Nice job. He’s adorable in any medium.
That is the best tattoo I think I’ve ever seen, the gorilla coming in second.
I’ve become a huge Walyon fan over the past five years, kind of a late bloomer there, but never thought about getting a tattoo of him. Actually, it was youtube that brought it on – he is way better live than recorded… Those tats should be pretty damn cool to see.
James,
Our boy’s name is Cash Jennings Cooper…after the legendary outlaws Johnny and Waylon. Turns out that our neighbor across the street is first cousin’s with Shooter Jennings, Waylon’s son, and grew up with Uncle Waylon.
OMG I thought the first pic was your new tat, I almost died. Hahahaha!
Killer Tattoo, very well done indeed!