IronlinePortland ME Book
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Pictures

Pictures of the trade

These are photographs of tattooing — flash sheets, ink, needles and the tools the trade was built on — chosen for the character of the studio. They are not a portfolio of this studio's work and not one of them shows a customer.

The pictures

Rows of ink bottles ranked on a shelf with their caps upward.
Plate 01Ink ranked on a shelf, photographed at a convention. A working studio keeps far fewer colours than this and mixes the rest, because a bottle has a life once it has been opened.
Four bronze tattooing needles mounted in bone, laid in a line on a white ground.
Plate 02Bronze needles mounted in bone, from a museum collection. The grouped points do the job a modern needle bar does, and how they are grouped is what separates a line from a shade.
A hand-painted flash sheet: butterflies, swallows, a rose and a lettered cross, laid out in rows.
Plate 03A flash sheet from the 1930s. The designs are drawn at the size they were meant to be worn, which is still how a sheet is set out and still why a flash piece can be priced before it is booked.
An extreme close-up of a needle laying a black line into skin, with ink pooled at the point.
Plate 04A macro photograph of a line being laid. Depth and speed decide whether that line is still a line in ten years, which is why the first pass is never the fastest one.
A sheet of flash drawn in ink on paper: dragons and coiled serpents.
Plate 05A sheet of dragons and serpents. A long coiling subject is drawn to a limb rather than to a rectangle, which is why the placement is agreed before the drawing is finished.
Gloved hands working on a finished back piece, the machine held like a pen.
Plate 06Gloved hands at work on a back piece. The machine is held like a pen and the free hand stretches the skin, over a fresh cover on everything either hand touches.
A carved uhi chisel laid flat on a white ground.
Plate 07A Māori uhi, the chisel used for tā moko, from a museum collection. Tattooing is older than the machine by a very long way and this is one of the tools it is older with.
A drawn torso covered in figurative tattoo work, shown front and back.
Plate 08A nineteenth-century drawing of a fully worked torso. Pieces laid out across a whole body are planned as one shape long before any one of them is started.

Talk to the studio

A picture is not a plan for the piece

Describing what is wanted in a message gets a straight answer about which service fits and what it costs.

Book a consultation Send a message Email the studio

The column

A short note when the studio changes something

Holiday hours, an artist joining or leaving, a price that moves. Two or three notes a year and nothing else.

The privacy notice explains what happens to the address.

This is a demo design, not a real business.Have it rebranded as yours for $500 from EZWebee.