Rites of Passage Festival

So this week was spent in Melbourne as you already know. We arrived Thursday morning (day before the convention) which meant a shopping trip into the city. We bought (well, I bought some clothes) and just wondered the lovely streets of Melbourne. Later that night we caught up with our old mate Jake and had the most amazing meal at “Vegie Bar” on Brunswick Street. I had the best pizza of my vegan life! The cheese actually taste like cheese (instead of that plastic, dirty feet taste, that you normally experience when eating vegan cheese). Then it was off to bed early to prepare for the next day.

Here is Matty looking rather terrified on day one.

So Friday was our first day at the event and I have to say the event venue was amazing. The Royal Exhibition Building is such an awesome building and looks like it should be in Europe somewhere. My shitty camera skills just don’t do it justice.

Obviously out front of the building

Side view

Main hall down the centre of the convention

We got there nice and early so we could set up and get the booth ready. I tried to hang our T-shirts and singlets but they just kept on coming down! AGH! Anyways, Matt had designed a massive back piece for Brenten for his first tattoo of the convention.

Here's the drawing

There was no real intention of finishing this one, since it was so big. Also Brenten is from Adelaide, so we knew we could always finish it later. Unfortunately due to some problems with council, the event couldn’t get started until a bit later. So Matt didn’t get as much done on this one as he would have liked to but that’s just the way it goes I guess. Still got some more black shading and all the colour to go. Thanks again to Brenten for flying all the way over for the convention !!

No laughing at my t-shirt hanging skills!

Done for the day! Still black shading and heaps of colour to go!

.

Simone managed to squeeze in an appointment with Jasmin Austin on Friday night at the convention. She did a sweet girls head on Simone's side of her leg. Simo is going to kill me for posting this pic but it’s too funny not to, love you Simo don’t hate me.

Simo getting her sweet girls head tattoo by Jasmin Austin

Jamie also managed to get an appointment with our mate Jake Fraser from Dynamic. So we stopped by briefly to watch for a bit. He did a sick coffin with skull and shovel. Jamie wanted to pay homage to his grave digging days. Yes that’s right people, before he was a tattooist he was a gravedigger!!

After Jake finished tattooing Jamie we all went out for Mexican and again the food was amazing. I was challenged to consuming a “Fish bowl”. AKA- a massive margarita drink- the fricken thing had to be equivalent to 3 litres!! I swear to God I sat there for the whole dinner trying to consume the whole thing but I barely made a dent. Challenge lost – big time! Was nice though!

Saturday was Paul’s turn (another devoted Adelaidian who flew over for the event). Matt drew up a Hannya Mask with a snake in its mouth. My favourite thing about this one is the skeleton's hanging off the Hannya and snake. One of them is humping the horn, one is beating the snake with a bone, one is doing handstand on the snake and the last one is peaking out behind the horn, holding a fan. Love it!

Here is the drawing

So after six and half hours they managed to get all outlining and black shading done. Again, there was probably never going to be a way of finishing this piece in one day. They had planned to go a bit longer but Matt’s neck and back were in agony (it’s not the most comfortable tattooing without a bench) and Paul had been through enough. So colour is to be done another day soon.

Stencil time

Coming along nicely

First session down- side views. All black shading down, heaps of colour to go!

Frontal action

And the other side

And now just some random pics of fascinating things I saw in my travels and tattooists we really enjoyed watching tattoo (there are way more but I will be here all day if I mentioned them all):

The guys from "Durga Tattoo" in Jakarta Indonesia. Tattooing a guys chest (Traditional way with sticks and I am not sure what else). This went on ALL DAY! This guy must have balls the size of coconuts!!

Dan Ritter (from After Ink) I couldn’t help but watch the throat tat Alex (from Tatudharma) did on him. Brutal and cool at the same time!! As Dan said, at least it shut him up a while-haha (his words- not mine).

Stoked to meet the guys from Tatudharma too, their work is awesome! Also we bought a nice little bench off them too, which will be handy for the next convention we hopefully do soon.

I watched Hoiyoshi III son, Souryo.

Horikazu, doing traditional tebori tattooing. I had never seen this done in real life, so it was a treat. Looks bloody painful but I was told it hurts less than machine?? Hmmm?

I watched Adam Kitamoto (Ten-Ten Tattoo- Melbourne) do a few tattoo's. Love his Japanese!

Dean Sacred (Sacred Tattoo- NZ). Love, love, love the prints. We bought I think 3 in the end. I wanted them all but I had spent too much money already.

Of course we supported Jake and watched Evan Griffiths tattoo for a bit. (Dynamic Tattoo- of course- Melbourne)

So all in all, it was a great event for us. We had an awesome first convention! We met so many great people, saw some awesome tattooing and got to mingle and meet some people we really admire in the tattoo world. Can't ask for much more than that! We will be doing next years Melbourne Rites of Passage for sure!

I think that will be it for this blog. It took me a while to get it together. I think I might post more photo's on the facebook "Progression" page. I took more, so stayed tuned.

Matt's only input this week- "people should listen to more Mastodon".

Pirate Babe

Update day

Been quite a busy week so here's a few photos I managed to take.

Hand of Fatima with some roses. Hopefully we'll be continuing this on the make a whole sleeve, so more pics soon.

First session on a dragon half sleeve. Can't wait for the next session.

Little Sugar Skull design. Good fun piece.

The next session on the William Morris design I posted previously.

Banksy design with a phrase incorporated.

No title, cos I can't think of one :P

So it's our second week back and it's been a good but fairly uneventful one. I think this blog might be as boring as the last one, which is probably why we have only aquired one more follower than last week. Please people, I know the blog is for public viewing and you don't have to follow us to read but please do.

Regarding the tattoo situation, Matt didn't finish anything this week so thought I would put a couple progress shots up.

Dan got his first tattoo and as you do, went balls out and got a sleeve! Nice work. I think there is like 7 chrysanthemums in that one.

Mandi got started on her peacock sitting on a skull leg piece, the feathers are going to end up going around to the front of her leg too but you get the idea.

Sick Dog and J Mang have some sweet t'os for sale. Sugar skull sickness, in an arrangement of colours. Boys you get black and green or a choice of white with green. Ladies you have 3 choices (because as ladies we need more choices) peachy with red, white with red or green on green action. 30 bucks! Be quick there selling like hot cakes!

Australia Day is upon us and we will be honoring the public holiday by not coming to work and drinking up a storm in true Australian form (well maybe I won't but I will be in the company of those who will:P). So we will be closed from Wednesday 26th and will re-open again Monday 31st. We are off to Rites of Passage Festival and sunny (*cough, cough*) Melbourne for the weekend. Come along and say hello if you happen to be in Melbourne. Can't wait to visit my favorite Australian city again, love, love, love Melbourne!

AND, we did get our prints back from the framers. So we stayed back till 11pm Friday night to put them up. We have re-arranged a few things to accommodate our new additions we got from Japan. So I went on a little photo taking rampage, so here is some new photo's of the shop:

Matt's room is finally coming along now and the walls are looking less bare. Still want to put heaps more prints up but it is coming along.

I took a pic from another angle of the reception area

And Simo found me a print of the Last Supper from a vintage shop, so my JC/religious wall is looking awesome.

Ok, think that is it, thanks for listening.

Bye for now....

We're Back!

Well as the title suggests, we are back from our long trip OS. We had an awesome time, met some great people, saw awesome stuff, got lots of new tattoo's and spent quality time with family. To cut a very long story short.

Best thing about getting home was seeing our children, catching up with people and best of all opening all the packages we had sent back to Australia from Japan. It's like we had christmas all over again when we got home. Matt had to take a photo of his book and print purchases- we had more at home but this is what was waiting for us when we got to the shop. If anyone wants great tattoo reference books check out Gomineko Books at http://www.gominekobooks.com/

Of course everyone is aware of the flooding in Queensland and we would like to send out best wishes to people over on the east coast, they are doing it really hard out there and it's been nothing short of tragic. I found a website where you can help out by donating to the cause at http://www.qld.gov.au/floods/donate.html

Progression Tattoo has done it's bit for the flood relief effort by taking in a flood victim. One positive that comes out of the tragic is that we got to keep Malika in Adelaide a little bit longer. Her house was flooded and she was unable to go home, so Simo took full advantage by getting a quick tattoo in before she headed back. I wish I had a photo to post but I plain forgot to take one.

Simo getting her foot tattooed by flood victim Malika

So Matt finally managed to find time to tattoo Jamie. We had last minute cancellation so Jamie got some work done too.

The boys being boys and very serious for some reason??

Of course there needs to be a pick of a tattoo in here. So here is one Matty did last night, on our good mate old Amy Guntbags. Pretty purple horsey. Excuse this shit photo and bloody arm. I have enrolled in a photography course, so I hope to be able to finally post some decent looking photos.

And last but not least (I know this blog has been a little lacking with anything exciting, sorry). We are getting new T-shirts and singlets (yes girls singlets too). We are just repeating the original T that we had done when we first opened. Here is a pick of the design in case you have forgotten (singlets will be the same):

Oh and one more thing. The Rites of Passage Festival is in a few weeks, 28th, 29th and 30th of January. Should be a good weekend, so come along if you can! Check out the site for tickets and more info http://www.ritesofpassagefestival.com/

That's all for this installment. Cheerio!

Happy New Year

Bouncing Souls logo slightly modified

Custom Ganesh piece on Georgia, really fun to do and finished in one sitting

£30 Flash hands on Kay

£30 Flash love potion on David

Courage script on Georgie's ribs

Some close ups of Ben's arm, there's a picture of the full sleeve posted a few months ago as well.