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!

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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".