My journey to become a High End Tattoo Artist… part 3

Life Decisions and Loyalty

I have to say that during the whole period, I was doing time, I just wanted to avoid California Parole altogether. They make it so that can’t happen now. In retrospect, it was the parole situation that saved my life I think. I’m not a fan of government, especially the California Government, but I must say, it was the revolving door of the parole system that let me experience both worlds in tandem for a while and that led to my willingness to sacrifice everything to the gods of art and tattooing. I’ve always said, “Tattooing found me broke, naked, and alone. Everything I have is from tattooing”, but I don’t always talk about my promise to myself and the Tattoo Gods, so to speak, that I would work every day to stay out of that little cement box. I had a 4”x36” window and my seat was a blanket rolled up in a way that I could sit on it working off a lower bunk which is basically a flat cookie sheet. I’m in a great big grey box now that could hold my whole house but my true goal and purpose is to bring back tenfold to tattooing, what tattooing has given to me.

The first time I got released after a parole violation my plan for success was to do home invasions on known dealers. A friend of a friend had even taken me to look at a house in the Hollywood Hills but the way he described the logistics threw so many red flags, I put it off. That same week I went to Dusty’s spot in the center of the SFV and he let me catch up with some clients there.

One day we were just tattooing and chilling, drinking and watching movies and things you do in that situation, all of us on parole when a fully dressed police officer walked into the garage. We looked at each other, he asked for Dusty, and I sent him to the main house. The rest of us thought for sure we were getting busted but he just left and that was it. Turns out he wanted my boy to start a shop in the Rampart Division. The one caveat was that if the neighborhood boys came in shooting, we had to shoot back.

For the first time in my life, I had made $1000 in a few days just hanging out and drawing on friends who had waited for me. I knew immediately that there was something there and I never needed another felony.

Shortly after that, I did go to work on a buddy of mine at his place. I had worked on him before but I went to check it out and it wasn’t really good to go yet. I decided to hang out for the day anyway. My guy was sort of the guy on the block if you know what I mean and he had to run a mission later in the day. I volunteered to roll with him and he had some time to burn so he offered to take me to Best Buy. They were having a sale on DVDs, knew I like to watch movies with my clients, and wanted to tip me for work prior. We pulled up to the Best Buy in Porter Ranch, CA and I got out of the car to find 2 guns in my face. Of course, I was additionally holding things that weren’t mine. The police were getting agitated as all that I would say was that it wasn’t mine until my boy stepped in and claimed the cash I was holding. I did 7 months on that one, but at the end of the day, at least they got us going out and not coming back. I’m thankful for that, blame the tattoo gods but it is ALWAYS better to be cash-heavy than dope heavy. This time, I had only been out for 2 months.

The first violation was my first trip through the Ventura County jail system. I met one of the youngest HA’s ever at that time, it was a much nicer trip and the day I woke up in jail, I was thankful to be back. Life is so much simpler inside. Find the line and walk the line. Get off first if it comes down to fighting and stand up for yourself. All EVERYONE needs to know is that anyone else is an easier target.

It’s much more confusing out here. Well, aside from shower time in reception when you have 3 open cells, 6 shower heads, and not much choice outside of that, and you end up lathering up next to the bearded dude with the biggest tits and dick you’ve ever seen. Mind you this was like 2007, I went back to the cell ready to take bird baths for the rest of my life.

This next trip was my second trip through LA County. Still old County but 3000 floor this time. When I was going through intake there was another kid with me about my age. Kris. I say kid, of course, we were men, but it was half a lifetime ago. We were the only white guys and we were tattooed AF. This deputy, Luna, called us out and made us strip. Chris’s work was all from the streets. Mine was all from doing time, and I was….. active, let’s just leave it at that. I thought for sure I was headed one way to single-cell housing.

Luna pulled me aside and sat me down, sending Kris back into the cell. I knew this was it. Then he told me, “Look, the Blacks and the South Siders are at war so we can only hire White Boys and Paisas for the work crews. We need a regular to keep an eye on these 6 or so guys we have in this dorm upstairs. (Meaning they needed someone already familiar with the system). It’s a pretty clutch spot, you want it?” … … What in the fuck do you say to something like that? A 23-year-old white kid from the mid-west, about to be thrown into the dungeons for the second time. It’s not even a real choice, obviously, you say yes.

There are no positive things I can say about LA County Jail. Never go. It sucks, don’t do it… That said, this time may be that which I romance the most about all of the time I served. When I was in Susanville the Norteños there were all off the books and that meant the South Siders didn’t have a legit enemy there and that the yard was pretty chill all in all. On a lot of 3 yards one or the other of the groups would be dropouts at that time and that did help to keep the tension down.

In LA County, it was war. I have seen worse shit in LA County than I would wish on anyone. I heard a guy get his head kicked in for a good hour 30 on one of my first days and I saw the deputies give out some mag light therapy and throw a man down the escalator behind me once. I even was in the Twin Towers once and the guy in the cell next to me died on the toilet in the night. I could see it over in the reflection of the pod windows. His celly tried to call for help all night and they ignored him. In the morning when they found the body they drug it down the stairs as his head bounced off of each of the steel steps.

On this second trip through I had pull. Because I was cleaning the halls, I had a lot of access. First and foremost, my job was to bring the newspapers to the cells. This gave me a bit of clout with the heads of the tiers and also access to medical which meant I was one of the few people who could get to and from the guys who could get syringes. When a load would come in (meaning someone had smuggled contraband) I would be asked to get it to the important people on the other tiers. Of course, it was always a lot and I would have to give up my name and # in case anything happened. Each time I was delivering before the guy on the delivery end could even pass off my info. Sometimes I would even get chunks of dope big enough for the whole dorm just as a tip.

One of my jobs in there was having to clean the recreation yard on the roof. For the life of me, I can’t remember the CO that was my boss up there. But she had a Jerry Curl like Easy E and wore bright red lipstick. She was pretty fucking dope to me. If I came and cleaned the exercise yard on time and with no issue she would bring me basically whatever I wanted from the officer dining. That wasn’t the best part though. The good…. The downright fucking beautiful part about that second trip through LA was that this cleaning I had to do took place before dawn on the roof of LA County Jail in LA (3000 floors in 2007) and you could often see the lights from Dodger Stadium as they were shutting down after cleaning up from a game. When you are housed in an extremely treacherous and violent warehouse and have an opportunity to be completely alone pre-dawn outside to watch the sun come up over a place your grandfather used to take you when you were a kid… That’s G.O.D. Speaking to you. The Good Orderly Direction of the universe, giving you room to take a breath. A lung full of Downtown Los Angeles never tasted so good to another human being as in those moments for me. I had it made.

Another thing I will always remember is the Friday night talent shows. Both at LA County and Chino. On Friday nights (at least in the early 2000s) the Whites and Mexicans (Wood Pile and South Siders) would say their nightly respectful goodnights. After that the Blacks would start yelling “BRING IT TO THE BAAAARRRRSSS” shaking the bars of the cells until it sounded like thunder. There would be singing, rapping, jokes, talent shows, and all sorts of other hilarious things, pretty much everyone would be drinking. In Chino. Once a month the white guys and South Siders would get involved too. Oddly enough this was where I got into county music. We had a white guy who went by “Country” that sang "Ole Red" and “Don’t Chase the Girl”. I had been asking relatives to send song lyrics and, as I read them, I could hear the music. Reading all of the songs I loved and learning what some of the lyrics were conveying definitely upset my connection with some of those songs. Even just being on the tier. Sycamore Hall was the Overflow at the time for Palm Hall. Palm Hall was “the Hole” of Chino. When you are paroled FROM the hole, and you get arrested again. You go back TO the hole. So, everyone in Palm Hall was pretty much a shotcaller from some SHU unit or gang throughout the state. When you are 19 in Sycamore Hall (Styc’m more hall) listening to the biggest true gangsters in CA talking about how Snoop Dogg is full of shit, that the CPT and LBC were NOT getting together again, and things like who pulled the trigger on Tupac. Being into gangster rap and pop culture at the time, this shined a light on things for me. It was all bullshit. I was there on a “90-day option”. You go to big-boy prison and talk to a counselor and a psych. They write a report as to whether you belong there or not. During this time I saw two different attempts at what I would call “slicing a face-off”. The first was for talking/disrespecting the [group] workout and the second was a Sergeant stopping someone and searching them after chow time. If you have ever seen the movie American Me, at the end, Edward James Olmos gets shanked and thrown off of the third tier. I was about 2 cells over and one Tier down from where that was shot. Hollywood man, I couldn’t escape it.

I saw Kris come through again and got him pulled onto my crew but he got into it with one of the cops and I couldn’t control it. I went back through Delano that time.

A few months later I was out and I went back to the original 5150 in Van Nuys where I had met Rick. They let me try out at the Reseda shop and ultimately let me work at the North Hollywood shop. If you are on the West Coast and familiar with Trigz, he got shot there a few months after I ultimately left and has a really dope tribute portrait in the alley back there. I knew him in passing but not really well. He and everyone else there were always pretty good to me.

During this time Kris got out and visited me. I did a bunch of black and grey sorta traditional shit on him but a lot of that time he was nodding out. I wish I had been able to save him. To teach him to hide out from all the bullshit weighing him down in the study of art. Dreamer got out too during this time. Feeling grateful for him offering me his old equipment, I gave him a power supply, a Mickey Sharpz liner, and a Brass Swing Gate from National along with a Thunder Bird. There was some drama he got into with some people who were looking out for me and I will not say too much on that as I warned everyone on all sides that it was not going to be a fruitful partnership. That said, I do remember him telling me later that he had sat behind the shop, high, doing speedballs and tearing up because he didn’t want to come in to face me. I wish he had. I wish I could have saved him. I would have given up everything to keep a brother with me. But, he also told me I was the only one that followed through and did what I said I was going to do while I was down. You get this sort of survivor guilt. You want to help and accept everyone. But, you can’t control them. Ultimately, we are each in charge of our own destiny. We all have to accept that. It’s not that YOU can do anything. It's that everything you want to do HAS to be done by you. You can find comradery, but there is no shortcut around the personal steps you have to take and the work you have to put in to un-fuck yourself.

I had a customer I’ll never forget during my time at 5150. I would be doing the world a disservice if I didn’t bring it up. I can’t remember her name but it was a middle-aged woman getting an anklet of dead-head bears. During our conversation, she told me she was getting tattooed as a celebration of graduating college in Psychology. I thought that was cool as I had been a Sociology Major and Psychology minor previous to getting into trouble. It was only a semester but that was the goal. She told me a story about a little old man who used to teach at the university she attended. As an older student, she didn’t fit in with the rest. She would see this old man eating alone and started to eat with him on occasion. Then, one day he was gone. She didn’t think much of it until someone brought up his obituary. Turns out he had written a pretty famous book. “Man’s Search for Meaning” It was Victor Frankl. I didn’t go back and connect all of the dots, so don't ruin this for me if you know differently, but that was the conclusion we came to at the time. “Mans Search for Meaning” was a book that I read in prison. I really didn’t appreciate it at first. The whole first half of the smaller book was the man's trip through and surviving the Nazi Camps in WW2. Being in prison at the time this was not the most comfortable group of thoughts but the second half was really good. Changing perspective to ease suffering and find meaning. Essentially that’s it. But this book has continually popped up in my life. My belief is that it pops up to let me know I am on the right path. It shows up in therapist offices, on TV shows, and in self-help articles. Last week I was talking to Jake Meeks of Fireside Tattoo during a group discussion and he even quoted the book. It’s a ready I highly recommend to anyone dealing with life issues and willing to listen.

I did get busted again when I was at 5150. I was sitting in my garage smoking a bowl and heard the knock. They didn’t ever test me for weed, but the fact that I had the paraphernalia of the pipe got me another 5 months. I knew then that I couldn’t even get away with hanging out at home. By the time I got out they had no more time to fuck with me really before I was off parole. So at least that was nice.

While I was down I had some gnarly experiences for another story, however I did do this cool handkerchief for Mark Mahoney at Shamrock. On my way home I stopped by 5150. They had saved my spot even though I had told them they didn’t need to. Of course at this time loyalty was everything to me. Eventually I met and spoke with Mark Mahoney. He said “ Oh, damn, you’re white?” And invited me up to teach me how he mixed his greys. He invited me in, made me feel like it was home, asked a lot about how I was doing and how the shop was treating me. I like to think I could have dug an offer up on that day. In the end, for better or worse, I chose the loyalty. It didn’t last forever, but it felt right at the time and I’ve never regretted that. A stint at Shamrock would have been about the dopest thing I could imagine at the time though.

During this same time I started taking classes on different art topics, mostly portraiture stuff at the Westlake School of art. Also down at Coast Airbrush in Anaheim. I would say those two places opened up my mind the most when it comes to art. Just before that violation, I met Mikaela Tomassini who used to paint the storefronts for tower records. She was actually my first foray into learning about airbrushing. We sort of traded information on tools and how to use them. At the time it is always hard to appreciate the chain of events, but in retrospect, that was the universe opening doors for me. At westlake school of art I worked under Glenn Orbik, whom I love but he hated me. There is a book/event each year called Spectrum for concept art. I had one of these books at 5150 and had found 2 or three pieces from some Pulp Artist inside that were really awesome. I went to the Westlake School of art and took a class for pinups. On our first break the instructor passed around his portfolio and 2 of these pieces I had picked out from the spectrum book were his! He hated me as I would often be sleepy by the time I got from the shop, through the hot ass LA traffic to the school, Live speaking would just put me to sleep. But I would learn even as I would be drifting off, I remember him calling on me once. I had to describe the anatomy of a shadow to the class. I’m not sure how much of it I learned in his class and how much I learned reading books in jail, but I hit the nail on the head, and he was not too happy about it. The thing he taught that I will always remember….. Doing pinups is about beauty. Always Idealize. Don’t get caught up on realism when you can idealize a shape, shadow or color. Mother nature already did her thing and it’s already perfect. Focus on what YOU can do to make the shape/person/idea idealized to convey the story. Really the perfect leap from portraiture to fantasy or surrealism.

I even flew out to South Carolina to the Dru Blair School of art to learn more about color theory. I highly recommend this to anyone who has an issue with color theory or wants to become a cold-blooded-assassin with an airbrush. This was probably one of the craziest educational experiences for me. I went and stayed in this guys studio and we did a deep dive on color theory. I had read a lot up until that point, but a lot of pieces fell into place on this journey. Things look natural when a repeating texture is randomized, the color wheel is a lie, color is a lot easier to understand when you think of everything as muted or a blend and very rarely a pure color from the color wheel. My favorite story from this time was this… Dru told us he used to make 10k per painting from his agent. One time he had some left over reference photos and decided to do a painting on his own that was not commissioned. He went to sell it to his agent, but his agent told him that he had no use for it. Mind you these are paintings of realistic military equipment in action. Instead of making 10k, he spent 10k on a printer and a scanner and a booth at an upcoming military air show. On his first trip out, he said he sold 1000 prints at $80. Even if you consider that learning the machines may have had the same value as owning the machines, AND he ate the original perceived value of the painting, he would STILL be 50k to the good. This is where I started to think about the business of art. Being able to repeat a sale amongst a specific group of interested parties. Supplying the demand if you will. It took a lot of years for me to process, but that is where the foundation was laid.

When my time at 5150 came to an end. I remember driving around and ultimately meeting Baby Ray at Spotlight in Hollywood. One of my favorite connections over the years. I remember walking in and someone else, also looking for a job came in right behind me. As I tend to do I shut the fuck up while this other guy was shooting his mouth off and referring to the traditional flash on the walls as cartoons. Personally, I don’t get too caught up on labels. That said, it’s good idea not to tell the old timers that they are doing cartoons. The flash in Spotlight was all yellow. This was because it had been rescued from a shop fire back in the day. It’s history. Anyway, Baby Ray threw this guy out on his ear. I just sat and watched it and kept my mouth shut. I came back to this place every few weeks for a year before I had the opportunity to show my portfolio. At the time I ended up moving into working privately and airbrushing a ton. Painting Murals and cars and bikes, tattooing out of the saddlebags of a ‘94 FXR. It was such a struggle then but in hind sight it still seems sort of romantic. That’s where I really learned to embrace the struggle you are in. Too soon, you will be in a brand new struggle and it will be much more daunting. Having no money is one thing, having no money and kids is a whole different monster.

The journey to be a Custom Tattoo Artist….To be Included, or to be Excluded? That is the Question

I’ve never fit in. Not matter how hard I’ve tried over the years. I think we all have these feeling wrapped around being included or being excluded. Early in my interest in tattooing I read somewhere that those are the two core reasons to get tattooed. If you have read some of my other posts, you may have figured that I have struggled a lot to be included over the years. It led me into a lot of trouble and often when I get there, I spend all of my energy trying to be different and excluding myself in some way. Even now, I am only recently leaning into the idea of going solo as a completely Custom Tattoo Artist after so many years working in and owning tattoo shops.

When it comes to art and tattoos I have definitely always been on the excluded side and happily so. I want to be a Custom Tattoo Artist. I’m just not in to doing all of the same stuff everyone else is doing. It’s weird too, on one hand people generally go and get tattoos as a way of standing out or separating themselves from family and social structures that may have been more oppressive than they thought was due. Now, I love the rebellious aspect, but I’ll never understand why so many people take that step just to look like everyone else.

Here I took a single sculpture of a dragon and produced 5 ideas for larger scale project/layouts. My attempt at “flash”

My mission is to help people tell their unique story. To dig deep into your brain, scoop out all of your great ideas, wants, fears and motivations and then bury it in your skin for the world to see. I love bringing in symbolism and those little Easter Eggs that you wouldn’t otherwise have thought of but make an excellent conversation piece as you blaze the trail of your next adventure.

I do respect people who are steeped in tradition. I understand the cathartic nature of working this way. It is often gorgeous. Unfortunately I just can’t get the idea out of my head that the people who MADE those traditions, were not following traditions, but were explorers or the second generation. And I can’t look at the basic tattoo related things without thinking that the “tattoo style” designs all look so great because so many people have done them so often that as a community it has just become visually pleasing to see comfortable designs and easier for the artist who is mostly able to draw from things they see. This was my problem for a long time and my motivation for getting into work that is so different from the traditional aspects while still attempting to respect the rules that matter and tossing the ones that don’t.

If you are an explorer, a dreamer, an entrepreneur. Come talk to me. I give options and second opinions for free (whether you want it or not sometimes) and am looking for clients with challenging stories to tell. I never pressure the sale but will definitely let you know what I see as pitfalls to your ideas if there are some. I’m seldom looking for people who know exactly what they want. I want to focus on people looking for ideas and ready to go hard for the perfect fit. And I’m willing to travel for work over 3 days or to offer you the most comprehensive service possible.

If you are concerned with fitting in, you should definitely go where everyone else goes and get what everyone else gets. If you want to stand out come talk to me. I often find many clients to be unaware of what the real possibilities are. They just know that they want to be tattooed but have no clue what they would want on their body forever. Turns out, I have an answer for that. As much as you want to be different you likely DO want what everyone else wants, at least at a primal level. You want positive feedback and attention when you enter the fray and from across the room without anyone needing to invade your personal space. You want to tell your story and have conversation boosting Easter Eggs in there to spur great conversations and opportunities for storytelling. If this sounds like something you are into then please feel free to contact me for a consultation.

I do welcome people in the shop but prefer to work over zoom or someplace where I can share my screen and ideas with you in the comfort of your own home. The beauty is that because of the way my design process works I can maximize my output capabilities while offering you something completely unique by using 3d tools in the design process.

I’m happy to chat and thumbnail with clients with no risk and no pressure. If you like what you hear and want to move forward, then you can let me know and I will send you the invoice for your deposit. I won’t charge for the artwork separately, but the deposit is non-refundable and pays for your FINAL session. I need people to be absolutely certain in moving forward with the process.

The work will be a minimum of a month out and during that time we will be talking a bit. More at the beginning. And then I will commence the process for the final work which I will reserve artistic license on because many times people that I work with are unable to envision what I am envisioning. There will be a day where we have covered you in tattoos and you are dreading the details. That’s where we officially throw in the towel as far as money and book a session for you to come in for a half day for me to inspect the healed tattoo, put in the bells and whistles and get some photos. If your skin is too irritated for the photos, we will schedule additional time to meet and take photos with no cost to you. I’ve been horrible about photography in the past but in 2024 there is just no room for that. Photography is an integral part of my ability to market my work and will therefore be part of the entire process.

So, after 20+ years in this business my advice is to go into things as mentally prepared as you can and that comes from knowing what your options are. I tell people that less is more and bigger is better. If you want to look good as you move from across the room, this is how I design. I spent years chasing all the tiny details and while it was fun to work on and cool to look at, if you can’t make it out from your view in the mirror brushing your teeth, no one else will be able to either. Be included in the group of people who know what they want, go for it, and invest in themselves. Be excluded from the impulse buying drones that want to be safe and look just like everyone else.

Currently my books are closed but I do keep track of all my requests and open them frequently to make the next quarter or so worth of appointments. I do make exceptions for consultations from my Wanna-Do page. There simply MUST be something there that gets the creative juices flowing for you, but I am trying to update most of it to video soon. In that workflow, I have room for my final 10 projects at my current pricing.

Custom Tattoos in Missoula Montana

I’ve always strived to do one off custom tattoosI started tattooing in Missoula, MT in the spring of 2010. I had been working for a few years already when I did my first guest spot at American Made Tattoo on Front St. where I worked for 2 months solid. If you know the locations, basically next to Biga Pizza and across from Tamarack Brewing then you know the area is gorgeous and, I was immediately hooked. Front St. in Missoula is the last street downtown before the river and parks and parking. Not to mention I was up here preparing to be a father for the first time I was definitely in a honeymoon phase over the situation.

I went home after 2 months as my then-girlfriend needed me around more. When I came back in the first days of 2011 the opportunity at American Made Tattoo was no longer available but they let me know that a new downtown shop called Blaque Owl Tattoo was just opening up.

It was a great move for me for quite some time but after a few years living basically on the same corner all the time I did become a little less enchanted with downtown Missoula. The homeless problem keeps getting worse as the larger cities pay to bus their problems here. Everyone’s heart is in the right place trying to help. But that seems to magnify problems in the more populated areas. Eventually, I felt that I was at odds with some of the practices in the shop. The home life at this point started to get rocky and I decided the best move I could make would be to remove myself from one of those situations.

After leaving Blaque Owl Tattoo I had planned to move the whole operation down to Lolo, MT but in the end. I found the buildings over on Stockyard. It was a dream come true.

I have loved the idea of tattooing in a warehouse for some time. When I found these units I had to wait an extra month to get in, but I felt that in every shop I had been in, space was always a problem, and this space was going to cure that. My goal was to put the tattooing upstairs and leave the downstairs as an Art Gallery in the front and an Art Studio in the back. Unfortunately, the latter never did get used quite enough. I think the current plan is to move the home workstation back to the shop to fill in that area and keep my schedule a little more regular.

At Montana Tattoo Company nearly all of the success early on came from pleasantly answering the phone and helping people after they were treated poorly in some downtown shop. With plenty of free parking all day and a relaxed environment that has plenty of space, we were able to compete with any of the walk-in shops downtown. We like to watch movies and take breaks to eat with the all-day clients. The one thing that always got to me though was how many of the other artists seemed so successful in such a small town doing things that were identical to each other. Flash tattoos and traditional style are both really popular up here. Even as a person wanting to put in extra work creating custom tattoos, a lot of the clients seem to just want the same safe stuff. That’s not a Missoula thing necessarily, but I think with tattooing in general there are a lot of people on both sides of the needle playing it safe. I feel now that working so hard to please each person who came in the door was not allowing me to work in the style I wanted. It’s just not necessary for things I can draw right on the skin or that clients bring in. If I want to push my style of art and reach a larger audience, I ultimately need to just say, “This is how I work, that’s it.” hang on through all the doubt and insecurity that brings.

Now, in 2024, I’m trying to learn 3d so that I can have ultimate control over every aspect of an image and other people are charging $1000 to tell everyone how to use the free-to-use AI. It’s a competitive world and I have to accept that if I want to create to the fullest of my capabilities, then the hustle and bustle of the walk-in shops and requests are not for me. I always think about the words of Robert Frost “I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference”.

I like to work on a single client a day and have a little more of a relationship with my clients. I prefer to work on large-scale custom artwork on and off the human body in a private location away from the street traffic and issues of downtown Missoula. Luckily we are close to the interstate and the airport so traveling into and out of the shop is easy.

These days I feel my art is really “image creation” in every conceivable aspect of the phrase. I’ve been through all of the different mediums, from watercolor to oil to patinas and all sorts of wild tools in between. Even down to consulting clients about their own personal image and what their tattoos can do for or against them. I’m even playing with the idea of faux rock sculptures. I can work from reference, AI, or nature but my favorite mediums are digital painting and digital sculpture. This allows me control of every aspect of every image from the surface texture to the lighting. This lets me bring all of the lessons from years of realism and gives me unleashed creative power. The one drawback is that the final image is not apparent until far down the workflow, whereas at least with a traditional sketch you pretty much know where everything is going from the gate. For those clients willing to give me their trust and creative control I like to sculpt the subject matter and share the progress up until the point where taking the photo for the tattoo comes into play. I go the long way around, from a sketch on a 3d form representing you to a 2d drawing, to a 3d sculpture, and back to a 2d photo or line drawing so that we can project that back on your body. I like to go over this portion with the client in person and make any final changes or adjustments right there on-site. There is always room for adjustments, but whenever possible I like to go into things with the most comprehensive plan possible. When the design is a body part or less I try to use a representative shape but for backpieces and bodysuits I can make a digital avatar so we can get a little closer to your true form. I believe flow and fit are everything but it has been a bit of a challenge to get people to allow me to push my boundaries without a more clear representation of some of the ideas. That is my current challenge, changing my deadline structure to allow for both the creation of the image and the projection of that image ahead of the tattoo. Luckily all the technology available to us today is helping me meet and exceed the technological goals. Now the trick is getting that work in front of the right people.

My journey to become a high end tattoo artist.

Part 1, Humble Beginnings

Contrast… I feel like most of my life and art is really about contrast, and it took a while to notice and appreciate the beauty that contrast can bring.

Being a high end tattoo artist was never really something I knew was even an option. No teachers or counselors or adults ever allowed me to consider art as a realistic job. I can’t blame them though, I was at least two handfuls, maybe more.

I grew up in an Army family… Don’t get me started down that rabbit hole. Needless to say I didn’t have a lot of strong connections with anyone growing up. This led to a lot of attention seeking and risky behavior.

My earliest memory or story about attempting art was when I was three and we were living in Germany. My dad came home and the neighbor kids were cleaning his car. Apparently, they were trying to keep me out of trouble as I had taken a Sharpie to his nice white Celica. Ever since that day I have no memory of ever being allowed to customize anything. No bikes, skateboards, walls, nothing. I never was even allowed to put stickers on things. To this day. All the magazines, conventions, tattooers and companies I have ever gotten stickers from… I still have them all in bags just waiting for a day to go nuts.

Young Mickey Schlick : Pre-High End Tattoo Artist

The only variation from that was one time in high school my parents asked me to take a picture of Marvin the Martian to get it enlarged so that the bake shop could make my brother a cake. Instead of doing what they asked I just looked at it, got out a big piece of paper and just did the drawing from sight. That little alien may have been the start of it all.

I did know a kid in high school that was doing these cartoon characters. They were black characters sort of similar to the show The Boondocks. Looking back it was probably not really for me to be drawing that, but I did a few and even got Snoop Dogg to sign one on a plane once. Luckily the stewardess took it up to him, so he didn’t really see who was behind the drawing but this had to be somewhere around the year 2000 and people weren’t really tripping as hard as they are these days.

In any event, the attention seeking and acting out eventually caught up with me and in September of 2001, at 19, I woke up in LA County Jail. Now, if you don’t know, then we can just say this is sort of an intimidating place. Especially the 2000 and 3000 floors of Old County downtown 20 years ago. 8 people in the 6 man cells, 6 people in the 4 man cells and out of a row of 160 or so people, maybe 2 or 4 looked anything like me.

The smartest thing you can do in a situation like this is to secure a hustle and become of value to those around you. Understand there is a reason you have two eyes and two ears but only one mouth. I really lucked out with a cell mate that was hustling cigarettes, envelopes and stamps. I saw someone exchanging an envelope worth $.32 with a drawing of a rose on it for a stack of 5 coming back. Now I’m not sure about anyone else, but 5x return is a pretty great deal.

I told my celly that I could draw a little and he got out a bag of patterns, or flash if we are talking tattoos. Really easy stuff, like a rose bud or there was a method of tearing paper and then using it to make a soft pattern of clouds and rain. Anything people could use to send to a mother or girlfriend on the streets to let them know they were special enough to get something unique even in the worst parts of the senders life. That was probably my introduction to both art and business. Life has never been the same since…..

In 2001, I was arrested for carjacking. Long story short, after a rough senior year in high school, the attention-seeking, drugs, and all of that got out of control. I was involved in moving and dealing, mostly party drugs, but at one point, I fell behind on my payments. Since this guy had been to my house, I was worried there would be repercussions with my family. When I talked to him, he said, "If you don’t pay, I can't deal with you anymore." To which I replied, "If I don't pay, I'll be dead or in jail." I didn't pay; I did call from jail.

It was September 15, 2001, four days after 9/11. The towers had just fallen, and like many Americans, I wanted to sign up for service. Long story short, I ended up in a car with someone, and they didn't take me where I needed to go. They tried to get weird, and I pulled out a knife. In the struggle, the guy got hurt and then jumped out of the car. I jumped into the driver's seat and took off. When I returned to a friend's apartment where I was staying, I told them the story. Before I could retrieve my belongings from the car, I was arrested.

I sort of skipped over that part in the first story, but after county, of course, I went to state. Mama didn’t raise no slacker, if you get what I mean. The judge literally sent me to the furthest possible place from my family and any possibility of a visit, about 10 hours away. When I finally got to Susanville, tattooing was fairly prevalent. If you have seen the movie “Ink Nation,” there is a clip of Freddy Negrete talking about learning there on Cascade Yard. I was on Sierra Yard, probably ten years after him, but they did a great job talking about it.

One day something happened on the yard, and they were searching the dorms. One of the guys in the dorm turned to me and told me he had a tattoo machine and that the guards were going to find it, and did I want to tattoo a cross on his leg while he still had it…

You never really know the gravity of the pivotal moment you are staring at when you are on the pivot point. That day changed my life in ways I still have trouble understanding and verbalizing twenty plus years later.

When we got off of lockdown, I had a line of people waiting for me. I couldn’t draw even a little bit. And that continued on Sierra Yard and Lassen Yard (level 3 (cells) in the same place) for about a year. At that point, I figured out that if I was ever going to be a high-end tattoo artist, then I was going to have to learn to draw.

One cool thing I came up on was a Punk Rock Zine called Scratch Magazine. In the back of that magazine was a recurring article about Mark Mahoneys’ Shamrock Social Club. If you don’t know, Mark goes way back to the days of tattooing being illegal in New York, and Shamrock was on the west side of Sunset Blvd in LA, which was a pretty nice area at the time. About four doors from Bel—Aire and walking distance to some of the most famous venues in the world. And the people tattooing from there were Mr. Cartoon and Freddy Negrete. From that time, I have always thought of that place as Mecca for me.

I would be remiss without bringing up that I really did learn some very good and basic business lessons at this time. Tattooing has existed since before any modern border or language and will be here, rain, snow or shine, regardless of regulations and shame. Value transcends social strife and poor environmental situations. Micro-economies exist everywhere, and, most importantly, where there’s a will, there’s a way. I remember this guy showing up on Lassen yard while I was there. He was a black guy, but I never knew his name. Just that he was indigent without a lot of connections. When he came, he had nothing. Of course, it wasn’t really my people, so I don’t actually know all the particulars, but this is what I have carried with me for all these years. I believe he may have gotten nicer clothing issued from the state, luck of the draw, and then traded that to someone who liked looking nice. Someone traded him, and he got some shoes, stamped envelopes, and a jar of coffee. He put these things in a laundry bag and threw it over his shoulder. For the next year and a half, I watched this guy walk laps on the track and be in and out of every building on the yard. Every time I saw him, the bag grew. He was just trading things and making deals. Sort of like these guys who start off on Craigslist trading a pair of glasses and end up in a car just from making different deals and trades with people with opposing value. Understanding that you can produce and identify value, and hustle can exist, in any environment. You just have to outthink everyone else. Also understanding the relationship between effort and value has been vital to me through the years. The guys working in the Boot factory made like $0.15 an hour or something like that. The guys in the kitchen didn’t make anything but got to eat real well and often had goods to trade. I was sitting in my cell drawing for people making $30 a contract; sometimes it was even sent to people outside for me. And this guy just walked around talking to people and making deals and ended up being probably the richest guy on the yard. You must have goals and direction, but if you’ve got the will, there’s a way. That way may not be what everyone else is doing, and may be lonely, but humans are capable of great and extraordinary things. Unfortunately, this experience also drained my empathy for a lot of the people I was in with. Seeing people come up from the dust really only proves that it can be done and must be undertaken by the individual needing the change. It’s great to want to help people, but some of the worst of us had help their whole lives. Change must come from within and does not happen without effort.

I wound down those years with a focus on drawing and learning about art, although Susanville had no art program at that time. At first, it was basics like storytelling and color theory (which took me forever to learn). Soon, I happened across an article that told me that if you wanted to practice realistic drawing, every problem you could possibly run into you can run into between the ears. My love for portraits and portraiture was born in that moment. Becoming a high-end tattoo artist just got that much closer.

I had a good friend during that time. Dreamer. He had at least gotten out and tried to tattoo on the streets before. Not that he really knew what he was doing, but he had a lot more experience than I did. I remember making a little drawing of a character holding a tattoo machine with fish bones inside the coils. I had literally no idea how things worked. Looking back though, I guess I was on rotaries from my very earliest days, which does say something about my early adaptation of those machines.

March 5, 2005, was my first parole date. I was so scared, but you wouldn’t have known it to look at me. Getting out is so much worse than going in. I literally had nothing to do but sit and worry about what I was going to do and where I was going to live for 15 months before I got out.

I tried working at a local motorcycle shop, Butch’s Cycles in Simi Valley, CA, and also an auto body shop, but unfortunately, those didn’t work out too well. Of course, at this point, I was looking for an apprenticeship, and the local HA shop let me know I could get my foot in the door. Unfortunately, I felt that having just gotten out, it was not very likely that I would be able to accept the structure needed to thrive there.

Before I got out, Dreamer gave me his mother's address. I’m not sure how to convey the importance of this gesture, but it is something that you really just don’t do in the system, give out family member info. I was out a month or two before I made it out there, but when I got there, she gave me a tackle box of his old equipment and a power supply. I ultimately never used any of it, but it was a gesture that lives with me today. Sometimes a person just needs a life preserver and to know that someone, even at their worst, believes in them.

I hit the San Fernando Valley, and especially on Ventura Blvd, and asked anyone that would chat with me at all. Of course, that is not really how it works. It’s not really a purchase like that. You can’t just say, "Hey, I wanna learn," and pay the man and learn it all. Maybe you can buy your way in and prove yourself, but what you are taught in that time is rarely everything. There used to be a shop called Art to the Bone on Ventura Blvd, and there was a guy there. Spoon I think was what he went by. We spoke a time or two. The thing is, by the time I had brought out some of my drawings, he had dropped a bomb on me. He noted that I was already doing tattoos in and out of prison, and he was just recently starting to do his own drawings. He asked me why I didn’t just go down to Hollywood Blvd or Venice beach and take my work and get a job… I didn’t have an answer.

Now, to this day, walking into a new tattoo shop is one of the most unsettling and anxious experiences for me. I have no clue why this is. I’ve almost never had a bad experience. Even as I write this, I have a friend opening a new shop, and I haven’t made it over. I mean, technically, I haven’t been in the area, but it’s something I need to do. You would never know this in the moment, of course, but at some level, there is a feeling of being around people who can call you on your bullshit and reject you if you get things wrong. I’ve never really dealt with that, but it does stay in my mind going into new shops even today.

Around this time, I also met Rick. I met Rick at 5150 in Van Nuys, CA when I came in looking for an apprenticeship. Rick had been through it over the years. As a former convict dealing with addiction, Rick was tattooing and owned some sober living homes as well. After being told that there were no apprenticeship opportunities and leaving the shop, Rick caught me outside and told me to follow him home. Once we got there, he basically told me how he sort of identified with where I was coming from, told me his story, and took me out to his little stucco, air-conditioned tattoo bungalow behind his house.

Rick had a giant tool chest of stuff from the CAM catalog and let me buy whatever I wanted from him and then put the word out to the sober living homes and NA community that I was looking for guinea pigs.. Pin cushions if you will, depending on where you come from I guess. He even let me use his little studio to get my first few clients in. I’ll never forget my first. It was a David Boltt piece on the thigh of some old SFV biker chick. I did a little bit of work there. Took my photos, went to Hollywood. Immediately upon visiting Hollywood, I felt I was going to have to go to Venice. Once I visited Venice, which I remembered from my childhood as the best place ever, I felt like I needed a shower and a ride back to Hollywood.

My journey to become a High End Tattoo Artist... part 2

Hollywood Nights…

On the busy part of Hollywood (Highland to Vine) at the time there were like 6 shops. You would think this would create a lot of tension but in fact they were all owned by the same people. Iranian businessmen with a ton of shops ironically directly over the LA subway. 50/50 may not seem so great to some people but stepping out of prison and into $50/hr for whatever I could land was alright in my book. Of course it’s not ever 40 hours and you only get the $50 because there is homework and longevity involved, but it does sound good. I had spent my college years hanging with the fellas, avoided the war, and got out with a career and no college debt. Hard to go wrong… Eventually, I found a way.

Hollywood Nights…I worked at OZ Tattoo, the only one without a headshop or selling shitloads of t-shirts on the block. I took the seat of the illustrious Madison Tattoo who was upgrading to Devil Dolls Studio. For reference, at this time just around the corner a couple of blocks down was the crew of True Tattoo with Clay Decker, Chris Garver, Tim Hendrix, Kat Von D, and the rest before Miami Ink blew up. I met one of the owners, Ray at LA Tattoo on Hollywood Boulevard, told him I was tattooing and brought a few of my photos and he told me I could bring a customer and do a tattoo there. If it went well, I would have a job somewhere on the strip. It didn’t go well. I forget what the tattoo was but the guy was flopping around like a fish and acting like he was giving birth. A real bitch move in one of the highest pressured situations of my life. In any event, Ray did like how I was able to wrangle and calm the client (even though I wanted to put him to sleep) and that I didn’t bring in the most simple thing possible. Three days later I was working at OZ from noon to 2 am at 50% of $100/hr for any hour I could book. I had taken the seat being left vacant by Madison Stone. I was in!

I learned a lot there. I had to, I knew nothing at all, was fresh to using traditional machines, and wound up like a firecracker. I stayed on the grind for the better part of the year and met a few cool people. Bought my Mickey Sharpz and my Brass Swing Gates from Superior which are still at the top of my list of favorites. We would work until last call and then sit in the lot out back with a case of beer until the sun came up a couple of times a week.

Having just gotten out, I, of course, wanted to date. Apps weren’t a thing yet so I found someone on Craigslist. Kimmy was not a bad person, just not my person. Kimmy lived with Cytherea. If you don’t know who that is, it’s worth looking up as she was popular at the time. Trigger warning though, it’s dirty. I remember going over one night to help Kimmy with her puppies who had shit all over the house. Everyone there was playing cards and they had asked me how I got myself into the situation to help clean up the dogshit with the fat chick. My only answer… “the goddamned internet”. Ultimately I became pretty decent friends with one of those guys even getting busted with him later on. If you want a laugh sometime, ask me about Dick Tracy and the Stolen Puppies and I take you on a journey.

One of my favorite people from that time was an older guy down the street named Dusty. Now, I don’t know the whole story but, as I heard it, Dusty had been around on Hollywood and the Venice Boardwalk since the dawn of time. The story I heard was that Dusty had the first shop in Hollywood, it was upstairs near where LA Tattoo was. He told me about an artist who worked for him with a horrible addiction issue. One time he fell out in the bathroom which was covered with blue tiles. He made some artwork about it and that later became the Dr. Feelgood album cover. In any event, around the time that I was ready to leave Hollywood for something closer to home, he was building out his private studio and opened his doors to me.

At the same time, I met Mark. Mark ran Skin Candy and made ink for a few different supply companies. I have some stories about that but at the time I was able to learn a lot about ink and mixing powder pigments. My favorite story for that time was getting to go to True Tattoo (old location) and meet Clay Decker upstairs where he had some pretty good stories about conventions back in the day. For whatever reason they loved the skin candy yellow. I forget what made it great but back in the day yellow was mixed with yellow Listerine and that did something to the mix. His was a generation down from that if I remember correctly but Clay loved that one specific mix.

That didn’t last too long as in January of 2006 I got stopped for making a right without fully stopping and having that contact with police got me a 5-month parole violation. They were arresting me and pulling a ton of dirty flyers out of my trunk. I had gone to the porn awards in Vegas (which was hundreds of miles outside of my allowed radius)and had gotten a ton of flyers signed by the girls at the show for all of my buddies still locked up. My heart was in the right place, but I’ve always been one to test my boundaries.

By the time I was doing parole violations I had already been tattooing professionally but I got deep into portraiture on this trip. My first trip through the system was hanging out with buddies, by the end of it all but by the time of the parole violations, I started realizing that I was meeting a lot of the same personalities and hearing the same stories and meth recipes. I knew I had to figure something out or I would be doing life on the installment plan like everyone else.

The California Prison System, at this time, was pretty segregated. If you have a hustle, that means that your customer base is highly limited to the people to whom you are bound to give the best prices when it comes to tattooing. This is because when you are locking yourself in a cell with a person you are opening yourself up to a lot more risk. Luckily the rules aren’t nearly as clear cut for artwork. Enter, William Maughan. Someone sent me this book when I was down. Had to be my boy Art or my Dad. This was one of my first forays into portraiture. It’s more about blocking in shadows and the envelope method rather than the construction method where you are looking for lines measurements. I highly recommend it as this is not really what I see when people are drawing portraits. If you are like me and certain artistic concepts that seem very mainstream are hard to grasp or understand for you, this book discusses a great way of looking at the head and portraits. I read, and maybe it was even this book, that any problem you could run into in realism you would run into between the ears. That’s what makes portraits one of the better study subjects in my opinion, because the principals can be applied to damn near everything.

I used to charge $30 for a portrait drawn from a prison ID or a picture. Know who has $30 to send a drawing home to Mom? Shot callers. People who are all big names in their community. Great people to know if you are keeping track. Friends in low places. I wasn’t doing any sort of business I had to worry about other than getting ripped off for my labor. I ended up realizing at this point that I had found myself in a really good place. Yes, I was in prison…. Again. But I was able to deal with 4x of the population, all of the important criminals, with basically no risk and living as well as anyone could in the situation. Now the trick was learning how to apply this to life on the streets.