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.