247 Ink Magazine (December/January) 2015-2016 Issue #6 | Page 34

translates into my love of tattooing animals, skulls and flowers. I’m not so into bio-mechanical or geometric tattoos.If clients come in looking for that I will happily refer to another artist at the shop. Do you like helping people design their tattoos or are you ok with “Do whatever you want to do”? Yes, I need some direction and generally don’t mind if someone has very specific ideas for their tattoo. I will help steer them in a better direction or make suggestions if their ideas are too much or won’t work together as a tattoo. It’s definitely nice when people step back and let me do what I enjoy but if someone says ‘do whatever you want to do’ they’ll end up with flowers so generally I try to get some sort of subject from them. How old were you when you got your first tattoo? What was it and how do you feel about it today? I got a little chair outline on my lower back when I was 18. I was in school for Furniture design and I naively thought that was what I would be doing with the rest of my life. Whenever I have a client who is in a lot of pain I always tell them about how I nearly passed out getting this tattoo and the artist had to go get me a snickers and coke. It’s about the size of a dime and took the artist literally about 3 minutes. It always gets a laugh and helps my client feel better. What was the inspiration behind some of your own tattoos? 32