Rebekah Crossing the Bridge

I met Rebekah back in June at Bowling Green in lower Manhattan. I spotted this interesting tattoo on her arm and she was kind enough to share it with us:

Rebekah credits the super-talented Sue Jeiven (@sweetsuetattoo) from East River Tattoo (@eastrivertattoo) with the work here. Rebekah designed and sketched it and Sue "improved and put her artistic spin" on the drawing.

She told me that the piece depicts her and her partner on a bridge, which one crosses to "find your truer self." They are symbolically crossing the bridge together and he is sporting antlers because the deer is his spirit animal.

Thanks to Rebekah for sharing this cool tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2017 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Oh Deer! Tattoosday Walks Into a Bar

Last Friday, I went to a book release party for my friend and tattooed poet Jeanann Verlee at the Side Walk Cafe & Bar in the East Village.

I had a Sixpoint  Sweet Action (ok, I had two - the Happy Hour deals are great) before the reading started at the bar's performance space.

The beer was cold, rich and delicious, and was poured by the bartender Amy, who was sporting this incredible tattoo:

This black and grey deer was accompanied by a landscape, decorated on the other side of Amy's arm:

Amy told me the work was inspired by the fact that she had been "living in a shitty apartment" and her room had a terrible view, but it did have a poster of deer and wolves in it. This poster was a distraction and made the space a little more bearable.

At East Side Ink, she worked with Josh Lord, who "drew it up and molded it to [her] musculature and shoulder blade." The end result was this beautiful black and gray landscape.

Thanks to Amy for sharing her tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Be sure also to check out Jeanann's fabulous new book Said the Manic to the Muse. She's an amazing poet!

This entry is ©2015 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Celeste's 8 Point Buck for Her Grandfather

Last week I was walking on a subway platform in Brooklyn when I passed a woman with an amazing tattoo on her upper left arm:

Fortunately, Celeste, the owner of this great tattoo, was happy to share it with us and she explain its origin:

"My grandfather, in 1950, he shot a deer that was the biggest 8 Point buck that was shot for ten years in New York State ... My family still has the bust of the deer so I took pictures of it and I gave it to my artist ... the branch is for a tree that I used to climb in his back yard ... and there are also tree rings throughout the design."

Her artist is Grant Lubbock from Red Baron Ink, on the Lower East Side of New York City.

Thanks to Celeste for taking the time to share her cool tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2014 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Work by Rev. Jorell Elie on Tattoosday

Trying to not to talk about the scarcity of posts back in August, we're expanding a little here, and sharing work by Rev. Jorell Elie.

I am told Elie "is an incredibly talented artist out of West Hollywood, CA, who happens to travel to Brooklyn, NY quite often (this month in fact)."

No arguments there. The photos were sent along to highlight the Rev.'s work.

Our readers are invited to check out the website here to see some of the bigger pieces that are works in progress.

Looks like the artist Rev. Jorell Elie works out of  The Honorable Society in West Hollywood, CA.

You can reach out to Elie at tattoosbyjorell@gmail.com, or follow him on Instagram @thejorell.

 

And, as mentioned earlier, you can check out more of this talented artist's work at www.jorellelie.com.

Thanks to Jenna Elie for sending these pictures along and alerting me to Rev. Elie's upcoming trip to New York.

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. Photos reprinted by with the permission of the artist.

If you are reading this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Max's Spin on a Traditional Gypsy Tattoo

I was passing through Penn Station late yesterday when I spotted Max, who offered up this fascinating tattoo:


At first glance it looks like the traditional gypsy piece, but if you look closely at the back of the gypsy's head, you can see Max added an element that extended the design up and around his right arm:



That is a deer skull that the gypsy woman is wearing, complete with a set of antlers.

When I asked Max about this he acknowledged that the tattoo, in concept, had started as just the old-style gypsy profile but, growing up in Maryland, he said that there were deer everywhere around his home, and that this was a nod to his former home state.

Perhaps reading too much into it, I asked him if he was taking a symbol of home and tying it to the nomadic image of the gypsy to illustrate a dichotomy between the two contrasting lifestyles. He nodded and said he hadn't thought of it in those terms before, but it seemed to make a little sense if you looked at it like that.

This is one of nine tattoos Max has. The piece in question was designed by Paul Bosch at Saved Tattoo in Brooklyn. Max came to Paul with the concept and left it to the artist to design the tattoo. Work from Saved has appeared previously on Tattoosday here.

Thanks to Max for sharing this fascinating spin on the traditional gypsy tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!