Being a Tattoo artist in Brisbane .. after & during a Cyclone!!

Wassup! If you're local and reading this as it goes up, what a f***in' week, hey! If you're local and reading this long after it's posting, remember Alfred the Cyclone? If you're neither local or know wtf I'm talking about, it's currently my birthday and over the weekend we had a cyclone named 'Alfred' predicted to hit Brisbane & South East Queensland with full force

The title of this blogpost suggests I'm gonna talk about tattooing, and what the f**k does weather have to do with tattooing?? (You might be asking)

Essentially, Tattooers (for the most part) are our own bosses, we sub contractors who work for ourselves. I've recently picked up some work with Queensland Health that I do when tattooing is quiet, which has (after working the passed decade full time & only as a tattooer) has reminded me how differently a lot of folks have it in their professional careers

Most other sub contractors I'm aware of, work in more necessary/demand industry's, while tattooing is going all in as an artist. Meaning it's luxury money for a luxury ( and somewhat unnecessary) service. It's an industry driven entirely by passion & blind ambition, with parasitic outliers  (eg Celebrity Ink & it's associates and other nefarious characters), so not many of us are/weren't ready for when the work dries up

Personally, I've never seen tattooing in such a tense state like it is now, while some thrive without compromise, many others are undercutting, outright begging & doing whatever they can to remain relevant and fortify their hustle. Necessity is the mother of invention, so to see the forced circumstance bloom a 'glow up' in some other of my homies, colleagues and fellow artists, has me surprisingly inspired & renewed in my place within this industry, despite how some are choosing to put themselves out there

High tide raises all ships, I hope everyone throughout becomes the best version of themselves. It's tricky times when we lose money because we've been flooded in, flogged by nature, isolated or even worse, injured. All I can say for my own circumstance is I've fought hard for my life, so I'm starting to feel stronger & more secure than I've ever felt in my life so far. It's been warming for my heart to have friends reach out to see if I'm ok during that cyclone, followed then by well wishes for my birthday. I'm feeling really, REALLY fucking grateful currently

This is the time of year for most tattooers to incur a drop in work (regardless of the current cost of living crisis and recent natural disaster), so things are hard for a fair few at the moment. All I know for me is; as long as you are constantly sharpening your Iron as an artist, every day will feel like a day worth fighting for. I've managed to stay faithful to my promise I made to myself to draw, pencil to paper, no screens for an hour every day. Drawing different subject matters constantly, from scratch, using shape language to birth each sketch

While I've missed a day or two here & there, the evidence is in my mental clarity, positive attachment to identity as an artist and sketchbooks that I seem to lock into on a nearly daily basis. I've been drawing concepts for clients and anatomy from the book, Gray's Anatomy. Next, I really want to sharpen and develop my skill set in Japanese art & Irezumi. So my next book to draw from will be my Hokusai collection book (I acquired from the National Gallery Victoria when his works were exhibited there). If anyone, ANYONE please has any recommendations for a book I can purchase to draw & reference Irezumi from. Whether it's Traditional Japanese concepts like Koi, Dragons, floral, fauna, background & foreground elements, yokai or Kabuki, I'm really keen for help & guidance if anyone has any recommendations or advice

I turned 38 today, I'm so god damn close to being 40, but I can recognise I feel great for my age. I've fought hard for my physical & mental health since we came out of lockdown, priorities I only enforce within myself more each year. I can't escape age & it's decay, but I can show my future self kindness by working today for many better tomorrows

I'm still winging it, flying by the seat of my pants. I've always enjoyed writing & journalling to some extent, so these blogposts have really become a great thing for me to remain accountable to & maintain those writing muscles. Even if no one read these things, or there wasn't an altruistic ulterior motive (showing up this website on google searches), I've come to a point where I still & will still be doing these

So thank you for reading. If you made it this far I really appreciate it

Cheers 🙏🏻🍻🫶🏻