Old Tattoo Documentaries

[gougetheeyes]

there's a documentary called TATTOO THE WORLD on ed hardy. it came out in 2009/2010. it's been shown at some festivals and in LA and SF. it's not on dvd, but i was tipped with a director's copy. it's pretty awesome.

Caught this in LA when I was there in September, pretty awesome. Ed was there and spoke a little bit and I got to meet him after -- also pretty awesome! Then I wrote him a letter when I got home and I think I scared him

[gougetheeyes]

Also Shawn, thank you a ton for sharing these. Really incredible. And looking forward to the others!

[ShawnPorter]

Spider Webb, NY 1974

[kylegrey]

When Higgs talks its with much emotion and conviction -"spiragraphed symbolic snot " .Nice one Shawn ,thanks mate

[ShawnPorter]

The Frisco Skin one was a huge inspiration on me when I first started getting tattooed. A lot of the work I get is "weird" (especially by the standards that were in place in 1990) and I'd walk into shops, barely 18 and ask for really odd stuff. Most of them were polite to me, but.... they didn't get it.

To have Higgs saying that it's ok to get things that people consider stupid and that it works anyway... it just opened my eyes to what I was missing. That there were people out there who were roughly my age who were into weird comics and art and all that shit AND who tattooed it. After that, I just had to be patient and find the right tattooer. Which is a good lesson when you're young and you just want to be tattooed. Patience is hard found sometimes.

[kylegrey]

Funnily enough a lot of that "stupid " stuff appeals to me also, the kinda stuff people wouldn't expect of the wearer.I'm not a biker but lately i find myself liking a lot of those 80's biker images that were quite crude but cool .

[ShawnPorter]

Funnily enough a lot of that "stupid " stuff appeals to me also, the kinda stuff people wouldn't expect of the wearer.I'm not a biker but lately i find myself liking a lot of those 80's biker images that were quite crude but cool .

At the time I was a weird comic book reading horror and scifi nerd (so, pretty much no change) who would just slap stuff together- "I want a black panther, but he's an incarnation of St. Sebastian... oh, and don't make him growl, cause he's a fraidy cat" could easily get you a dead silent stare in 1990. I eventually got that in 2000 from Hoffman.

it took me a while to hit my stride with getting what I want, but now I just sort of ramble on until my artist of choice says "I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about, but lets nail it".

[Petri Aspvik]

Shawn, did you get tattooed by Higgs?

[ShawnPorter]

I never did. Big regret there as I had no excuses why I couldn't have gotten tattooed by him. Just always assumed I'd get around to it, then it was to late.

[Petri Aspvik]

Who was your Higgs "substitute" at that time?

[ShawnPorter]

I never had anyone ape Dan's work; I'd never say "can you make this look like Dan Higgs" ya know...

At the time I was getting a lot of work by Mike Wilson (Full Mahakala/Peter Pan backpiece) and John Himmelstein (who Wilson worked with). John was a comic book illustrator so his stuff had a nice graphic comic vibe to it and Mike and I just sort of clicked. Neither of them thought the stuff I was requesting was too weird and both really helped me start getting big tattoos, versus the little things I had been picking up.

[SkinheadPete]

there's a kid I heard that ripped off DAn Higgs style and Robert Ryan and tries to steal Ryan's clients....fucking internet stealers

[ShawnPorter]

Thanks to scottyb, I'll be throwing up highlights from Dave Lum's Heavy Duty tattooing tomorrow or Sunday!

I lost the master files to that and the Corbin/Higgs footage, and instead of making me recapture everything, Scotty has been a champ to get the files I gave him back to me. Woo hoo. The Lum one is GREAT.

"I wouldn't mind tattooin' a big ol black panther with a big ol pink dick on some gal".

Classic.

[sboyer]

if i remember correctly malone is getting his torso tattooed by lum at some point in the movie?

[ShawnPorter]

Different Mike Malone.

[sboyer]

i was confused about that because i thought i read in the trevino book that lum and malone didn't really get along. could be wrong.

[ShawnPorter]

It was difficult to compress that video into 15mins; there's so much classic material in it so I tried to distill it into the "essence of Lum".

Between downloading it, converting it, editing it, rendering it, uploading it and waiting for youtub to process it.... the 15 mins video will represent about five hours of on task time.

This process isn't always fun but it's great to hear Dave talking about black panther dick.

[ShawnPorter]

[hogg]

I lived in Austin from 1990 to 1997, so I've seen more than my share of Dave Lum tattoos. That video was a time machine for me! I was really happy to see Waldo in it at about the 8:00 mark. I met him when I was just getting my first tattoos, around 1992. He already had his hands done, which, 20 fucking years ago, was out-of-this-world insane. But every time I ran into him, which was often, we'd talk tattoos and he would just light up. Even though I was just a kid with 2 or 3 tattoos, he never condescended to me and was always cool as hell.

Here's are some then-and-now pics of him with Viktor the Viking:

[ShawnPorter]

Wow! Haha. That's great. What's on Waldo's face?

[Avery Taylor]

Wow! Haha. That's great. What's on Waldo's face?

That is a goatee.

[hogg]

Haha, nice on, Avery.

Shawn, those are howling Rottweilers.

[sboyer]

victor and stephanie are very nice people.

[ShawnPorter]

Tattoo City « Occult Vibrations

[jayessebee]

Thank you again - so good to see this stuff