Friday, April 29, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Monday, April 25, 2011
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Friday, April 22, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Capricorn
Capricorn by Angela McEwen featuring scoop neck tops
I made this for my little Endangered Gelatinous Substance to wear.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Unabridged Interview with Tattoo Artist Clark North as found in Tatuagem Arte E Comportamento Magazine
hi Angie, this is the last interview i did for a tattoo magazine, it took me like 4 or 5 days to type all this, i type so slow that is hard for me to answer things via internet Lol...but i do hope you enjoy and feel free to use it in your blog as i think your good people, and would love to have you as an avenue to let people know me a bit better-yer friend clark.............
1) How long have you been working as a tattoo artist?-
i started working at Kari Barba's shop in Anaheim California in 1994 but was tattooing illegitimately at home for a long time before that!
2) How did you begin?-
When I was a kid my mom had a guy friend that was so heavily tattooed that he looked like no other man, he was the coolest fucker i had ever seen. When my dad was at work she hung out with him, from when i was 4 till i was about 6 (naughty woman lol). i would sit at the table with him while he drank coffee or whatever and i would try to draw the tattoos he had, on paper and or on myself. when i was 7, 8 and 9 years old i would do neighbors birthday parties for their kids turning 4 or 5 and draw tattoo's on everybody, the parents would give me like $5 for a couple hours of drawing and i thought it was a real job ;^) in high school I did a few tattoos on myself and a couple friends by hand and with a home-made rig, nothing skillful, nothing with any real quality that’s for sure, but cool shit none the less, hell nobody had tattoos back then, so I thought I was cool and most people thought I was stupid for liking tattoos. For a couple months when i was 17 or 18 I tried to hang out and learn stuff from Cliff Raven at "Sunset Tattoo" in Hollywood, but was quickly given the boot as, like a dumb kid, I never bought tattoos and I said something Cliff didn't like, so he told me to take a hike. around the same time I got tattoos from Mark Mahoney and was helped out with this & that by him and sometimes Mike Brown if I had a question about something, if I was lucky I would get an answer, mainly only if I would do them a favor, run an errand or bring them some money :)
... "Those are some great memories"...but, of course, I wasn't allowed to tattoo at any shop. I tattooed at home on friends and their friends when I was lucky, but I wasn't very good. Most of my friends had no interest in it at all...a few years later I lost my eye and my mother died, all inside of one month, and I lost it. I went to live with my aunt in Florida and tried to get my head back on right, I almost opened a little tattoo shop there with encouragement from my cousins, but I didn't know enough to tattoo full time any ways ...took about a year to get out of that depression anyways.
Then I moved back to California and lived with friends and in my car for about 7 or 8 months till I saved up enough money to get a first and last deposit for an apartment...i talked to one of my experienced tattooist friends about an actual apprenticeship and was told that "he had never seen a good one eyed tattooer" and he was not really into apprenticing me...I still tattooed at home once in a while but was very discouraged and it was hard to learn and teach myself to draw again without depth perception from losing my eye, very hard...after about a year I went to Mark Mahoney and talked seriously again about an apprenticeship...he said that Rick Walters might do him a favor and help me out and he sent down to Rick at Bert Grimms in Long Beach California , the first time I went down there he took my art work that i brought with and stuck it in a locker and asked how much money I had in my pocket and I said about $4oo, so he took it, and told me to come back the next day, i didn't see that artwork again for a couple years because, he said that i needed to learn how to design a tattoo, not pencil sketch, he wanted me to forget what i had been doing and start over, i am very grateful for that...the next day he had a couple machines for me to use at home instead of the crap I was using, and he said I could hang out to watch and listen while he worked, as long as I was "out of the shop" by the time the night shift came in, cause they would get pissed that he was helping any one out that wasn't a real apprentice. Rick was in his late 40's then... for the next couple few years that is how it went with Rick... I would tattoo at home at night and he would help me out during the day , and all along keeping my morning job at a commercial print house, 4:00 or 5:00AM at my morning job 1:00 or 2:00PM at ricks shop then 7:00PM till late with drawing and or tattooing at home... a few years like this was pretty hard on me and I lost a bunch of weight and weighed like 145 pounds, and at 6 foot 2 a lot of people joked about me looking sick lol..Any way then after getting a bit better at it, Kari Barba gave me a job at her shop, outer limits in Anaheim California.
I still don't feel that I really had the true hang of proper tattooing for another 5000 or so hours, and feel that it took 5000 to 10000 hours in the skin before I really had a following that could support my family, but still with no retirement, and I can't put my children through college like I wanted to...
to put things into some sort of time frame, my last year in high school was 1980 and I was not hired by Kari Barba until 1994 or 95..if i did not love tattoos themselves from child hood, no way would I have been able to stick it out, and it has been hard, nothing has come easy or quick...
3) What do you think of the new generation of tattoo artists?-
i love the caliber of artists that are tattooing these days, but do see a lot of tattooing being done with no concern for what the tattoo will do in the skin with age...it’s important in learning to tattoo, that the tattoo needs to be readable in 10 or 15 years, hell even 20 years, not just the day it is done...tattooing without concern for things like this give professional tattooing a bad rap and people don't come back, and they tell their friends what happened to their tattoo...
4) Tell me something about the tattoo business in your country?-
something that i love seeing these days is the amount of tattooers that are really getting into traditional, nostalgic, styles of tattooing...i love the origins of decorative (pictures rather than symbolic) tattooing and i love the last 100 years of traditional tattooing...if these things get lost, like was happening in the late 1980's and in the 1990's, we can lose such a great connection to the craft...
5) Do you know or have you heard about any Brazilian tattoo artist?-
i have a small circle of friends and don't get out much, i don't travel because it adds too many bills onto the ones i'm already trying to pay off (medical crap) lol, but on the internet i have seen many good tattooers from all sorts of places around the world. Brazil seems to have a great love for the traditional tattoo and flow of the tattoo on the body; this is rare in a lot of the tattooing being done around the globe. many communities teach each other in the simple fact that you see tattoos being done by locals easily, and each visual can teach the viewer, whether it be what looks great or what does not look good...i love what i am seeing from Brazil in the aspect of good flow, good form and strong line to direct the eye, guiding the eye to view the piece correctly is important in tattooing.
i started working at Kari Barba's shop in Anaheim California in 1994 but was tattooing illegitimately at home for a long time before that!
2) How did you begin?-
When I was a kid my mom had a guy friend that was so heavily tattooed that he looked like no other man, he was the coolest fucker i had ever seen. When my dad was at work she hung out with him, from when i was 4 till i was about 6 (naughty woman lol). i would sit at the table with him while he drank coffee or whatever and i would try to draw the tattoos he had, on paper and or on myself. when i was 7, 8 and 9 years old i would do neighbors birthday parties for their kids turning 4 or 5 and draw tattoo's on everybody, the parents would give me like $5 for a couple hours of drawing and i thought it was a real job ;^) in high school I did a few tattoos on myself and a couple friends by hand and with a home-made rig, nothing skillful, nothing with any real quality that’s for sure, but cool shit none the less, hell nobody had tattoos back then, so I thought I was cool and most people thought I was stupid for liking tattoos. For a couple months when i was 17 or 18 I tried to hang out and learn stuff from Cliff Raven at "Sunset Tattoo" in Hollywood, but was quickly given the boot as, like a dumb kid, I never bought tattoos and I said something Cliff didn't like, so he told me to take a hike. around the same time I got tattoos from Mark Mahoney and was helped out with this & that by him and sometimes Mike Brown if I had a question about something, if I was lucky I would get an answer, mainly only if I would do them a favor, run an errand or bring them some money :)
... "Those are some great memories"...but, of course, I wasn't allowed to tattoo at any shop. I tattooed at home on friends and their friends when I was lucky, but I wasn't very good. Most of my friends had no interest in it at all...a few years later I lost my eye and my mother died, all inside of one month, and I lost it. I went to live with my aunt in Florida and tried to get my head back on right, I almost opened a little tattoo shop there with encouragement from my cousins, but I didn't know enough to tattoo full time any ways ...took about a year to get out of that depression anyways.Then I moved back to California and lived with friends and in my car for about 7 or 8 months till I saved up enough money to get a first and last deposit for an apartment...i talked to one of my experienced tattooist friends about an actual apprenticeship and was told that "he had never seen a good one eyed tattooer" and he was not really into apprenticing me...I still tattooed at home once in a while but was very discouraged and it was hard to learn and teach myself to draw again without depth perception from losing my eye, very hard...after about a year I went to Mark Mahoney and talked seriously again about an apprenticeship...he said that Rick Walters might do him a favor and help me out and he sent down to Rick at Bert Grimms in Long Beach California , the first time I went down there he took my art work that i brought with and stuck it in a locker and asked how much money I had in my pocket and I said about $4oo, so he took it, and told me to come back the next day, i didn't see that artwork again for a couple years because, he said that i needed to learn how to design a tattoo, not pencil sketch, he wanted me to forget what i had been doing and start over, i am very grateful for that...the next day he had a couple machines for me to use at home instead of the crap I was using, and he said I could hang out to watch and listen while he worked, as long as I was "out of the shop" by the time the night shift came in, cause they would get pissed that he was helping any one out that wasn't a real apprentice. Rick was in his late 40's then... for the next couple few years that is how it went with Rick... I would tattoo at home at night and he would help me out during the day , and all along keeping my morning job at a commercial print house, 4:00 or 5:00AM at my morning job 1:00 or 2:00PM at ricks shop then 7:00PM till late with drawing and or tattooing at home... a few years like this was pretty hard on me and I lost a bunch of weight and weighed like 145 pounds, and at 6 foot 2 a lot of people joked about me looking sick lol..Any way then after getting a bit better at it, Kari Barba gave me a job at her shop, outer limits in Anaheim California.
I still don't feel that I really had the true hang of proper tattooing for another 5000 or so hours, and feel that it took 5000 to 10000 hours in the skin before I really had a following that could support my family, but still with no retirement, and I can't put my children through college like I wanted to...
to put things into some sort of time frame, my last year in high school was 1980 and I was not hired by Kari Barba until 1994 or 95..if i did not love tattoos themselves from child hood, no way would I have been able to stick it out, and it has been hard, nothing has come easy or quick...
3) What do you think of the new generation of tattoo artists?-
i love the caliber of artists that are tattooing these days, but do see a lot of tattooing being done with no concern for what the tattoo will do in the skin with age...it’s important in learning to tattoo, that the tattoo needs to be readable in 10 or 15 years, hell even 20 years, not just the day it is done...tattooing without concern for things like this give professional tattooing a bad rap and people don't come back, and they tell their friends what happened to their tattoo...
4) Tell me something about the tattoo business in your country?-
something that i love seeing these days is the amount of tattooers that are really getting into traditional, nostalgic, styles of tattooing...i love the origins of decorative (pictures rather than symbolic) tattooing and i love the last 100 years of traditional tattooing...if these things get lost, like was happening in the late 1980's and in the 1990's, we can lose such a great connection to the craft...
5) Do you know or have you heard about any Brazilian tattoo artist?-
i have a small circle of friends and don't get out much, i don't travel because it adds too many bills onto the ones i'm already trying to pay off (medical crap) lol, but on the internet i have seen many good tattooers from all sorts of places around the world. Brazil seems to have a great love for the traditional tattoo and flow of the tattoo on the body; this is rare in a lot of the tattooing being done around the globe. many communities teach each other in the simple fact that you see tattoos being done by locals easily, and each visual can teach the viewer, whether it be what looks great or what does not look good...i love what i am seeing from Brazil in the aspect of good flow, good form and strong line to direct the eye, guiding the eye to view the piece correctly is important in tattooing.
6) What techniques do you use in your tattoos?-
i like to use a strong line and i don't blend grays with color, the grey muddies up the color in a few years, the same as it would if i poured grey milk into a colorful bowl of fruit punch, the bright color would get muddied up, ( use a colored sharpie on a tissue paper to see what tattoos do with time, yellow sharpie does not cover gray, it does not change the gray to yellow, the gray changes the yellow to gray) i use black next to color to brighten it with a "tight" blend into the color if it is a shadow, but not gray. it does take black to help the color stand out because the skin is a very low contrast medium, very little contrast is in the actual tattoo itself, so i think of it as tricking the eye into thinking it is seeing more contrast than it actually is, mid tones do not help with this at all so i generally stay away from gentle blends. i like bold fields of tone and color, over exaggerated contrast the day i do the tattoo will give it an attractive contrast when the tattoo settles in the skin...i let the line separate the layers and make sure i see that before i start finishing the tattoo, but sometimes i do the bolding of the lines at the end of the tattoo to see the kick it gives the piece as needed to please my eye....i try to create at least 4 layers in a tattoo, example- if i do a snake with a flower, the snake head and body that is on the same plain makes the first layer, then a snake body part that goes behind the layer of the snake head is another layer, when a flower (or anything i like to design in) is added i can create another layer between the first two, this is my favorite way to create separation and definition, snake face=layer one, snake body behind snake face=layer two, flower=layer three, snake body behind flower= layer four, this makes the piece look 3 dimensional...then if back-grounding is added i can even find two more layers or dimensions, say the back-grounding is water, a splash in front of the snake is one more layer or dimension and the water behind the snake is another layer, i like to create even more layers sometimes with another splash behind the snake or flower adding yet another layer of dimension, but this is tricky because too much will clutter it up and the eye won’t know what it is looking at, so larger work is the best to multi layer, with small work i keep it very simple and keep it down to 2 or 3 layers...in the large work i do i am very aware of the back ground, being aware of where the back ground is going and where it is coming from... one thing i don't like the look of is too many colors in tattooing, i like to let the line and form entertain the viewers eye, too many colors looks like a big bag of candy to me.
i like to use a strong line and i don't blend grays with color, the grey muddies up the color in a few years, the same as it would if i poured grey milk into a colorful bowl of fruit punch, the bright color would get muddied up, ( use a colored sharpie on a tissue paper to see what tattoos do with time, yellow sharpie does not cover gray, it does not change the gray to yellow, the gray changes the yellow to gray) i use black next to color to brighten it with a "tight" blend into the color if it is a shadow, but not gray. it does take black to help the color stand out because the skin is a very low contrast medium, very little contrast is in the actual tattoo itself, so i think of it as tricking the eye into thinking it is seeing more contrast than it actually is, mid tones do not help with this at all so i generally stay away from gentle blends. i like bold fields of tone and color, over exaggerated contrast the day i do the tattoo will give it an attractive contrast when the tattoo settles in the skin...i let the line separate the layers and make sure i see that before i start finishing the tattoo, but sometimes i do the bolding of the lines at the end of the tattoo to see the kick it gives the piece as needed to please my eye....i try to create at least 4 layers in a tattoo, example- if i do a snake with a flower, the snake head and body that is on the same plain makes the first layer, then a snake body part that goes behind the layer of the snake head is another layer, when a flower (or anything i like to design in) is added i can create another layer between the first two, this is my favorite way to create separation and definition, snake face=layer one, snake body behind snake face=layer two, flower=layer three, snake body behind flower= layer four, this makes the piece look 3 dimensional...then if back-grounding is added i can even find two more layers or dimensions, say the back-grounding is water, a splash in front of the snake is one more layer or dimension and the water behind the snake is another layer, i like to create even more layers sometimes with another splash behind the snake or flower adding yet another layer of dimension, but this is tricky because too much will clutter it up and the eye won’t know what it is looking at, so larger work is the best to multi layer, with small work i keep it very simple and keep it down to 2 or 3 layers...in the large work i do i am very aware of the back ground, being aware of where the back ground is going and where it is coming from... one thing i don't like the look of is too many colors in tattooing, i like to let the line and form entertain the viewers eye, too many colors looks like a big bag of candy to me.
7) Besides being a tattoo artist, do you have any other professional activity?-
not really, i do paint and draw a lot, but that is not a business to sell art, i do it to try out new things. i think the last place to experiment and try new things is the skin, so i do ideas "on paper first", then i am not working things out in peoples tattoos, they would have my experiment for the rest of their life if i did that lol.
8) What are your favorite tattoo artists? Which one has influenced your work?-
my favorite tattooers are my friends, they have taught me so much in the past 30 plus years, but as far as people i think have changed my thinking in tattoo lately, i love the work horitoshi, he keeps things simple, layered and dramatic, with great separation in design...often less is better and it has taken a long time to teach myself how to do that the way i do it today, i think when i really looked closely at horitoshi's technique and style it helped me so much that i jumped a stair step or two in my goals as a tattooer.
9) Leave a message for our readers-
Whatever i do i won't stop learning!
Born in 1963 I don't feel I know everything that I want to, and have many years coming to learn and pick up new tricks. I still draw, design or paint every day to learn and teach myself new things and techniques to better my art and skill...I study Japanese art and tattoo books all the time, as if I were in college, constantly!...I try to learn from the people I work with everyday and hope it passes on to my clients tattoo and in turn I get closer to myself and the tattoos i do.
not really, i do paint and draw a lot, but that is not a business to sell art, i do it to try out new things. i think the last place to experiment and try new things is the skin, so i do ideas "on paper first", then i am not working things out in peoples tattoos, they would have my experiment for the rest of their life if i did that lol.
8)
What are your favorite tattoo artists? Which one has influenced your work?-my favorite tattooers are my friends, they have taught me so much in the past 30 plus years, but as far as people i think have changed my thinking in tattoo lately, i love the work horitoshi, he keeps things simple, layered and dramatic, with great separation in design...often less is better and it has taken a long time to teach myself how to do that the way i do it today, i think when i really looked closely at horitoshi's technique and style it helped me so much that i jumped a stair step or two in my goals as a tattooer.
9) Leave a message for our readers-
Whatever i do i won't stop learning!
Born in 1963 I don't feel I know everything that I want to, and have many years coming to learn and pick up new tricks. I still draw, design or paint every day to learn and teach myself new things and techniques to better my art and skill...I study Japanese art and tattoo books all the time, as if I were in college, constantly!...I try to learn from the people I work with everyday and hope it passes on to my clients tattoo and in turn I get closer to myself and the tattoos i do.
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| Clark and his Boys. |
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| Clark and his Wife Terri. |
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| Clark's handy work. |
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| Clark? |
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| Clark rocking out as a teen. |
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| Everyone should have one of these who like this kinda stuff. |
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