Japanese tattoos

Japanese tattooing has a grammar to it. Subjects carry meaning — the koi that climbs the waterfall, the hannya that shows a woman's grief turned to rage, the foo dog set at a gate to guard what is behind it. Backgrounds are not filler either: wind bars, water and clouds are what hold a piece together and give it movement across the body.

I work in both traditional and new-school interpretations. Traditional keeps closer to the old rules of composition and subject. New school pushes the linework bolder and the shapes more graphic, and lets colour do something the old work would not have asked of it. Both are on this page.

Nearly all of it is black and grey, often with a single red carrying the eye through the piece. I take on everything from a single mask to a sleeve built over many sessions — and a piece designed to wrap the body is drawn for that body specifically, not lifted off a page.