Alan‘s little hedgehog, Max, posing in front of a memorial tattoo for his predcessor Ruby… Oh no… Oh no… Now I can’t get the theme song to Max and Ruby out of my head… damn you Alan!

I’ve seen so many kids tattooing their friends and family, either directly, or even just having their drawings applied that I almost think I need to dedicate a section to it. Brett and Mike went on weekend trip, and Brett got a tattoo from a diminutive source… He writes,

“My friends Bob and Joy Roughton were at the show — I used to work with Bob down in Newport Beach and in Pico Rivera for a while. I was at their wedding, and have known their son Kai since his birth. I knew Kai had tattooed his name on Bob about two years ago, but when I got to the show on Friday I found out he was preparing to tattoo his uncle Al. I joked around with him about what his hourly rate was and all that stuff, and was really impressed with his maturity. I started honestly considering getting tattooed by him. Of my friends that I’ve made since being in California, the Roughtons/Garcias have been a few of the dearest. We don’t see each other often because they moved up to Oregon, but I would definitely put them on my list of trustworthy family. I just didn’t have a clue what I would get tattooed by Kai if I did let him do it.

As the weekend progressed I met some nice folks from Hayward, CA that work at a shop called Black Wing. They were all a lot of fun to hang out with, and for a while our whole booth took turns playing with their children Lili and Jens. They had a big bag of prehistoric animals and I kept thinking about how the sabertooth cats actually resembled a werewolf head I used to draw as a small child. By the end of the weekend I decided that was the image Kai would tattoo. It was a lot of fun, and his parents did as much as they could to not stifle Kai’s natural ability. That is of course a very kind way of saying my tattoo is extremely shaky and looks like a character from the squiggle-vision cartoon Dr. Katz. But come on people, do you think I expected a six year old to tattoo clean lines with a machine that weighs almost as much as him? Hahaha. I had Kai sign the piece and paid him for his work — I had found out that back home someone broke into their car and stole his video games, and thought maybe this would help replace one or two. Lots of people got video and photos and I entered the piece in Tattoo of the Day context just so Kai could get a little recognition and feel special. He’s a really awesome kid — so much so that the promoters made a special ‘Best tattoo by an artist under twelve’ category which of course he won, being the only one present that fit the criteria.”

I like Mike’s facial stripe as well!

E-Vomit really loves her cat! This tattoo portrait based on it was done by Gil at Jolly Roger’s in Montreal, Canada.