Mondial du Tatouage 2013

Fortune will be visiting Paris during the spring for Tin-Tin's World of Tattooing 2013.  

Here's a sweet trailer for the show.

In 1999, Jennifer Billig and I worked together at Tin-Tin's first Tattoo Du Monde.

I was flying under the Outer Limits banner  at this time.

What do I recall from this first experience? Walking through the Charles du Gaulle airport with bubbles coming off my boots. I had been thrown into the pool by some of my tattoo gal pals in Florida at a poolside party just before I left for Europe. Being ridden around the city on the back of Bruno's 55 BSA. Buying flowers at the market for our booth with Jennifer after enjoying our morning continental breakfast. Coming out of a drunken stupor to find myself surrounded by real vampyres. Thankful P.M. was there to pull me out of that spell. Realizing if I hadn't left when I did, I never would have been able to. Rummaging through the flea market with Seth and some pals on the look out for brass thing-a-mick-gigers and special souvenirs. Every night we had a bottle of champagne delivered to our booth. Spitting off the Eiffel Tower and having half of it flip back into my face. Having Tin-Tin make me look at Robert Hernandez's portfolio. Robert was up and coming then and had not reached the U.S. yet with his talent. I was blown away and couldn't wait to tell everyone at home about this phenomenal artist and what he was doing with his tattoos and paintings. The venue music was picked by artist's for the artist's pleasure.

This was the first time I had experienced a promoter working hard to make not only the public but the artist's experience worth the while.

We were entirely spoiled to great dinners by some of the finest chefs in Paris, and had carte blanche to all the after hours clubs.

I stayed up with the late night creeps til' the wee hours of the morning and made it back to my room in time to join the sober folk to see all the sights I could.

I learned from this experience to take in everything.

Sleep? There would be time for that when back on the plane headed for home.

All these years later, I am excited to seeing how Tin-Tin will top himself this time around.

Much love and respect.

When a client wants "someone else" to finish an existing piece.

When a client wants "someone else" to finish an existing piece. This can be a very heated topic for some. I'm not exactly sure why, since it is not our bodies to be territorial over and or our artwork once we put it on other people that pay for our service. Most people that come to me are not looking for a deal to get their work finished. They just want to see their work finished and done properly. There are many variables to consider with this process. Over the years I've had this situation come up and have tried my best not to offend anyone. When a potential client comes to me to finish existing work, I ask them [the client] to let the other artist know first. This is not always possible. Since most times when these situations come up, it's because the client has had a falling out with the original artist, cannot find them, the artist moved to another state/country, or wishes to not have them [the artist] work on them [the client] any longer because they are not happy with the results.

I rarely get clients that will come to me from well established artists. Though it has happened in the past due to the artist/client not getting along and not seeing the relationship ever reconciling. In this particular case, a man came to me that had had a falling out with his artist and just wanted it done. I requested he get permission nonetheless. Which he told me would try. I finally agreed to help him. He had an outline established which I filled in for him, keeping to the integrity of the piece. I worked as if I was doing a collaboration with this artist. Of course after we completed the project, I find out from the original artist that they had reconciled their friendship. Go figure.

It's a rather delicate subject to consider, this helping people achieve a finished piece that was started by someone else. The end result is making the client happy and making effort to be respectful to the original artist if possible. So what if the client just doesn't like the results, because the artist working on them is not at the caliber that they had hoped they would be when deciding to take on a large project? Who is my loyalty to? After considering the options, my loyalty is to the client. And to this art.

There are enough botched attempts out there in the world. I'm sure I have many from my own efforts over the years at trying to develop my own techniques. Am I offended when someone leaves me to go to another artist to get the work I started finished? No. I'm sure it has happened many times over the years. If they leave me, it's most likely because they have good reason. I can only hope they leave me because they have found someone that can do a better job than I can, instead of their having found someone to finish the work for a deal or due to their impatience from having to wait to have the piece finished. In closing. If I can help someone not have to cover their arm in solid black or have to under go many sessions under a laser to remove the mess. I will, respectfully.

June and July 2012

Keeping up with keeping up. Having started into our summer guest cycle.

Summer is really here.

Though today we have had some needed showers, for those that have gardens.

After a week of eighty plus weather in consession, its a small relief for those like myself that enjoy the cool breaks between the heated kisses summer bestows upon us here in the North West.

First up and presently happening is Olivia's Stick n' Poke fun day.

So far....she is 7 down...20+ to go.

What a fun and unique way to mark the day then with an original handpoked tattoo.

The wait is worth the while!

At  the end of June, Danny Boy came up for aweek and brought his beautiful girlfriend Rosie along to share our paradise here with her.

They took full advantage of our bicycle friendly city and put some good miles down figuring their way around town.

Between nailing out some epic tattooing, eating at many of our tasty restaurants, digging through our vintage stores and some site seeing, the time flew by too fast.

For a final epic moment, after missing their plane home, we jumped on the Motorcylces and road up to my local cemetery to enjoy a splendid view of the sun setting over the Willamette valley.

I missed them as soon as they left the city.

Til next time.

Riding the waves.

Fortune Tattoo has been included in some awesome projects this year.

We were included in Bob Baxter's Tattoo Road Trip book on tattoo shops around Oregon. The book is being published by Schiffer Book Publications and should be available for purchase sometime in 2013.

An entire day was spent with our clients here at Fortune while Bob took photos of their work.

We had a great time seeing the diversity our works in one room.

Bob also did small interviews with all the shop owners included in the book, so make sure to check them out on his site.

They are all well worth watching.

We will keep you posted on when the book comes out.

Oregon Represent!

"Alis Volat Propriis".

Also, Fortune Tattoo was included as one of  Matador Magazine's top twenty Iconic Tattoo shops in the world.

I had not done an interview for them, but was pleasantly surprised to see something nice being written about us by someone outside of our Tattoo community.

There are many good articles about other shops on this site, if you are wandering the globe and wish to know the short list to some places worth dropping into.

Olivia also participated in the Pretty Pretty collective down in SF. Hopefully I will be able to participate next year.

I have been in school this summer and have been nailed down to making my brain stretch a few new miles of synapsis growth.

It is a delight to know old dogs can learn new tricks.

I will try to get back to this and update more of our fun happenings.

Next on Track is Lisa Schmoldt and Matt Howse, Faerie Worlds, Seattle Tattoo Expo., among other history making events coming soon.

Custom tattoo design for client reproduced without permission.

So…this was a shock.

The tattoo I did is on the left. I was really pissed at first but now that I’ve had some time to think about it and get used to the fact that nothing is sacred to people anymore, especially with the internet, I’m at peace with it. It’s up to us to educated our clients and also be the ones to give someone their own tattoo and not someone else’s. We must use this discretion since what we do as tattoo artists is permanent. This was not on a flash sheet, it’s an image I painted, put on my business cards, and tattooed on a good friend. It’s personal to me, and probably to them as well.

While I’m flattered (maybe?) that someone liked it enough to reproduce it (without permission or credit, and literally copying it almost exactly), it’s still disrespectful. I won’t name who did it because everybody makes mistakes, but I want to take this opportunity to try to let other people know that it can happen to them, and also to think about it before you just grab something and use it.

In this age of instant gratification, blogging, and reblogging, please credit your sources, or if you want to be even more decent, ask permission. It really goes a long way.

XO

O. Britz

Oregon Ink 5/6-8/2011

Olivia and I drove down for the Oregon Ink convention held in Eugene. Load in was easy. We were surrounded by pals who had opened up all six booths. There was plenty of room to work. Which is not usually the case at many show venues. Since being close to home, we were able to bring our massage tables and some added comforts from the shop. We even had a lounge area for our clients and friends. All three days sped by quickly. I was stoked to hang with some old friends and had the pleasure to meet some new people. Thank you Oregon Ink for having us. Til' next year.

Tattooed ladies make it to Portland

These beautiful tattooed ladies flew up from Oakland, California to Seattle, to join some other pals. They rented a car and drove down to Portland, Oct. 1 to sit the day with us. We had started Zulma's peacock half sleeve down at SkullandSword in SF over a year ago. It was nice to get back in and put some color down for her. Something new to look at for the next couple months, til we can sit together again. Dani has been here a couple times since weve opened the shop. Yesterday we added the line work for the inside of her left sleeve, and added some more color to blend the old and the new piece together. Next session will be to either color the inside or lay out the lower part of the sleeve. After our tattoo session, the grrrls followed us over to the Heavy Metal Heart Show at Nemo. That was a great turn out. I was so stoked to see Molly Quan's beautiful work. Nice to see some old friends on the walls as well. After the run through the show we blasted over to Namaste to enjoy the musical genius of the Advisory. The grrrls kept stride, even after being tattooed all day. Til' next time. Love and light. Safe travels, ladies.