J. Arthur Loose

6/1/05

So. At long last, I'm finally undertaking a full body tattoo in the Norse Urnes art style. Inspired by my friend Keith Alexander, I'll be keeping a blog while I work on it. I think it might be interesting for some of my friends, family & customers to read about the process... and my motivation.

I got my first tattoo at the age of 18 from Juli Moon, in Glen Burnie, Maryland. It is a direct expression of my belief in what popularly came to be called Asatru, or a belief in the Old Norse Gods and I was surprised to discover that it's a fairly popular tattoo for just this reason. Juli was great. I told her I was off to art-school to study jewelry & metalsmithing; she told me she'd always wanted to be a jeweler. The original tattoo, done entirely in single-needle, looked exactly like the original Hammer, found in Gotland. Unfortunately, as many tattoo artists later discovered, the single-needle technique had a tendency to fade over time. Fortunately, Juli had told me to come back for some trade when I was a successful jeweler. I looked her up some ten years later, and she reworked the tattoo & added the flames for this. The flames, progressing through the spectrum, represent the Norse concept that the inhabitable world exists between realms of fire & ice; there is also a myth concerning Thor & the Rainbow Bridge, Bifrost, which he cannot cross. Though departing from my original concept of historically possible artwork, it felt just right.

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Each man, from the tip of his toes to his neck,
is covered in dark-green lines, pictures and such like.

-Ibn Fadlan, Arabic chronicler, 921 CE.,
on the subject of the Swedish Rus.

...I first read this statement long before I got that Hammer tattoo. I'd always wondered what they must have looked like... other descriptions indicate "...intertwining birds & beasts." I suppose the imagery would have related to the common artistic styles of the day. The Scythian tattoos certainly look just like other Scythian artwork. I've always thought that the Urnes style was the most developed & beautiful of Norse artwork. In fact, my second tattoo, by Marcus Kuhn, is in this style.

...Yet I remained fascinated by the concept of being *covered* in this style, especially as it is commonly a vehicle for Runic inscriptions and thus holds vast magical potential...

6/2/05

Almost every single ancient Northern European body that has been discovered with the skin intact has had tattoos. I believe it is deeply important to mark our experiences on our bodies; it is talismanic magic. Ask anyone who has a tattoo and most will tell you what it *means*. I've even observed that ditzy young girls who get tattoos seemingly without any intent at all are still actively taking control of their own bodies, and that in and of itself can be a very powerful statement.

The day I started the body-piece was also an act of taking control. If there are things one wants, one must simply make them happen. It's a fine balance of doing things in the real world & envisioning them in others. I had a local artist start the piece; he does good work but hadn't a lot of experience with very large gestures. As glad as I am that he started it, someone else needed to finish. Luckily, Juli wanted to do the piece. I returned with a bribe and we had a long design session... That's a preliminary sketch by Juli above.

6/3/05

Tuesday we had the first ink session to go over the previous work. Alas, unbeknownst to me, the previous owner of Cat's car cross-threaded the spark plugs & the new ones I bought to insure my return trip won't go in. Cat works 45 minutes in the opposite direction from Juli, leaving me with two options: drive her to work, pick her up and add 4 hours to an 8 hour round trip... or take the bike. Forecast calls for showers & thunderstorms & I wonder what riding home with fresh abrasions will feel like. I literally make poor Cat wait at the door while I make up my mind at the last minute. I'll take the bike. Next time I'll even remember that Juli's off *95* and not *495*. I arrive an hour late but having only been lightly misted by the Gods, who deem to favor my ride. Glad I took the bike... I'd have been too late for conscience in the car.

I forget what the needle feels like until it goes in; right on the sternum. Some say it's the most painful spot... I'll get back to you on that one. Yes, it hurts at first but then something else takes over and soon we're chatting away. Juli's got a light touch. She's wearing a wrist-brace and I realize why she doesn't do much decorative work these days. I feel honored that she wants to undertake such a large piece with me. We cover the prior work and the black looks so much stronger & smoother I can't believe it.

The ride home is great. The weather had actually been *warmer* in New Hampshire & Vermont. I catch a beautiful sunset in the mountains of New Hampshire. Soon I'm doing one of my favorite things: motorcycling on a nice, warm night. I used to have dreams of flying on just such nights... I enter that world. The tattoo feels fine and I arrive home after stopping at Charlie-O's for one much needed beer. Turns out my bartender's been proposed to. Congrats!

Sleep.

7/12/05

So I didn't think any of this was going to be easy. The last session certainly wasn't, though the tattoo looks phenomenal. Maybe tomorrow I'll get a pic up...

I'll post about that in a bit. Today I lost a great friend, Keith. Yes, the same one referenced in the first post here.

I met Keith back when I lived in NYC. I went to The Gauntlet, NYC's premiere piercing establishment to ask about piercing jewelry, since I was interested in designing some. I noticed a card with an Ingwaz Rune on it. Ing is a Rune of growth, fertility, & another name for Freyr. A trip to Brooklyn and a six-pack later I had a friend. I hadn't yet met anyone with a similar Norse worldview.

Keith and I had some crazy times at the Wicked Monk. I remember when he was losing the piercing shop I stayed up all night convincing him he'd be fine. I remember the amazing transition he made from extremely adorned Piercing Guru to corporate info-tech Suit. Regarding my approach to bladesmithing he once said : "*** We are so alike. Get into something and quickly get up to speed and then... :-)"

Nope. Not up to speed like you, bro.

I hope you went like you lived!

There's a wake on Thursday. Such a sad excuse to see Old New York Town.

8/25/05

So it's taken me a while to recover and get back in the spirit... but this is the result of the first bit of color work. It's hard to capture the subtlety of the color with the camera, never mind the interaction with the red hair. In the sun there's a great play between the gold & the blue / purple. Also not well captured is the eye, which we decided to color like a red opal.

The trip down to the studio was relatively uneventful. I even got to use my car, which made the return trip easier, if not quite as pleasant as a motorcycle ride. I'm glad I was in the car actually, it's true what they say about the sternum being painful. I hadn't noticed it with the line work so much, but the wide shading needle and the relatively broad area being worked... ouch! I even had to take pain-breaks; and I really do have a high threshhold for pain. It's so high that when I broke my back the doctors thought I was cogent enough to walk out of the emergency room. I told them I really didn't think so, but if they insisted I'd try to sit up and get out of the bed. My vision went a very interesting shade of yellow and I lost consciousness. "I told you so," was all I said upon coming to, "now will you x-ray me?" Three fractures & a compaction! Anyway... yes, the sternum hurts; beauty is pain!

8/25/05

The car... the car. Spent $300 on the coils, only to lose power the next day and spend $90 figuring out that it was due to "bad gas." Leave the next day for a 12 hour drive and the brakes start grinding somewhere in Pennsylvania. It never ends. What is it with me and four wheels? Two wheels good... four wheels bad. I have to take the bike down again. It's already getting a little bit colder in the mornings here; I shiver despite the fleece & scarf until I get to Massachusetts. I'd spent the previous night gesture drawing on myself. I slept in a long-sleeve shirt to preserve the best example. It's a pretty simple matter of fine-tuning the placement and working out the details on the hand. I'd always thought it would be fitting for the left hand to be grasping a pair of tongs, since it's grasping at a Hammer on my right. Luckily, there's more than a few representations of tongs in Norse Art. We've only sketched the tongs in as we're going to put flames around them and get them to visually match the Hammer.

I had Juli pick out some nice stones for a necklace. I'm also working on a damascus ring / knife. I want to have something physical & finished before my next session and I have a few outstanding commissions to finish before then. I'm going to let the motivation work me over...

11/9/05

-An Abrupt Change of Direction-

It's been a busy couple months and I can't believe I have gone so long between sessions. I spent a few days ahead of the appointment sketching gestures on my body and photographing them. I'll spare you the self-porn as I'm getting to the part of the design which necessitates full frontal nudity. The halting point has been the shoulder, where the very first tattoo, laid in haste, ended on a difficult note. If you look at the first picture from 8/25, you'll notice that the line ends and points over the nipple and across the pectoral. A great deal of the intent behind this tattoo is to move away from the convention of full-coverage and yet have a design that covers the entire body. The goal is to make it flow with the body in both stasis and movement while maintaining true to the Urnes style. It's complicated further by the limited amount of ink-work per session, meaning that the design must be almost entirely conceptualized before executing.

As a result, we spent nearly three hours drawing gestures and looking at designs until we hit on the right concept. One of the beautiful things about Urnes is the appearance of continuous movement. Nearly every runestone has an irregularly bordered space, and the nice ones have an unimpeded design which utilizes that entire space without crowding it. Not only do we have to do this on an awkward space... it's three dimensional; but there are also multiple visual cues which must be dealt with, such as musculature, nipples and birthmarks.

We're satisfied with the concept of directional change in the body-painting above. Now to refine it. I like the spiral as a finial... it needs to reflect the one on the neck. I'd like it to look like the finial in the lower left hand of the rock-carving: those are classic. Perhaps playing with the spiral placement in the juncture is also in order.

Anyway, if all I do this month is nail this aspect of the design, I'll count myself happy. We filled in the outer lines on my arm. When the peeling stops I'll post a picture.