Guy/Russ Collab Recap

Over the course of two days, master tattooers Guy Aitchison and Russ Abbott joined us in Easthampton, MA to collaborate for the first time ever. Russ and Guy worked together in the months leading up to the event to discuss how they could blend together their unique and recognizable styles into one cohesive piece. The result was a jaw-dropping fusion of ornamental and bio-mech that wrapped around eachother through an entire leg sleeve. Both tattooers put in full days working on the piece and got an incredible amount of work done. And the client and fellow tattoer, Brian Geckle of Flower of Life Studios in PA sat like an absolute CHAMP both days so that didn't hurt the process either!

We truely couldn't have asked for a better event experience!  So much hard work and focus. The first day consisted of lots of drawing. Both on Brian's skin to contour the design to the flow of his body and also on the Wacom Cintiq Companion tablets that Guy & Russ use to digitally create portions of their art. Two lucky people that purchased tickets to the event got to take those amazing tablets home and will hopefully bring their tattooing to new levels with this powerful tool! 

After the drawing portion wrapped up Guy and Russ dove into the lower portion of the leg (including that pesky ankle bone section) and got straight to work. This design incorporated a flower of life mandala created buy Russ and some detailed bio work to wrap nicely around it.

The second day focused mainly on the upper portion of the leg and included a gorgeous blue and orange/red mandala with ornamental filigree filled with bio. The picture below is a great detail shot of Guy Aitchison working on some bio inspired filigree. The 3 camers shot that the webcast captured really brought the viewers right into the action as the ink got laid.

All in all there was a lot accomplished over these two days and everyone that attended took a lot away from the experience. All of the professional artists in attendence were able to interact with Guy & Russ and have many of their burning technical questions answered on the spot. 

We had a blast hosting this event and look forward to bringing many more professional delveopment opportunities like this one to the tattoo community. Be sure to check out our complete list of webinars on our website and stay tuned for the upcoming streaming event that we'll be bringing to you live from the World Wide Tattoo Conference in Italy.

A huge thank you to our sponsors over at Painful Pleasures, InkJecta, Eternal Ink, Tattoo Education, Abbott Color Wheel, Off The Map Tattoo, Tattoo Release Forms App, Wacom, and TattooNOW for helping us make this happen!

photos by Rebekah Hanlon of TattooNOW