I have two separate routines for work. it depends whether I am having a tattoo-studio day or a home-studio day.

if I’m working at the shop, I wake around ten or eleven and lay around like a slug until it’s time to rush to work. I arrive, drink coffee, plan out my hours. talk to clients. clean my inks off or monkey with a machine until  “real work” shows up. I leave right after the shop closes for the day. I usually don’t do any other art on these days; working on commission is draining (satisfying though!)

if I’m not going in to the shop, I wake up late, noon or one. I have coffee and laze around a little.then eat, and start looking over the mess I left the previous day. usually I will have something drying and ready to be worked over a little more. so I pick up where I left off. at some point I’ll reach a moment where everything is tacky. then I start something new…I work a little, stop and stare. smoke, have a sandwich and more coffee.

a lot of times I’ll just get in the car and go exploring, searching for objects or supplies, detritus. things that make me feel creative. it’s a lot of walking along the river or the side of the road.

I work until very late at night when I’m doing my own art. I’ll stay up until the birds are talking. sometimes I work all night and into the next day. coffee is my friend. this happens a lot more in the winter. I tend to have a very hard time waking up in the mornings, it’s always been that way.

of course I spend about two months each year  “on the road”; I can’t call it a vacation because I usually am tattooing just about that whole time- I don’t like not working anyway. but when I travel I have no routine at all, and when I return it takes me a while to get back in rhythm with my schedules and routines at home.