Red Region Inferno

Honey Nut Cheerios is one of my very favorite cereals.
This stuff is YUMMY!

Honey Nut Cheerios was introduced in 1979 by the General Mills as the first variation from their very popular regular Cheerios.

When it first came out they actually had nuts stuck to the cheerios with sticky honey and sugar.
In 2006 for some reason they took away the nuts and changed up the flavor.
At first I wasn’t impressed with the change, but it grew on me and I ended up loving the cereal all the more for it’s new flavor and texture.

Honey Nut Cheerios has a great mascot.
Buzz The Bee or as some still call him… “BuzzBee“.

Honey Nut Cheerios Buzz The Bee Tattoo

This cereal mascot character has been one of the most popular ever.
It was introduced with the very first television commercials for the cereal and has never needed replaced to keep people interest.
Both adults and children alike love the bee.

Originally this funny little bee didn’t have a name. He got his name in 2000 when a fifth grade girl won a national contest to name the bee, dubbing him “BuzzBee”.
Later this was shortned to just “Buzz”.

My favorite Honey Nut Cheerios tag-line was (and is) “It’s a honey of an O.”
It’s kinda naughty and very yummy… I love stuff like that.

A few other good ones existed though. My faves in order….

1. It’s a honey of an O.
2. It’s Irrezzzzistable!
3. Little O, Big Taste!
4. Nobody can say “No” to Honey Nut Cheerios

The most disliked tag-lines for the cereal (my least favorites) are…

1. Bee happy, bee healthy! (the current one)
2. Race for the taste!
3. It’s Honey Nut Cheerios! (duh?)

So… as a tattoo is Buzz cool?

Heck yes he is.

Buzz makes a great tattoo and like a slinky he is fun for a girl or a boy.
Buzz has appeal to both sexes and doesn’t seem to be a pansy, but he is no tough guy either… and he represents one of the most yummy cereals in existence that actually isn’t 100% bad for you.

Honey Nut Cheerios actually still has some nutrition and is semi high on fiber.
Yay for bad for you cereals that we can pretend to be eating semi healthy with!

In short… “The Honey Nut Cheerios Bee is a rock’n tattoo!”

Like the bee? Check out more of my cereal mascot tattoos here.

I believe in art therapy.

When life chops you up in a blender and dumps you down the drain – create some art.

At the end of what I call my first life I filled a sketch pad with a ton of drawings.
About a year into my new life I tossed the sketch pad in the garbage.
Most of what I created in that sketch pad I hope to never revisit in my mind.
I did however rip about a dozen drawings from the book before it went in the trash.
Those drawings survived the trash because somehow they still touched me, but didn’t make me sick to my stomach with nasty feelings and bad memories.
Some brought back pain and sadness… feelings of loss… yet no illness type feelings.
I decided since they didn’t want to make me sick I should keep them.

I called this little drawing  Sacrificed.

Sacrificed

I didn’t call it that during it’s creation.

I gave it the title only after it was done and I looked at it to see what my  achy mind had made.

Sketches and drawings in general can tell some fucking crazy stories about what can be going on in an artists mind.
The speed of creation allows them to tell these stories even better than paint because they allow no real time for contemplation and unlike paint they can’t shift into new images.
They are like snapshots of feelings and emotions.

When I look at this it is like looking at a photo from long ago.
It is not however a photo that captures reality.
It is a snapshot of my state of mind.

This image shows a place I pray to never visit again.
The end of my first life broke me in a way I was never able to recover from.
My drive left me for good.
My self confidence and my huge ego vanished forever.
I am and always will be just a small part of what I once was.
My thought is that if I ever reached that point again I would lose what is left of my art.
To never draw, paint, tattoo, or create anything again would be so hard.
No outlet would exist.
I would be done.

My second life is turning out o.k.

It is not the wild whirlwind adventure my first life sometimes was… and it is more stressful.
Yet it offers me calm moments.
I am no longer a megalomaniac and have huge bouts of depression and self doubt, but the pressure of always doing amazing things is gone.
Nothing extraordinary is expected of me in my new life.
I am allowed to just exist.

For the time being… That is what I wish.

To just exist.

To rest.

It is super cool that I have an international clientele.
People come from all over the world to get tattoos from me and that makes me feel pretty darn good.
It especially makes me feel good because I am not always easy to find… so sometimes people need to really hunt.

On the other hand it causes me a problem.
I love to see the finished product.
A tattoo isn’t really finished until it reaches 6 months to a year in age.
It changes a lot during those months and I do my tattoos for that finished look.
When people travel from far away to get tattoos from me I very seldom see them again.
That means I rarely get to see my finished (healed and aged) tattoos.

I’d guess at least half o the work I do is from out of state and about 15% is from out of the country.
Cool… but it sucks I don’t get to see the finished tattoo and know the client is happy.

Sometimes though A client sends me a picture.

Super cool!

This picture was sent along with a thank you note from the client. It shows off her reverse image sailing tattoo I had done for her about a year previous.

I cropped the image to not show the faces… but still I am sure you can all get the idea of the picture.
The client was nice enough to think of me a year plus later when she saw the tattoo on her back and sent this picture along with a super nice note.

Images of my work in real life situations are my favorite.
Much better than just a close up of the tattoo to me.
It is one of he reasons I tattoo.
Unlike paintings…. Tattoos move.
They travel the globe and all different sorts get to view my art.

So…
about the tattoo.
The client travels and races sail boats. It is her hobby.
She was in Australia when she got hold of me to set up the work so I was actually confused when I found she was from DC.

Anyways… I can’t recall the type of sailboat, but she was very specific and sent me some pictures.
She also described how they turned.
I ended up watching some videos to really get a feel for it and then I went to work.
She was interested in my multi dimension reverse image color style stuff and wanted something centered on her back.
She didn’t care to much about how much I utilized the negative space as long as I used it and she wanted some bright colors.
Besides that she let me go with it.
The design was done with no rough work. It came together very easy.
She loved it.
The actual tattoo took about 6 hours.

I took a picture, but it came out shiny.
I will however share anyway…

The not very good picture I took of the multi dimension reverse image sailing tattoo when it was fresh done.

The coolest part of this tattoo is kinda hidden.
You will notice the base shape of the entire design is a copy of the primary boat.
The entire right side color wedge is a sail… but the super sweet part is in the water.
The entire boat is there.
I worked the boat into the water so as to not be easy to notice or distract from the waves, but the whole thing is there.
It was extremely fun.

Now for some extras…..
A couple semi famous quotes that I particularly like involving the wind and sails:
First ~ From William Arthur Ward…

And second ~  From Jimmy Dean…

I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.

You gotta admit… Those quotes rock!

Now a fun fact ~

Have you been Minding Your P’s and Q’s?

I sure hope you have. We have all heard this saying before , but who the heck knows what it really means and where it came from?

 
People pretty much use the Minding Your P’s and Q’s saying nowadays to imply that you are on your best behavior.
They really don’t know what the P or the Q stands for though.
The saying comes from old navy sailors.
The “P” is for pea jackets and “Q” is for the officers queues (pig-tails, wigs).
When it was time for inspections they had best have their P’s and Q’s in order!

I seem to have been getting to serious lately with my posts so I think it is time to share another one of my  cereal character tattoos.

Today we have Jose.

This fabulous little monkey may look like he is eating a poop ball… but nope.

Jose The Cocoa Krispies Monkey As A Tattoo

What we got here is a cocoa krispie.
Jose was the first mascot for Cocoa Krispies when it came out back in 1958.
They traded him in pretty fast for Coco the elephant, but Jose the monkey was first.

I guess Kellogg’s figured out it looked like this funny little monkey was eating a turd. Maybe somebody complained… I don’t know.

Certainly  makes a pimp cereal tattoo though.

Just for fun I will give you some Cocoa Krispies mascot history.

• 1958 is the one and only Jose. A super pimp chimp with a taste for poo.
• 1959 we get Coco the elephant who just happens to look like a pink Dumbo.
• 1963 The Hanna-Barbera character ‘Snagglepuss’  took the job of  Mascot.
• 1965 Cocoa the ape man came and went.
• 1965 Snagglepuss returns.
• 1968 brings us Ogg the Caveman. He sucked! Total dork of a caveman in my opinion.
• 1971 brings us Tusk the brown elephant. He acts just like Coco, but is brown with tusks.
• 1981 Kellogg’s gets smart and just gives the job to Snap, Crackle and Pop.
• 1990  They make Coco the Monkey the Mascot again, but this time he is a bad ass and doesn’t eat poo.
• 2001 Someone at Kellogg’s realizes people like Snap, Crackle and Pop , so give them the job back.

Yep… Seems Kellogg’s just doesn’t know what direction to go with this particular cereal and the mascots for it’s publicity campaigns… but that’s cool.

Chocolate cereals kinda sell themselves.

Just a little chunk of flash from my Zombie Dolls series.

Don’t really have much to say about it.

Don’t think I need to say much.

A picture is worth a thousand words they say.

Entrust

For those who are not of the tattoo world… “Flash” is a term used to describe the drawings and sheets of drawings you find in tattoo studios that are for clients to choose from, get ideas from, and be inspired by.
In general “Flash” is meant to look semi fancy and draw the eye while actually being very simple of design to keep the cost of tattooing low.
Detail is often drawn with quik style illusions allowing for easy tattooing.
If a client wishes a more fancy version… we add to it.