IronlinePortland ME Book
Sections

Flash, tools & tradition

The craft behind the work

Flash sheets, ink, needles and the older tools the craft was built on: the traditions the resident artists draw from. Fresh and healed portfolio work is shown in person at the free 20-minute consultation.

Flash, tools and traditions

Rows of ink bottles ranked on a shelf with their caps upward.
Plate 01Pigment ranked by colour. Every station at Ironline is set with fresh single-use ink caps poured from vegan, lightfast pigments, and an opened bottle is dated and retired on time.
Four bronze tattooing needles mounted in bone, laid in a line on a white ground.
Plate 02Bronze needles mounted in bone, from a museum collection. How the points are grouped still separates a line from a shade, though today every needle cartridge is sterile, single-use and opened in front of you.
A hand-painted flash sheet: butterflies, swallows, a rose and a lettered cross, laid out in rows.
Plate 03A hand-painted flash sheet from the 1930s, drawn at the size each design was meant to be worn. The resident artists still paint their own flash that way, and each design is tattooed once and then retired.
An extreme close-up of a needle laying a black line into skin, with ink pooled at the point.
Plate 04A line being laid, close up. Depth and spacing decide whether fine linework still reads cleanly in ten years, which is why the first pass is never the fastest one.
A sheet of flash drawn in ink on paper: dragons and coiled serpents.
Plate 05Dragons and serpents in ink. A long coiling subject is drawn to the curve of a limb rather than a rectangle, which is why large-scale work begins with an in-person mapping consultation.
Gloved hands working on a finished back piece, the machine held like a pen.
Plate 06Gloved hands at work on a back piece. The machine is held like a pen and the free hand stretches the skin, with a medical barrier film over everything either hand touches.
A carved uhi chisel laid flat on a white ground.
Plate 07A Māori uhi, the chisel used for tā moko, from a museum collection. Tattooing is far older than the machine, and the studio's blackwork and ornamental artists study traditions like this with respect.
A drawn torso covered in figurative tattoo work, shown front and back.
Plate 08A nineteenth-century drawing of a fully worked torso, front and back. A sleeve or back piece is planned as one flowing composition across every session before the first line goes in.

Talk to the studio

Bring the idea, leave with a plan

Describe the idea in a message or at the free consultation, and the studio names the artist, the style and the rate.

Book a consultation Send a message Email the studio

The column

A short note when new flash goes up

Holiday hours, new flash, an artist joining or leaving, a rate that moves. Two or three notes a year and nothing else.

The privacy notice explains what happens to the address.

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