New Year's tattoos and photography w/ Inkmaster winner @ryanashley!

Good tidings, Steemit! I hope you’re all maniacally calculating your STEEM gains. WTF?! $7 STEEM?! Is this real life? If you’re wondering if cryptocurrency is infiltrating the mainstream, I just sat down and helped my mom, @bonni, buy $500 of XRP. It’s such an exciting time. 

In my previous post, “STEEM, EOS and BitShares is allowing me to pursue my dream job!”, I’m mulling the reality that 2018 is going to be the year I’m actually able to do comics for a living. All because of Steemit. I watched a lengthy interview with @dan recently, talking about freedom; not technology, or blockchains, but freedom from masses of people that weren’t able to pursue the lives that wanted. That mission statement is hitting me in the face like cold water because it’s actually happening, and I’m one of those people.

Fear not, though. I’ll still be shooting. Maybe not as often, but I love photography. Once the “Dark Pinup” book through @wcpublishing is released, I’m looking so forward to six months of staying home, drawing and inking […not paying @bryan-imhoff any STEEM for our art accountability/shaming initiative].

I am on the road now. As I mentioned in previous posts, I had arrangements to shoot with my friend @ryanashley for Tattoo Society magazine, and Steemit. We were both going to sit for another agonizing 8+ hours in the tattoo chair, getting one step closer to finishing my sleeve.

I was @ryanashley’s last tattoo of 2017. We started around 1:00p.m. on New Year’s Eve and finally wrapped up at 9:30p.m. It was….without exaggerating…the worst pain in my life. I should note, I spent four years as a professional death match wrestler. I’ve had thumbtack, barbed-wire and florescent light bulb matches. I’ve been set on fire. Nothing….nothing hurt as bad as this. It’s “the ditch”. The small crook on the inside of your elbow. You cannot mentally prepare yourself for the pain that causes. @ryanashley went over it with a liner, two shaders and finally, a liner of white, which felt like a bright red poker across skin that was already exposed and raw. Turned out great, though. So close to being done!

On New Years Day, I met her at her place. We talked over what needed to be shot for the magazine, and what we wanted to shoot ourselves. Magazine features are typically direct, and kind of “stock”. When we’re shooting for ourselves, we can explore crazy ideas and experiment with outfits, poses and light […or lack thereof]. 

I’ll have new photos of @ryanashley soon. First, I need to finish the feature for Tattoo Society, because they’re dude in a week. The shoot for the “Dark Pinup” book is going to be unreal. The “Proclivities” chapter was just slightly underrepresented and @ryanashley shot some of the sexiest images I’ve never seen her take. I’m so grateful for that and it’s a testament to how long we’ve been friends. Here are a few behind the scenes images taken with my phone from our recent shoot together. 

*Please, if there are @ryanashley fans reading this post, please leave these images here. I know they’re public, but Steemit is important to me and this community deserves to see content you can’t see on Instagram or other silo social networks that give nothing back to their users. Thank you!

I'll leave you all with a photo of @ryanashley in her natural habitat.

Thanks for reading, voting and resteeming! For more photography, illustration, art and stories behind the work, follow me here @kommienezuspadt!