Day 206 – 365 / July 25th 2015

Two bottles of ale given to me for my birthday today by John and Pauline and Damo and Gill. They know what I like, for I am rather partial to a nice ale and I enjoy a well designed beer labels. I like to see good use of colour and typography in their design. These two have a colour palette that my Bradford City biased eyes are drawn to and the relaxed treatment given to the font is appealing and suits the names splendidly. The fact that a pin up girl graces each of them is simply an additional attraction

I do like a pin up girl!

In fact, I particularly like the “Dizzy Blonde” and am considering adding her to my left arm sleeve. She will wonderfully compliment the Mary-Louise Parker influenced “Bantam Belle” of my right sleeve.

I sometimes refer to this sleeve as my “Two Cities That I Love”  – Bradford City and New York. The sleeve contains many elements personal to me; it features the pin up in a claret and amber bikini to represent my team and she holds an apple (I use an Apple Mac to earn my living); she sits on top of a postcard that features New York images; their is an old style radiogram to reflect my love and enjoyment of music and especially radio; lyrics from “Wherever You Roam”, a song by The Proclaimers are in there too, they remind me of my daughter.  My tattooist ,the brilliant Tommi Cjezak, has added several street signs in a NYC style to indicate my business as a sign maker and these signs include the date of the Valley Parade fire as a tribute to the 56 victims. As a quirky detail, he has added my blood group onto the radiogram.

Other bits include the motto “Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose” from “Friday Night Lights“, a US TV show about American football; it’s a fabulous show and very inspiring. Recent additions include a portrait of my late grandfather, James William Dimmock, in his RAF uniform, his service number on a dog tag, his nickname “Digger” and a Spitfire plane and cockpit instruments – he designed instrumentation for them during the war. Two of his 1930’s jewellery designs he created for Cartier are also in there along with elements to reflect his ingenuity and artistic nature, he was a fine watercolour artist in his later years. I will speak to Tommi and ask him to work his magic with his guns.

Tommi has done all the work on my sleeves and I wouldn’t consider using anyone else. I know I can take germs of an idea to him and he creates magic with them. If you’re thinking about inking give Tommi a call.