Twelve Years, One Binding

The drawings in this book were made between 2000 and 2012. The book was published in print and as a digital edition, the digital one dated 2015: seventy-one pages of dragons, all in black and grey, all drawn as working tattoo flash.

Flash was part of my work long before this book. I drew it in sets for years, sheet by sheet, and the dragons accumulated until there were enough of them to stand on their own. This is that collection, closed and bound.

Drawn to Be Used

Flash has a different contract from custom work. These sheets were made for other artists: clear enough to transfer, readable in black and grey, built so that a tattooer in another city could put one on skin without guessing what I meant. Every page was meant to be used again and again, by hands I would never meet.

That is the honest purpose of a flash book, and this one was made to serve it.

Not From My Hand Twice

I do not tattoo from these pages myself. When a client brings a design from this book and asks for it as it is, I decline the copy and draw something new that keeps the idea and answers their body.

It is not a rule against my own past. A drawing fixed on paper belongs to the day it was drawn. The person in my chair belongs to the day they are in. Why a copied design stays a product, whoever drew it first, is its own conversation: Process or Product.

A Hand of Its Time

Looking at these pages now, I see a hand that had not yet narrowed. Japanese structure sits next to solutions from other traditions, and the shading carries the habits of years spent in black and grey. That was my hand in that period, and I leave it as it is. A milestone is useful precisely because it does not move.

The road from there to the work I do now is told elsewhere: Judged a Decade Later. What the dragon carries as a subject, and how I approach it today, belongs to the dragon page.

Where to Find It

The digital edition is available through the link below, and the book is also on Apple Books. The designs remain under copyright and are offered as reference for tattooing, not for resale.