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David, left and Bryn in the studio © Christian de Sousa 2000 

Can you describe doing Bryn's tattoo? 

'I've always been interested in religious icons and symbols, although I'm not religious myself. And I've loved the Dali painting, I think it's superb, so it kind of came to me straight away to do that.


We thought we'd write something in Latin above the top of his back, which took quite a while to work out what we were going to have. It needed to be something that would fit in basically. Something simple, something that got to the point, and finally came across "Ecce Hora" which is "behold the hour of destiny".


I thought it would take seven or eight hours, but I think in the end it took about five to finish because Bryn is very, very good. It is quite painful on the back especially down in the centre, but he was very good, he took it very well. Once I get going I do work very fast, but the initial first hour was horrendous, it was really frightening.


The actual nerves of doing any tattoo is frightening but this was it in this black and grey sort of form. I've never done anything this size before in that style. I was fairly confident and then the minute I started it, like I do with all tattoos, I thought "what am I doing, you know, this has got to be right, this is going to be seen by so many people", I did get very nervous about it. But by the second hour I was well into it and enjoying it.


You kind of want to do it all at once, like a sketch, but with this I can only do like his right hand and arm, and then the next session the other hand and arm, and then the legs and then the hair, so it was very difficult to get into that routine each time. I think I just did the arms and shoulders over the next couple of hours. The last session on the actual main figure was his hair, which I was very worried about because hair's very difficult to do. But once we got going it was all fairly easy really.

Whenever you do any tattoo, I think anything that looks good on paper, once you put it on the skin it tends to look a hundred times better.


I had an idea what it would look like but when it's actually on the skin, and a figure this size, as Bryn moves his body the figure moves - I think it looks better than I thought it would to be honest.'

 

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