LUCKY BASTARD - A Missionary of Traditional Tattooing

LUCKY BASTARD -  A Missionary of Traditional Tattooing

LUCKY BASTARD -  A Missionary of Traditional Tattooing

Tattooing and tattoo consciousness has inevitably evolved since its introduction to Europe and the USA. It became a widespread socio-cultural reality penetrating through all classes of our society. Throughout the years we have witnessed many of a tattoo artists, rather coming then going, bringing new ideas and creating new styles. The norms for this production find their roots in the ethics of the each individual artist. Some of them, unconsciously, lacking respect towards their clientele not realising, or being completely oblivious to the fact that the value of the tattoo lies not only in the artistically aesthetic output of their ideas on a skin but in its power and durability as well. The others, being truthful to themselves and  to the World help us open our eyes wide for the sake of increasing our knowledge and better understanding for this particular art form. One of  those people and one of the most outspoken proponents of the need for rigorous self discipline and harmonious blending of knowledge and arts, is Lucky Bastard. 

Lucky was born in El Paso, Texas but before he could even walk, his parents moved to California. There, growing up on the streets of Los Angeles, during the 1980's, he started to form and shape his outlook of the World around him. Incapable of offering the unconditional love and blind obedience to authoritarian dogmas he was instantly drawn to the rebellious yells of the loudly opinionated punk rock and rocketing gang scene and inseparably to it, mesmerizingly picturesque tattoo scene. So it wasn't really a surprise that his first encounter with tattooing was while in the juvenile justice penitentiary system where he got his first tattoo.  Not too long after he got released from the penitentiary destiny took him to the 'dirty shop on Hollywood Boulevard' where he got his first professional tattoo. This act caused an irreversible chain of  fortunate events for Lucky. 

Lucky comments: "The whole deal changed for me at that dirty shop on Hollywood Boulevard. I got skull and the dagger tattoo on my right upper arm. Right away I knew that tattoos were for me just didn't know to what extent. It didn't take me long to realise that I wanted to be on the other side of it. From that moment on everything started slowly going on for me and in the end it turned out that tattoos saved my life. Since I am not being able to have a regular job from 9 to 5, becoming tattoo artist saved me from becoming a career criminal."

Still it wasn't until Lucky's second tattoo was done, by Joe Vegas,  when he finally made up his mind saying to himself that that was not only something he wanted on himself but something that he could do for a living. And it was Joe Vegas who helped him out to get in the business. 

"Back in the late '80's were not that many tattoo artists in Southern California. Most of my friends were older than me, most of them were either punk-rockers or gangsters and most of them were having tattoos. Joe Vegas, among them, was the guy who really helped me shape my whole idea of tattooing. He helped me get first job as a helper at The Pike, Bert Grim shop in Long Beach. I was working there just for a while and then they moved me to another shop, Long Beach Tattoo, owed by the same people where I got an apprenticeship working for the guy named Snickers. He was a natural caricature artist who drew really well with limited effort. In the beginning I learned basic stuff about drawing and tattooing from Joe and Snickers and later on I ended up learning from the Shaw Family. That was a perfect place not only to learn about tattooing but also how to deal with crackheads and hookers which made dealing later with the regular clientele a lot easier for me.  Also by studying Pat Martynuik's flash and Terry Tweed's line drawings and observing rock solid tattoos of Bob Roberts and Mike Malone I learned how tattoos should look like."

After few years working in LA Lucky moved to San Francisco where he spent next five years working at The Picture Machine. All those experiences helped him create his own style what he calls himself "tradition with progress" (the phrase for which he credits Chris Garver), a style which would be somewhere in between "Pat's raw and Terry's meticulously refined drawings. From The Picture Machine he went on further working briefly on Haight Street before 'hitting' the road, traveling around the globe. His favourite destinations were, and still are,  Amsterdam and Tokyo.

Lucky explains: "While I was in California I constantly kept hearing from many people about the stories from Amsterdam. Joe Vegas alone told me tons of stories which intrigued my curiosity and I decided to go to Europe and 'give it a shot'. My plan was to stay for about a month, travel around and see all of Europe. But I ended up at my very first stop, Amsterdam, hanging out at the Hanky Panky shop, trying to score a job. By then I already had a good reputation and I knew Permanent Mark and Chris Garver who were already working at Henk's. For me, then, it was a dream to be able to work in Amsterdam among such a great artists. When I saw Henk for the first time he already knew who I am and what I do. Unfortunately, shop was already full and there was not a space for me. Instead, he offered me to work in the Tattoo Museum which was located just around the corner from the shop. I thought, wow this is awesome, I am going to work in the Tattoo Museum, in Amsterdam!!! 

In the '90's Amsterdam was considered as 'Mecca' for tattooing. Bob and Charlie Roberts, Freddy Corbin, Dave Shore, Paolo Suluape (R.I.P.), Filip Leu, Clay Decker, Eric Hogan (R.I.P.), world's top artists were working in Amsterdam at the time and for me was a great honour to be a part of it. The time went by quickly and I had to go back home. Once I was back I have immediately planned to get back to Amsterdam to work for a longer period of time but then I had to face all kinds of problems. The shop where I was, was taken by the landlord and I had to move around."

In October 1999, Lucky hit the road again but this time he went to Tokyo to attend the First Tokyo Tattoo Convention and for the next four years he continued to travel around the World "jumping from continent to continent without setting foot in America". His only agenda was to make enough money to take him to the next destination.

And the more he traveled the more American he felt. However, all of those experiences have opened his eyes to the various cultural approaches to tattooing, from Japanese and Thai to various Pacific Island styles and where ever he was he got himself a little souvenir, a picturesque reminder of his adventurous voyages over the seven seas. But by far, the most peculiar impression and the biggest impact on him was the way of the traditional Japanese tattooing. He immediately recognised the parallels between traditional Japanese and traditional American tattoos. 

"It is funny to say but traditional 'Americana' tattoos are very similar to traditional Japanese tattoos. They share the same basic idea of nice big bold lines, 'tons' of black shading and solid bright colours. Either style has different approach but the parallel is clear. Those three elements are important. Simple colour palettes of western traditional tattooing could be compared with the Japanese. Early colour palettes worked beautifully. I 'took' their experiences and work myself with the seven colour palette to this day. In fact I don't really use blue and purple that often so could even say five colour. This was the way how they did it before and nothing was wrong with it."

Japanese tattoos, undoubtedly, with their bold lines, lots of black shading and simple palette of bright colours that radiate power and vitality proved him that simplicity can still create a big impact. The impact on him was so strong that ever since his first trip to the land of the rising sun, to the present day, he dedicates at least one month of  the year either studying, working or getting tattooed in Japan. 

"I have worked in Japan for the first time back in 1997 but after the first Tokyo convention in 1999 when I started getting my back done by Horiyoshi III was the moment when I definitely knew that I was locked in and that I wanted to go back to Japan to learn. Since then, I travelled back to Japan every year and stayed there for couple of months but since I got my own shop I make sure that I find time to spend at least one month in Japan."

Although Lucky's first tattoo 'language' was traditional American having the opportunity to work in Japan with traditional Japanese tattooers it was natural for Lucky to want to embrace the studies of this particular style and incorporate a "vocabulary of Japanese techniques" into his own bold "Americana" style. Something what, in his words "...is not a new concept. It was an epiphany Bob Roberts had years ago."

"After I came from the road and got settled back down in So.Cal. again, beside my regular 'traditional' clientele I started having clients that wanted Japanese stuff but nobody around wasn't able to do it properly.  Most of the Japanese tattoos that Americans were receiving, I noticed, were not true to the style that I have seen in Japan. So I ended up doing half sleeve on one of my clients trying to do it as correctly as possible. I made a photo of the finished work and added to my portfolio. That photo brought me another client and then another and then I said to myself I better fuckin' start seriously to study this thing, to figure out exactly what I am doing to these people and to try understand and correct the mistakes. Regardless of all what I've been seeing in Japan, doing it was a completely new field for me. So I had to go back to the source again, to Japan. And when I showed my 'Japanese' work portfolio there, it was embarrassing. My stuff had no point. I had to try to, at least, visually catch up with them. Trying to learn deeper about Japanese tattooing became my obsession. I was constantly thinking about it. I realised that if I want to do it right it will take some time. People see Japanese tattoos and they say: "Yeah I can do that" but it ain't working like that. There are so many rules and formulas which you have to consider and respect for every single move, that sometimes it might become frustrating." 

When I have asked him what would be the secret formula for successful Japanese tattoo Lucky went on:

"Ok I am not an expert but one thing I learned is that you have to approach the subject in the respectful manner. That means that you don't change things that are not to be changed. We go there and take their way, their images, their culture and then we try to make it ours, to make it original. That is not the way. I am not trying to change anything. I can't say I am going to create a new Hanya or invent a new dragon but I can try to make some of the old traditional designs as cool as possible. Being an American I can't break new grounds in Japanese standards. Horiyoshi III can and he did make new set of rules. What I am trying to do is to mimic things that they do and in my opinion that way you might be able to make a successful Japanese tattoo. 

Since it became sort of a standard for westerners to 'wear' Japanese style tattoos, being curious myself I had to ask Lucky what, in his opinion, would be the difference between western approach to this style and 'real' Japanese tattooing and his reply was:

"Hmm, it is something what would I call a spelling mistakes. Almost there but not really. On western Japanese tattoos you can almost always see that the guy who did it is not Japanese, something is always missing. For example, growing up in Japan. Being surrounded by dragons, phoenixes, peony flowers, things that are there by nature. Simply, you have to be born there and to grow up there to understand their way of thinking and accepting the surroundings. It doesn't really work, you go there buy couple of books, make few pictures, come back home and say now I understand everything. Being Japanese is what makes their work look the way it does. That's why, I repeat, I try to mimic only, their way, because I don't know how they process all that stuff through their heads. When I am in Japan I observe their culture on all levels, how they eat, the way they communicate, how they act towards each other and see if there is the way to co-relate that to tattoo that I want to do. It is a composition of everything they do, their rich history, culture, art, protocols. A relentless persuade of perfection of every moment of every day. That is already hard to mimic. And if you still want to do it look at the guys who are doing it the best. Those guys live that life and they are very focused and motivated." 

Not only that Lucky's tattoo technique influences are imported from Japan but their way of respecting the limitations of the offered working space and their vivid imagination about it's organisation comes from Japan as well. His shop, Fine Tattoo Work in Orange, California was "structured after Sabado's Eccentric Tattoo shop in Nagoya".

"Since space is a commodity in Japan, everything in the shop was built on wheels to allow maximum working space and ease of cleaning. Everything was measured down to the inch, so that no space was wasted."

Although Lucky never really planned to open his own shop because "there were already too many shops, that another one seemed unnecessary", back in 2004 he did open a street shop Fine Tattoo Works so that he could "offer helping hand to the clients without having someone looking for a cut". In one manner, design of the shop refers to the compatibility of Eccentric Tattoo and in the other evokes the sentiments of the real 'old school' street shop as once The Picture Machine was. Built on 3000 sq. feet with all the stations built on wheels and designed by Lucky, the shop allows all of the seven artists enough space to manoeuvre. Beside, shop includes fully equipped photography studio for making high quality pictures of the done works. Furthermore Lucky explains the dynamics in the shop:

"I have now a clear vision of how I want my studio to function. Mostly, it is based on woking with people like Henk, with a defined captain of the shop who will train you and whom you'll listen to. Because the captain is there to give it all up for you. Bring down together the right people who are eager to learn and forced them to learn the things correctly. In a way it was like opening a tattoo school, l with a clear philosophy of tattooing. The way that works in my studio is formulated and methodical based on the fact that there is a reason for everything. I don't let people get away tattooing the shit they don't know about. If you don't know what it is don't tattoo it on somebody. I am trying do what was done for me. And nothing makes you a better student then being a teacher. To verbalise something that seems so natural gives you also an opportunity to make an adjustments to whatever it is that you trying to do. Teaching the guys in my shop makes me also a better tattooer. Knowing how eager to learn they are it makes me stand on my toes to be ahead of them to be able to give them the right information. Once they are acknowledged with the basics they are free to explore and go in any direction they want. That way I can be sure if someone walks in the shop I can turn them to the right guy."

There is only one thing. The amount of hours of a day is far too small for an artist of Lucky's caliber. Being busy leading the shop, tattooing, teaching and traveling around the globe leaves him no time for painting which he'd love to do. 

"These days I rarely find time to paint or do anything else beside tattooing. With this new generations of clients, I am busy doing larger and more ambitious tattoos. More tattooed people and more tattoo studios equals more tattoo educated people. And that right there shows the progression of this art form."

And mentioning progression, Lucky is a man who's not afraid of the future for this business, on his path of pursuing the perfection.

"This business is now wide open and you can go anywhere from this point. Maybe the down side is that there is a large number of people in the business but still I think it could just go better. To cite Filip Leu: "More tattoo artists mean that more tattoos are to be done..." Just 20 years ago the idea of a sleeve outside of Japan was ludicrous. But with all of the informations and abilities it can just go for better. The guys that are good will rise to the top. If you are good you will easily separate yourself from the rest. But you'll just have to keep your standards high."

For almost two and a half decades Lucky Bastard embraces powerful traditional artistic criteria while maintaining the connection with the real World, evoking the past without melancholy. His impeccable tattoos are his testament of hard work and dedication for this particular form of art. 

More about Lucky Bastard is to be found on his website:  www.finetattoowork.com

 

Photo of the Lucky's back with the tiger tattoo (still in progress) done by Horiyoshi III.

Photos by Lucky Bastard & Dejan Knez.