Dancing Man

Recently got back from a week's long stay at Gabriola Island. It's so beautiful over there. The photo above is a picture of some arbutus trees taken from the beach. This photo has NOT been retouched at all. It's kewl how it kind of looks like a black and white photo with a splash of colour [when it's actually entirely in colour].

So on the third day we were on the island, I was sitting on the beach with my DH and, as the sun shone down on us, I turned to him and said "You know what would be perfect? Getting a tattoo of dancing man. I wonder if there is a tattoo artist on the island. Would be lovely if they could do it on the beach." [although I knew that the chances of getting it done ON the beach would be pretty small (no power for example)].

Dancing man is a petroglyph that can be found on Gabriola. There are quite a few [roughly over 8,000 years old, done by the First Nations]. But dancing man is the one that I fell madly in love with when I first saw it, oh, so many years ago.

This is a photo of a replication of the dancing man petroglyph. They have replications of the petroglyphs at the Gabriola Island Museum so that folks can go and do rubbings on those [thereby helping to protect and preserve the originals].

Anyways, from the beach we ended up heading over to a relative's home on the island. I asked her if she knew of any tattoo artists on the island. She said she didn't, but I could try asking another relative on the island as they tend to be more up on that kind of thing. We had a nice visit and then we left. On the way back to our cabin we decided to stop and get some ice for the cooler. As soon as we parked, I turned my head to the right and what should I see? A sign that said "Pretty Devils Tattoo." Naturally, I had to run up and into the place and harass the poor artist. Thankfully, she turned out to be a very sweet (and patient) talented woman who answered all my questions and let me know that she'd have time in the next few days to do the tattoo. I left the shop and called her the next day (okay, I called her a few times - perhaps I should have gotten a tattoo called "stalker woman" instead of "dancing man"). I finally went in on the Friday and got my dancing man tattoo on the outside calf of my right leg.

This was taken not quite a week later - still in the healing process. As you can see, it's absolutely fabulous. It kind of has almost an Aztec or Mayan feel to it (at least to me). He's so happy and so gosh darned cute! I'm very pleased with how he turned out.

So if you're ever anywhere near Gabriola and you want a tattoo, be sure to give Sue Addison at Pretty Devils a call. Check out her website: http://prettydevils.net/ and see for yourself. She's not only a wonderful artist, but a wonderful person too. I can't wait to go back and get another piece done by her (I'm thinking something to do with stylized Arbutus).