What did an 86-year-old get tattooed on her ankle? What’s the worst tattoo design? How common are mistakes, and can they be fixed? Hawkesbury tattoo artist Geoff Deakin spoke to Sarah Falson about his experiences.
‘TO tattoo or not to tattoo?’ has always been a question of fashion for me: what do I love enough to get inked onto my flesh?
However for my parents, the question itself is a cause for concern. Far from being close-minded individuals, they freely admit that their distaste for tattooing is a hangover from their 1950s upbringing.
Back then, tattoos were not as widely-accepted as a valid form of expression as they are today. In fact, mid-last-century, ink was commonly regarded as evidence of unsavoury behaviour - ‘the mark of sailors and criminals’, as my Nan so blatantly put it.
More recently, tattoos have been growing steadily in popularity and social acceptance. No doubt, their appeal is broadening, and the tattoo industry in Australia has recorded strong business over the past five years, according to figures from IBISWorld.
Debunking the stereotype
The smell of antiseptic solution overwhelms me when I walk into the foyer of Feel The Steel, one of the Hawkesbury’s few tattoo studios.
Based in Park Mall in Richmond, the business is co-owned by Geoff Deakin, a 35-year-old Bligh Park resident who has been in the tattoo game for 13 years.
Standing in the store’s entrance, I can hear a slight buzzing sound coming from the back rooms. I ring the bell on the front desk and a young lady pops her head around the corner. I introduce myself and she disappears, then reappears with Mr Deakin.
Both the earlier buzzing and the fact that Mr Deakin is wearing surgical gloves confirm my suspicion that he’s mid-way through a job. He doesn’t shake my hand (hygiene and all), but points to a chair and asks me if I would mind wheeling it into his studio so I can sit and chat to him while he works.
From my perch in the doorway, I can see another tattooist working in an adjacent studio; he pops his head through the cut-out section between the two rooms and introduces himself as Paulie Surridge, who has co-owned Feel The Steel for the past two years.
I don’t see who Mr Surridge is working on, but to my left is a man lying on his stomach. I introduce myself and ask if he minds me being in there while he’s so… indisposed. Mr Deakin has been working on a design on the outer part of the man’s thigh, high up on his left leg, and part of his bottom is showing.
He says it’s fine and asks me if I want to see the work they’ve done today. ‘Yes please!’ I say, and he begins peeling down the seat of his track-shorts to reveal two completely-inked bum cheeks.
His name is Andrew and he’s a 49-year-old Londonderry resident. He’s been in Mr Deakin’s studio for six hours already and they still have another half-hour of work to do.
“Wow. How long do you think it will be until you can sit on that again?” I ask.
“I didn’t really think of that. I don’t know how I’m going to drive home!” he says.
Mr Deakin asks me if I have any tattoos. I tell him what my parents think about tattoos. He grins.
“That’s what my Nan used to tell me, too! But times have changed. Believe me, you’ll want one by the time you walk out of here,” he says.
Professionals all the way
The crew at Feel The Steel have been tattooing Hawkesbury residents for the past eight years, but Mr Deakin began learning the craft from home - “like most people do,” he told the Gazette.
“It used to be a biker-run industry, and it was very hard to get work in a tattoo shop. I got my first tattoo when I was 19, but I wasn’t happy with it. So I tracked down some machines and practiced on my mates. You’d be surprised by how stupid some people are - they’ll let anyone tattoo them!”
Fixing shonkily-crafted designs or ‘regret tattoos’ could be a major source of business for Mr Deakin if it were a simple case of tattooing over a mistake.
“It’s not that easy. People come in daily wanting us to cover one up - we’ve probably had three already today - but they have unrealistic expectations. Some things are not fixable that way,” he said.
Recently, a 15-year-old girl visited the store asking if they could do anything about the word ‘B*tch’ she had tattooed on her arm.
‘’It looked like it’d been scratched in with texta,” Mr Deakin said.
The legal age for tattooing in Australia is 18, however studios can legally tattoo 16-year-olds with the consent of their parent or guardian.
“But we don’t tattoo minors, and I told her there was nothing we could do for her,” said Mr Deakin.
“But generally we’d urge them to get laser tattoo removal. Laser has really advanced from with it has been in the past.”
He pointed to a section on his leg which he said had been lasered only a couple of weeks earlier, and was healing-up nicely - none of that pock-marked scarring indicative of the laser-removal systems of yore.
In terms of ‘regret tattoos’, the Southern Cross is a design he’s often been asked to ‘fix’ - or at least to transform into something different.
As for his own mistakes, Mr Deakin has made only two during his 13 years in the tattoo industry, and both were back at the start of his career.
“I made a spelling mistake once. I draw pictures; I can’t spell! But before doing the tattoo I showed the stencil to the customer and his friend and they both said it was OK,” he said.
And then there was the time he accidentally tattooed a six-fingered hand on a man’s abdomen.
“It was handprints of his daughter’s hands, and when she’d done the handprints she’d accidentally doubled-up touching one of her fingers on the paper,” he said.
According to Mr Deakin, both of these mistakes were fixable. But these days, “We don’t make mistakes!” both he and Mr Surridge laughed.
Fashion, art and self-expression
Indian dot patterns known in the tattoo industry as ‘mandala’ - a Sanskrit word for ‘circle’ or ‘universe’ - as well as Indian dream symbols which resemble dream-catchers, and simple words and phrases, are all in-vogue at the moment, according to Mr Deakin.
On the other end of the spectrum, “tribal is hated by tattooers worldwide,” he said.
“Polynesian and Maori designs are good, but people just get plain black tribal colouring in - it’s boring and it takes forever to do, and they don’t realise that.
“Also, we never tattoo partner’s names. Never. Because it’s bad luck, and everyone ends up wanting to get it covered-up eventually.”
Mr Deakin meets a lot of interesting people through his work, including the oldest customer he’s ever inked.
“An 86-year-old lady came in once. It was her first tattoo. And guess what she got? A Canterbury Bulldogs emblem on her ankle!” he said.
“Everyone’s got a story, so it’s always entertaining. Some of the more memorable times have been when someone passes out, but it’s usually more from the nerves than the pain. I had one girl pass out when I only put the stencil on her. I hadn’t even started yet!”
