Hi

I just wanted to jot down a summary of my experience of the Doncaster Tattoo Jam hosted by Skin Deep.

Travel – coming from Leeds it was around 40 mins by train and another 10 mins by regular bus to the Doncaster Races Exhibition Centre so quite easy.

There was also ample parking and the roads seemed to be pretty clear.

Queuing – When I saw the queues outside it as halfway round the building and I thought I was going to be stuck there for an hour. As it was we were in by 12:15 and there was no hassle with security searches just paid, tagged and off we went.

Artists

There were around 168 tattoo artists from all over the USA Europe and as far away as Japan. Normally at conventions there is a mix of shaky average, average, good and mind blowing artists.

I am pleased to say that I managed to look at every single artist’s work and all of them ranged from good to mind blowing. I was extremely impressed at the quality of artwork that was on offer. This said quite a bit was not to my personal taste but even my wife is who anti-tattooing admitted that there were some damn fine artists.

There were several artists who even amongst this large gathering really stood out for me;

Electric Linda (Norway) some mind blowing portrait work and damn was she booked from the moment she sat down.

Red Bunny Tattoo (Tokoyo) – These had some masterful Japanese tats and with 4 artists every one of them was booked solid.

Tattoo Prime Dublin – These had to be the best fantasy tattoo portrait artists I have seen in a long, long time.

Skunx Tattoo – I admit even though not a fan of Louis Malloy Dan Gold is 1. An excellent artist (his killer robots are great) 2. Was actually very approachable. We had a 10 min chat as he was working on a lady’s stomach piece and had no objections to me getting a film clip of his work and a few photo’s.

Security Guards

To be honest the majority were a right pain in the arse with faces so long they were scraping the floor. Permanently moaning at ppl to move along.

The prime example was that at the same time as the convention there was a private wedding going on which seemed to be very expensive affair. They were segregated but since they had split the artists over a top and bottom floor we had to share a lift.

The security guard was saying that 4 of us with tattoos had to get out of the lift so that his wedding party (not bride or groom just guests) did not have to share a lift with ‘our kind’! 😮

Since you could fit 16 ppl in this lift we advised that we were not stopping anybody from getting in and since we paid £20 each to get in + hundreds combined in tattoo fees and general purchasing we had every damn right to use the lift like everybody else.

The wedding party got in and it was all smiles after that point.

Exhibition Tattooing

There was some great examples of stick/bone tapping tattooing going on as well as a 2x single point Japanese artists who were doing some work.

Great stuff to watch.

I also got to watch some Maori tattooing being done but this was with a machine. They also had to hold the guy still for his chest piece (Wuss! lol)

Food and Drink

Well very basic and the food service was crap – queuing forever and had to repeat order about 4 times and also ran out of soft drinks.

The sandwiches were around £4.50 -£6 and a bottle of lager would set you back around £3 so not too extortionate but not cheap.

Bands

Regular live bands which from the bits I heard were not bad.

The vendors – lots of em and the usual expensive crap was on sale – was some nice gems to be had to be fair in terms of portraits and such but £350 for a A3 picture of a tattooed lip reading Fuck Off was taking the piss looked like it had been ripped from BME.

My wife spent a fortune on clothes there – T shirts alone set me back £15 a piece but again some nice stuff in and amongst the usual tat.

I wasn’t able to stay for the judging comps as had to head back but would def go again.

The day out including travel, food & drink and shopping was for 2 £170.

The downside was my wife wouldn’t let me get any ink done due to health issues 🙁 but had a damn good time and would recommend it for next year.

Take care
Matthew