Thanks to both of you for your suggestions.

Scrubmuncher: My reasons for getting this kind of tattoo are indeed very personal and spiritual, and I do not plan to head to a convention to get one done for a number of personal reasons, as well as time. Money is not an issue for this piece of work, I am in no rush to achieve it, it has been an aim of mine for many years and a lot of prior thought has been spent on the subject. My plan has always been a similar idea to what you suggested, to find an established native artist and develop a relationship with them whilst my wife and I are living and working abroad. We are leaving this year, and for a while I have been trying to discover different artists before we leave, however currently without much luck.

Demure: I completely understand the way an ink reputation, especially with this method, travels by word of mouth, and aside from reading books on the top I have been trying to research and discover names from magazines and online, however with not much luck, hence my arrival into tattooing forums, to see if I can gain more information and to finally learn and hopefully meet some artists. In terms of our plans whilst we are away there are a number of countries we will be visiting: New Zealand (We plan to visit and stay with my cousin’s friend who is a native Maori tattoo artist there), Plhilippines, Bali, Thailand, Vietnam, Australia, and few places in the Pacific (we will be crewing around so we’ll see where it takes us). These are countries that we will certainly be visiting, however we have no time frame for a return to the UK (if at all) and we will be working abroad, so we hopefully plan to visit many other countries all over the globe along the way.

I tried a few searches of this forum using the search function, however I was unable to pull up many results, however I continue to plough through the posts 🙂

Thanks again for all of your suggestions and help, I look forward to hearing what other people have to say as well.

Regards,
Martin.