Lonnie's Tattoo Page

Typical first tattoo. I was 18 years old and wanted some ink on my skin. So I went to the nearest parlor and picked one from the wall that I could afford. The colors faded out almost completely over the years, and I had them redone in the summer of 1993 by Charlie Green at World Famous Tattoo Emporium in Van Nuys, California.

Ever since I got the first one, I wanted a second tattoo, this time a picture of the Tazmanian Devil cartoon character. It took me eight years, but I finally got it. I chose the design from the wall in the shop.

Also chosen from the designs displayed on the wall, this black ink only tattoo shows a nighttime desert scene with a howling coyote in the foreground, a cactus and a distant butte in the background, and the moon behind a few small clouds in the sky.

I don't know where he found it, but my brother came across a very interesting drawing depicting the head of an indian brave (or Native American, if you prefer), silhouetted inside a rustic looking arrowhead. He liked the drawing so much he had it tattooed on himself. I liked it so much I did also (although not in the same location on my body as my brother).

Two crossed revolvers forming a sort of lopsided X. Except for a little touch of brown on the grip of each gun, only black ink was used. There are also a few wisps of smoke coming from the barrels

In the mid 50's, while in the Navy, my dad got a tattoo on his left forearm. It showed an eagle, wings spread wide and high, in front of a large blue five-pointed star. Above that was a banner which read "U.S.N." (as in United States Navy), and underneath was another banner reading "E.W.D." (his initials). When he died in 1991, my brother and I had that same design put on our left forearms, changing the top banner to read "I.L.M." (for In Loving Memory).

A small eagle head, done mostly in black ink except for the beak which is filled in with yellow, and some very faint blue shading around the bird's head. Design chosen from the wall in the shop.

The Grateful Dead's "Steal Your Face" logo. It's the skull and lightning bolt symbol inside a circle filled in with blue on the left and red on the right. I'm sure everyone has seen this logo at some point.

By far my largest and most colorful tattoo, this one is a green winged macaw perched on a tree branch, and cracking open a peanut with his beak. The design was on the wall in the shop, and we did it all in one sitting (which took 4.5 hours).

The picture of Sweet Jane on page 67 of the Grateful Dead Comix book (lyrics to "Truckin'" drawn in comic book format by cartoonist Nina Paley). Basically it's a giddy, overly sweet looking freckle-faced blonde girl wearing a red ribbon in her hair, a red, purple and white dress, red shoes and a big smile.

Same book and same page of the Grateful Dead Comix, this time the picture of the Not-So-Sweet Jane (after all that "living on reds, vitamin C and cocaine" have taken their toll). She's still wearing that ribbon in her hair, but now her long blonde hair has been clipped into a short punk-rock sort of style. She's a lot skinnier, has a rather unhealthy looking purplish-blue tint to her skin, and is smoking a cigarette. Gone is the farm girl dress... Now she is wearing a red mini-dress, high heels and fish-net stockings with holes in them. Also, at my brother's suggestion, I added a banner to tattoo #10 and this one. Under #10, the banner now reads "All a friend can say is," and the banner under #11 says "Ain't it a shame," completing the line from the song "Truckin'."

The Grateful Dead dancing bears. Six bears, each a different color (green, red, blue, yellow, orange and purple) in various stages of dancing poses, wrapped all the way around my wrist, directly below tattoo #7.

A portrait tattoo of Mark Twain. The original picture was taken from the Mark Twain biography "Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain" by Justin Kaplan.

When the tattoo heals up, I'll try to get a better picture of it for this page. Right now, that picture looks a bit too lopsided; much too large and dark on the right side (your right, not Mr. Twain's). I can only surmise that is because of the way the tattoo bends around the natural contours of my forearm. It looks great if you look at it with your own eyes (in person) but this two-dimensional photography distorts it all to hell...