Thinking Outside the Box:
Steed Gets a Tat

By Paul "Villam" Steed

Now. Anyone saying that tattoos don’t hurt that much lie. They hurt pretty noticeably. But lucky for me I’ve had asphalt scrubbed out of my side and leg via an iodine, soap-covered scrub brush (like the kind you use on your floor) after I slid 290 feet coming off my bike at about 65 mph. I also sat for 4 hours in a dentist chair getting three root canals and temp caps from biting pavement (my mountain bike’s quick release quickly released in mid-air while skying off a hill into a parking lot. I pretty much picked bits of rock out of my face for a week after that… Compared to those this was nothing. Compared to no pain at all, well…this hurt. I gritted my teeth and made a few faces only when he worked on the back of my arm (MAN! Did that sting…), but over all it wasn’t an unbearable kind of pain. Just…continual. For four hours.

Here’s how it looked after the crucial outline part of the process…

After a short break, Robert started again adding detail and shading…

(Continued on next page)