Top Gun Tattooing

Trusted for 10 years

My love for art started from as far back as I can remember.  My dad encouraged me to paint all over my bedroom walls as a toddler and taught me to draw the human body broken into muscle structures, whilst other children at school were drawing stick men which bought alot of of attention to me from the teaching staff.  From this young age it gave me a confidence with art that I have always had and appreciated. 

The beginning of my love for body modification started with designing and shaving patterns into hair from as young as 10 years old.  By the time I had started secondary school I had already built up a clientele and had an appointment book full of hairdressing clients, as I also did normal hair cuts on parents.  I developed a style of hairdressing which was inspired by the double Mohawk from The Prodigy, and the rude boyz patterns from Oxford Road in Reading.  Fusing these two styles together and adding a bit of colour.  In the late 90's groups of my clients would be hitting the rave scene with various styles of my custom work on their heads.  And I loved the way we all stood out.  Many people would mistake the patterns for tattoos.  

During this time, art was always the way I stood out amongst my friends.  I was even asked to design some tattoos for older friends when I was as young as 14.   From getting an A* at GCSE level I moved on to study fine art, photography and history of art at Henley College.  After two years, I needed to fund the rave scene and got straight back into hairdressing, and started working at Toni and Guy.  Here I was trained by them and given a strong foundation in all styles of hairdressing.  However, after a short time, I realised that using clippers and designing patterns just made sense to me and moved away from the Toni Guy style and got my own salon at the age of 19.  I grew a large following of clients and became well known for my unique style of hairdressing. 

Whilst shaving an intricate almost Polynesian style pattern into someones head, a man I didn't know who was a tattooist  was sitting in the waiting room watching.  Whilst I was cutting a precision flat top into his hair he mentioned I was very good at art and he would like to teach me tattooing.   So I entered into the world of tattooing.