Chris Reynolds | Skin Poison

What started you off and got you into artwork?

Art is something I’ve always done. I got into tattooing in my teens. There was a biker shop in town we used to go to, to get our weed, and they knew I could draw, so I started drawing designs for them. They were offering to teach me, but they SUCKED, I figured it must be really hard to do, because these guys were so bad at it. So I avoided it and when I hit 20, 3 days after my 20th birthday, I was living on the streets and I went into a tattoo shop just to sell my drawing book. I wanted 10 bucks for it and the guy ended up hiring me right there on the spot. So I said fuck it, I’ll give it a try. So I slept in the shop that night, and eventually got me into the hotel down the street. They paid me 200$ a week and 10% in the beginning, in 3 months I was running 2 shops for them in Toronto doing like 15-20 tattoos a day. The shop was always completely packed with people and I had to take care of everything by myself. Keeping everybody in line, who came in first, who wants this, who wants that, that type of shit ya know, control the fuckin drunks while the owner was off at his other shop. Every other week we traded off, so I’d be in Mississauga one week and Toronto the next. That was a total learning experience because he taught me everything I needed to know, he had me in the chair and I was fuckin bangin it out. These days the apprenticeships are basiclly moppin floors and scrubbin tubes for 2 years, back then it was someone to pick up the extra work that they can’t handle. Now there is just too many of them, they’re floodin the market with them. Everybodies lazy, they don’t want to scrub their own tubes, or clean their own shops, so bring in the apprentice. Now this guy is all of the sudden tattooing, so I can’t tell him what to do, so bring in the next apprentice.

Like a certain tattoo television show, they have what around 8 shop managers now?

Yeah, the shop manager thing, I never got that. It’s like, don’t we all know what we should be doin anyway? We’re all handling our own crap, we don’t need to be managed. Maybe a desk girl that can answer the phones, deal with the walk-ins, and tell her we’re out of paper towels so she can order more, other than that, ya don’t need managers.

So you were born in Canada?

Born in Toronto, grew up just outside of Niagra Falls, and then back to Toronto for tattooing and I lived there for quite a few years. I came to the States in 93′ I was just kinda hanging around checkin it out and officially moved down in 94′. I stayed in NY for 3 years and then off to Cali. I came to the States because all my buddies were goin to British Columbia, and I knew somebody here that talked me into movin, so I said fuck it I’ll come down. My plan was south, to Florida, I left Canada to get away from the snow, I wound up southeast in NY. Then I said fuck, I gotta get outta here and ended up in Cali for 12 years which was really nice. They’re a lot more artistic out there. Everybody in the shops during any down time is sittin down drawing or painting something, trying to get better. There all all different styles out there, ya got the Mexican style, lots of blackwork, faces, pin-up chicks and that type of shit which is really cool and fun to do. Lots of Aztec stuff.

Were you working out of your own shop?

I worked out of a couple then had my own for 7 years. I just got sick of owning it because I work by myself, I generally like to work alone, I don’t like bad work coming out of the shop, I don’t like having to deal with someone elses bullshit. There is nothing worse than looking over someones shoulder and see them fucking somethin up, and it’s not like you can tell them to stop and say no, no, no, I’ll finish from here. You have to walk away and just let it happen. I can’t stand that. It’s frustrating as hell. I need to work with people who are good so I can keep bouncing off of them, everybody gets to absorb my shit, I never got to absorb what they did. I was always handing my work to them and they’d give me somethin of theirs and I’d be cringing at what they were doin. So workin alone was good but again, I had to do everything on my own. It was a fuckin huge shop, so I had to keep an eye on the people, answer the phones do the tattoos, all the ordering, everything. I was competeing with shops that had like 13-14 people working for them. These shops even had volunteers. I was lookin at their websites and some people would be listed as volunteers, it was just strange. Those are just the people that love the rock star side of it, to be able to say yeah, I work at this shop, or I’m with these guys. They don’t realize that they are the ones that are watering down the process. I hate the business now, it’s nothin like when I first started. When I first started tattooing I thought, this is somethin I can do for the rest of my life and make a pretty good living. Now, Jesus Christ, every time I turn around everyone knows a tattoo artist or is a tattoo artist. My cousin, my brother, my father, my uncle, this dude who just got out of prison is gonna tat me up, fuckin everybody does it. When I first started tattooing it was like, I’d meet someone and they’d say, I do tattoos, and I’d be like REALLY?! Holy fuck, wow where do you work? I’ve never met anyone else! Now it’s like, yeah of course ya do, I don’t even want to fuckin hear it. As soon as they see you have tattoos they start talkin about who they know. Oh Yeah! You know that guy?! Let’s hang out! I’m just like fuck off. Yeah, that guy who you know, I just covered one of his pieces up. The worst is when they show me their work that their buddy did and tell me how good he is. It’s like, I’m looking at it, I can tell YOU how good he is.

I was out at a club, and I started talkin to this person, and she ended up being an appretice, go figure right? She started showing me all of her work, and I was thinkin to myself..what is that supposed to be?

Hahaha, I know who you’re talkin about, it’s the same girl I spent half an hour tellin her how much I’d like to smash her kids heads in with a fuckin hammer, hahaha. You have to look at the guy who is traing her, because he is BAD, so yeah, she thinks she is getting good because she’s catching up with him. I saw his work, the lines were destroyed, none of his lines connect, they’re blown out, the shading is horrible, but it stayed permanently, it stayed in the skin, that’s how they look at it.

What’s your favorite style of tattooing?

Black work, realistic, I like doin faces things like that, portraits, anything kinda “collagey” I like to do. Anything with a lot of shit goin on in it. I’m not into the old school so much, no tribal. I mean I can do tribal but it’s just not fun for me.

You do any new school type work, pieces blasted with color or anything?

Naa, I think a lot of tattoos that come out these days are over-colored, they put way too much color into some of these things and it’s like..it’s over-worked. A lot of these guys don’t know what their stuff looks like in 10-15 years, and it’s a big difference when you can see that. The old school stuff holds up nice, but it’s just not my style. It’s cool though, I have my blackwork, that’s all I want to do, and the other guys here are into color, that’s all they want to do, so that’s cool you can have that. I’ll check out your work, you can check out mine, that type thing. It sucks having to do everything, ya know? Like.. a tribal is comin in now, I gotta do that, now a portrait, then an old school, now a heart with mom in it, it fuckin sucks. I want one path I can go down and get just really good at that instead of goin from Japanese style to portrait work to old school and constantly jumpin around from needle styles and techniques and things like that. It fucks up the flow.
I like knowing what people are bringin in, everbody who knows me know I don’t like doin certain things. Don’t come to me if you just want your baby’s mammas fuckin name, take it somewhere else.

I see plenty of incredible artists workin on people doing just basic tribal stuff, or Chinese symbols and it has to be frustrating to have to sit and do something like that.

Once in a while I don’t mind doing it, but they have to be one after the other, I don’t mind spending a whole day doing it if I have like 30 in a row, because there is a lot of money in it. There is nothin more disappointing than wanting to get into something nice, and somebody brings in some rinky dink, poor drawing, poor fuckin idea, just weak design. Like someone bringin in a picture of their babies foot, as soon as somebody pulls that shit out, I’m just like…fuckin really? Is that the best you can come up with?

People generally are pretty limited with their imaginatons and ideas.

YES! And that’s what I used to have on my business card, Your imagination is my only limitation, and stop limiting the fuck out of me. Jesus Christ, give me an idea and let me go with it, any direction I want to go. Once I get rolling and people stop me sayin, I don’t want to go that direction with it, or I’m not into that idea really…fuck it makes it tough. I tell people Picasso would have never have been Picasso if some asshole was standing over his shoulder goin, could ya put a little more green in that area? I think yellow would make it pop! Fuck off, you’ll see it when I’m done. I always wished they could slide their arm through a glory hole or some shit, different holes in the wall for arms, legs, neck piece..you can have it back when I’m finished. That’s the way the Japanese do it. You sit down and plan out your whole body suit, what story you want to go with, and the tattooer takes over from there. That’s the best way to do it, because he’s gonna know what works and what doesn’t. Half of these people over here pick all these Japanese things and nothin goes together. No clue on what the imagery should be, or the meanings.
They had a Japanese tattoo convention a few years back, I was reading the article on it, and there were no contests. I was like yes! I fuckin love that, because they don’t want to put one old school style against another old school style and say this ones better, cuz that’s dangerous fuckin territory over there. Here, the only way you can have an actual contest is if you pick 10 people, and said you 10 artists are going to do this eagle on a person. You’re all doing the same eagle, but we’re going to see who does the best one. These days you got portraits goin up against these dragon back pieces and Japanese versus old school American, it’s like, how do you gauge it? They’re completely different fuckin styles. It’s aggravating. At the conventions someone has to win anyway, so the award thing is meaningless to me. Say you have a portrait category, and nothing but horribly done portraits show up to the event, they’re going to pick the best of the worst. He’s gonna win first place, he’s gonna get the write up in the magazine, and the guy who did it gets to put that up on his wall and people are fuckin thrilled. Like, my guy won awards! Yeah, but ya don’t know what he was up against or if anything else was even there! He was the only portrait that showed up, of course he won. It doesn’t matter. A lot of times I’ve been in the conventions where I know the people putting it on, or I worked at the shop that was putting it on…and they’d come up to me and say, what do you want to win? What categories do ya want? I don’t want to win anything, if I happen to win, I’ll take it. Two years in a row I airbrushed a hearse for a give away raffle, and both years it was like, ya want it? No… I don’t want it, OK, we’ll raffle it then. They were just going to give me the winning fuckin ticket. The whole business has just been raped and pillaged. Now you have Cunt Von D, that douche bag on television being the fuckin queen, I never ever heard of this girl ever until she got a television show. Now she’s the big name, she shows up in all the magazines and everything. She had her own tattoo convention where she stayed in a little roped off area signing autographs, not tattooing, just signing fuckin autographs. Who the fuck are you? This business you used to sign an autograph on skin not a fuckin 8×10 glossy. She’s pullin in a million bucks for every ten episodes of the TV show for pretending she’s a tattoo artist. I got a good look at her portrait work, they’re middle of the road, they look like the person, but they’re no Jack Rudy, Tyrell or anyone like that, not even close.

Bob Tyrell is fuckin SICK at portraits, because he does nothing but portraits and ya get real good at them. I’d love to throw some shit at him and see what kind of loop I can throw him into. Like some Hindu style, or lets see a Japanese sleeve, see if he can pull it off, hahaha. Because Paul Booth, I know he can’t. His original shit that he was doin from back in the day, he started off a little while after I started out. I saw his stuff start showin up in the magazines and it was all color, it was all big and goofy in the style of Dave Lum, very old school looking but very characteristic, it was nothing like he is doing now.

You do other art work, besides tattooing, like oils too right?

Yup, oils, airbrushing, bikes and cars, I was doing a couple Hells Angel bikes when I was on the other side. That was always a pain to do, because they have to be just right, ya have to match the Death Heads perfectly. I did one, I painted the Death Head on the side..they never want the head as is, these are all the younger guys, they always want super viscious teeth and the wing done different. So I did the one on the side, I didn’t really like that, sanded it off, redid it, flipped it over and did the other side. I measured this fuckin thing out perfectly, Then I looked at it from the top…and they were off. So I said Goddamn it, I sanded that off. I did those fuckin things 4 times! In one day! Then the next time I did them, I measured, measured, and measured everything out..I nailed them absolutely perfect, I was so fuckin shocked. I get that knot in the stomach when I’m puttin it down. Airbrushing’s a bitch cuz, the last one I did he had super long jagged teeth, ya have to cut out one tooth, then spray it, then the second and spray it, then the third. So every little piece is a stencil, what a headache. I just want to go to town and freehand a bunch of shit.

What’s your favorite medium to work with?

Right now I’m diggin the wood (the Carried Away Coffin plaques), I figured now I can draw on wood for a little while. I have this big canvas at home, and I can’t think of what to do on it, I’m kinda blocked. I wanna do somethin that just grabs ya, and that always ends up slowin me down because I don’t want to do just….it’s gotta be good, so I don’t stick it aside forever ya know? Plus I like doing those scale models, I do them up like they are old junkers. I put dents in them, make them all rusty, filthy. I take rolling papers and crumple them up to make them look like newspapers and throw them in the backseat and shit like that. I love doin that type of shit, making it look as real as possible. I have the rust technique down really good. I guess as long as it’s “painty”, as long as I’m applying paint to somethin, that’s where the models are nice. If I’m doin a hot rod, I can airbrush the shit out of it, or hand paint a real detailed paint job on it.
Artwork is all I do, as soon as I go home. Like last night, I didn’t draw or paint cuz I finished my angel (pic below), so I just sat there lookin through magazines tryin to find some ideas and shit. Next I want to do some crazy warrior, just some massive demon dude. Giant fuckin muscles and veins, with a shield, helmet and a sword, just sick.