BLS: The Baseball Tattoo Hall of Fame: Mickey Mantle and Pete Rose

Color Verbanic in Needle Poke confused…

‘Duk: Can you take us through the process of doing both the Rose and Mantle tattoos? Who were they for? How long did each take to complete? Etc?

DeVries: When it comes down to a portrait that is recognizable to everyone you always get a much better reaction, rather than just a portrait of a mom, dad, sister. and when it comes down to famous ball player i am into it for sure.The Mickey Mantle tattoo was done first on a fellow buddy/tattoo artist Ryan Hadley and the Pete Rose was done on an old buddy from high school, Brian Hickman. He played a lot of ball growing up and he wants to get Nolan Ryan tattoo and possibly some others from that era.

Both tattoos took about 7-8 hours (one sitting) to complete. I think I may have done a hour or two fine tune session on the Pete Rose. The images that I used were just ones that we had found by looking through books. When it comes down to portraits it’s best to find a good clear picture and go from there. i like to say better the picture better the tattoo,and when its a nice solid picture to start from it takes alot of the trickiness away.

I’d say that both Ryan and Brian were very pleased with the end result of those pieces they got done ... At least I hope they were.