In honor of St. Patrick's Day, I naturally had to feature work from The Celtic Tattoo Queen herself, Pat Fish.

Collectors from around the world travel to Pat's Santa Barbara studio for her intricate knot and dot work tattoos. Last year, I posted an excerpt from my Inked mag profile on Pat, and I figure it's fitting today to post a bit more from our Q&A, where we talk about how she earned her royal title:

You're called the "Queen of Knots" in the tattoo community. How did that get started?

Lyle Tuttle gave me the name "Queen of Knots, and the title "Celtic Queen of the West Coast" came from a Skin & Ink magazine article. When I started [to tattoo], I was thirty years old. You can really do what you want till you turn thirty, but at that point, you better specialize and chose a profession, something that you are. I put myself through college doing research interviewing, and then I got hired by the local weekly newspaper to interview people. I did it for over a decade. But after a while, I got to where I didn't want to be edited anymore, where they'd brutally cut my work to make room for more advertising. I finally just decided that I wanted to do art full time. At that point, I thought that tattooing seemed to be the most legit way to do art. That's when I went on my quest to find who I should learn from and the rest is history. Now it's almost 28 years. Simultaneously, I decided something else I really needed was to find out my true identity because I was an orphan and lived all my life with a chip on my shoulder that somewhere, in some office, was the truth of about where I came from. I put a private eye on to find out who I was, and it turns out that I'm Scottish. It just made sense to me that everyone else in the world has ethnic pride--has an identity--and here I was finding it out and at the same time learning to do this new skill. So I decided to specialize in Celtic art, bringing back that tattoo tradition of the Europeans.

Like what traditions?

People think that the Europeans started getting tattooed when Captain Cook came back from Tahiti with tattooed sailors, who had gotten souvenirs when they went and explored. That isn't true. The Pictish people were known for their tattoos. It turns out that I'm a Campbell and the clan Campbell are Picts. It's an extremely small ethnic group. I thought it was something I should explore and one of the ways to do that would be to bring back alive this tradition of the heavily tattooed Pictish people--to bring these designs back to life in skin. One of the better choices of my life was to learn to tattoo and then to specialize in this.

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See more of Pat's work on Luckyfish.com.  Slainte!

The inimitable Pat Fish -- "The Queen of Celt" -- is internationally renown for her powerful and intricate Celtic knot work tattoos. She is also known for being quite outspoken, calling bullshit on issues she believes harm the tattoo industry and collectors. Pat does just that in our Icon Q&A for Inked mag.

In the interview, she raises some of those controversial issues, like potential dangers in color tattoo ink as well as the ethics of giving clients exactly what they want. Pat also shares some of the lessons she learned from her mentor, the legendary Cliff Raven, who changed her life, and how her pet mule, Tobe, has done the same. Here's a taste:

[...]

Read the rest in the latest issue of Inked and see more of Pat's work here.

Pat Fish
Tattoo Santa Barbara - LuckyFish, Inc.
2007 State Street
Santa Barbara, CA 93105
(805) 962-7552

Tattoo by the fabulous David Allen

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and tattoo studios across the country are working for the cause.

In Aurora, Colorado, 5280 Tattoo is tattooing free pink ribbons every Saturday this month on breast cancer survivors and the loved-ones of breast cancer victims. Reni Soto has already made her appointment, telling Fox 61 News "I'm getting 'faith' underneath it. I kept my faith through the process. Every time I look down I remember what I went through."

In Pomona, CA, this Saturday, October 10th, is the Second Annual Tattoos for a Cure where the artists of Ink'd Chronicles will be tattooing the pink ribbons and other designs at their Pomona Art Colony location (there's an $80 minimum). All the proceeds will go to the Breast Health program at the Robert & Beverly Lewis Cancer Care Center. There will also be an art show and live bands.

For years now, the Healing Art Foundation has been "Saving the Boobies" bringing awareness and raising money through tattoo and fine art. They also hook survivors up with tattooists for tattoos, permanent make-up, areola repigmentation, and cover ups.

Those interested in getting a pink ribbon tattoo with a Celtic twist, see Pat Fish's story of how she created her endless knot of remembrance tattoo design, which can be downloaded for purchase here.

One of my favorite tattoos is this F*uck Cancer rendering that I found on Punk Rock Mommy a couple of years ago, but be warned, it's a heartbreaking tale of one badass woman's fight against the disease.

On a personal note, my mom is a breast cancer survivor, and in her 70s, is still kickin major butt. She did tell me that if I wanted to honor her battle, "a nice Italian dinner" would suffice and not to get needled on her behalf. No worries, mom. Reservations -- no tattoo appointments -- have been made.

I'm starting a new section on N+S on interesting tattoo projects, and the stories behind them. Not stories of the dog that died and that's why I got this Kanji on my shoulder, but stories meant to inspire and inform on the creative tattoo process. I'm snotty like that.

Here's the first in the series: Colin Dale's 3d Celtic Tattoo.

Colin's tattoo was a culmination of a project started on his own leg last February in California and involved various artists in the process. The original idea was to design a piece of Celtic knotwork that wrapped in an unbroken piece around the entire leg -- not just a band but also running from top to bottom in a three-dimensional tattoo encompassing the entire calf.

The design came from Pat Fish, aka The Queen of Celtic, a master at knotwork. The design was then given to her technical assistant and webmaster Colin Fraser Purcell who then made a 3D template that could be wrapped around Colin's leg in a cone shape. Pat then applied the design ... and got it right the first time!  Not an easy task, even for someone as experienced as she is. Pat then spent 3 hours adjusting and freehand drawing it to fit before she even started to tattoo. The original outlining ran into the early hours of the morning.

Colin returned home and began to thicken up all the lines himself. This was actually more painful on the hip joint and lower back than the actual tattoo. [Imagine tattooing while touching your own toes for 2 hours at a time!] This was followed by Colin dot-shading all the negative spaces on the instep and shin. Unfortunately the tattoo wasn't finished in time for the Northern Ink Xposure convention in Toronto, but Colin took the opportunity to have Cory Ferguson to fill in the negative spaces in the left side and back where he couldn't reach. Cory is another talented award winning artist and friend who specializes in the pointillism technique combined with mandalas and tribal patterns.

After this was completed Colin took it down to Alex at Rites of Passage who did all of the greyshading of the knotwork. Alex specializes in Black&Grey and Portraits work, so this was sort of like asking da Vinci to paint a ceiling...with a roller. But it was decided that a simpler more graphic approach was the best way to compliment the Celtic style and complete Pat's original vision.

After this collaboration of three great artists, plus to artist/collector himself, the Three Dimensional Celtic was completed.

And that's just one way to get a kickass tattoo.