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Mike Baxter is a great guy that we love hearing from. The work he shares with us are tattoo designs that are done on hog skin. I’ve never used hog skin to practice doing a tattoo before but looking at his work, I would definitely recommend using it if your looking to practice how to tattoo on something similar in texture and epithelial layers like human skin. I just don’t know where the hell your going to find a hog.
I personally love the pinup style girls. The one in the green reminds me of the old vintage Sailor Jerry tattoos of quasi pin up girl tattoo designs. The effect from the varied shading gives the piece a good textured look. That is the sexiest looking girl I could imagine sitting on a hog about to get slaughtered. I have yet to ask Mike the meaning or inspiration for that particular one but I’ve included a little excerpt from his email to share in this blog post. I hope I didn’t cross any boundaries by posting the excerpt Mike, let me know if you want me to edit that part out of the post. Anyway, Great job! Look forward to hearing from you again soon man!

Mikes description of his work: “Richard, Hopefully these make it to you. All of these are just practice done on Hog skins. The Rabbit was done with the .444 and the .38 (.444 Hildbrandt Magnum and .38 Hildbrandt Calibre). The Pinups were done exclusively with the Assassin, Sniper, and Hitman Rotary’s. If anyone has wondered how these perform they are flawless for lining, color, and shading as evidenced.”

How Mike got a bunch of hog skin for practice and the inspiration for his pieces:  “I usually just do Hog Ears and what not becuase they are available from the local butcher but I was wanting to do something a bit more elaborate. We have a local packing plant here in town as well that mainly distributes wholesale pork to companys. I went to the plant and inquired about getting a hog belly or hog back and they kinda thought I was half nuts when i told them what i would do with it. The hog back he sold me was the size of a human back its very large and for $13.00  I just couldnt pass it up. I took it home and cut it in half so the design of the pinups are approximately 8×10 for both, quite large.  The inspiration was this, I wanted something challenging, something with tons of line work, something with tons of shading, and something that would really push my comfort zone so I choose the pinup girl:  then since the guy at the plant was kind enough to get me that hog back I thought why not throw a pig all sectioned up on that thing as well???  When this was finished I took it over and showed them what I had done to that hog back…they were quite impressed with it! LOL!!!!!!  So there is the inspiration behind that piece. The second one with the color, was again, and experience this time trying out some coloring techinques with the heavier duty Rotary and some Mags to lay in serious colors…..?”