About Colin F Brennan

My name is Colin Brennan.

If you hail from anywhere in central to southern Victoria, and are interested in tattoos, chances are you will have heard of me – perhaps you are even wearing some of my work. I have been in the tattoo design game since 1989 and, while the first 5 years or so were just designing, I have laid approximately 3,500 tattoos in my time. Most of those were done in Castlemaine, Geelong and Ballarat. My tattoo flash sheets are still found in tattoo shops in Bendigo, Geelong and Melbourne and I am constantly meeting people who have had these designs done by the experts in this local area.

As a teenager I followed in my fathers footsteps and began a mechanics apprenticeship in 1975 and continued in that field even while trying to hone my tattoo design skills after hours. During the early ’90′s I was forced to take a year off work with some disc degeneration problems in my lower back and was then forced to lean on my artistic skills to support my family, my wife didn’t work and our eldest daughter was just starting school so times were tough.

I found out then just what a fine crowd of people were involved in the tattoo field in my area. Great people with pleasant personalities who were willing to give their all to provide quality art for their customers. I enjoyed the work and the people so much, I began to focus more on the tattoo designs and less on the cars.

What I will attempt to show you is how I do my designs these days, using the technology of today – namely, a computer and a copy of Photoshop. My preference is Photoshop CS3 but any graphics program that works with layers will do, so don’t throw out that old version of Corel Paint just yet, these techniques will all work with it also.