Tattoos by Bram Adey: butterfly tattoo

Monday, August 03, 2026

July 2026 - Tattoos, flash and summer wildlife photography

Hi, welcom to the blog. My name is Bram Adey, and I've been tattooing in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada for the last sixteen years. I make all manner of tattoos, custom or flash, often nature themed. If you'd like to explore a tattoo idea, email me at bram_adey@hotmail.com to get the ball rolling.

White Throated Sparrow tattoo - Inner-arm

Bison tattoo - Chest

Crayfish tattoo - Inner-arm

White-lined sphinx moth - Wrist

Monarch Butterfly tattoo - Stomach

Pussy-willow and pocket knife tattoo - Calf

Jack-pine tattoo - Calf

Pine-cone and Garter snake tattoo - forearm

Snake and Chrysanthemum tattoo - Thigh - Black and grey tattoo design by Winnipeg tattoo artist Bram Adey in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Snake and Chrysanthemum tattoo - Thigh

The Better part of the work I do is smalleer-scale one-shot tattoos that take around an hour or so, this snake and chrysanthemum tattoo is a bigger custom piece that took two, two hour sessions or so.

Sun and Moon tattoos - Inner forearm

In addition to traditional machine-made tattoos, i also work by hand relatively regularly, this sun and moon combo were made in the stick-and-poke style, a couple years apart.

Our Wild World

Portraits of the wild things of our natural world

Our Wild World is a large set of tattoo designs I'm working on celebrating Manitoba flora/fauna/fungi. Most of the tattoos I posted above were chosen from this set of flash. Here is a little smattering of designs from the set that I haven't tattooed yet, but would love to!

Chickadee tattoo flash design

Mallard Ducks in flight - Tattoo flash design

Monarch butterfly alight on Milkweed - Tattoo flash design

Monarch Butterflies - Tattoo flash designs

Painted turtle - Tattoo flash design

Mallard duck - Tattoo flash design

Garter snake - Tattoo flash design

Kestrel - Tattoo flash design

Northern widow - Tattoo flash design

Signs and Symbols

from

Around the World and Across the Ages

Signs and Symbols is a collection of amuletic tattoo designs I've collected across the last ten years or so from a huge variety of sources from ancient mesopotamia to 20th century North america.

Here are some new designs i've been working on the last couple weeks. I make these tattoos on fingers and hands in the stick and poke style (no machines), and freehand (no stencil). Drop me an email at bram_adey@hotmail.com if you'd like to have one/some of these or similar tattoos made for you.

The Suits and their relations to the seasons, elements, and archetypal ideas

Ornamental Finger tattoos - Stick and Poke tattoo designs

Thank you som much for checking out the work, here are some nature photos from the last month or so for your viewing pleasure, have a great day!

Sunday, March 15, 2026

New Tattoos - March 2026

Hi, welcome to my blog. My Name is Bram and I'm a tattooer from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. I have been tattooing for sixteen years and make black and grey tattoos in a traditionally inspired fineline style, often nature-themed but also with a little dose of esoterica in the mix.

If you'd like to come get tattooed, shoot me an email at bram_adey@hotmail.com to get the ball rolling.

I also own and operate a small tattoo studio in winnipeg called Ritual Winnipeg, and you can see more of my work as well as my wonderful coworkers at https://ritualwinnipeg.com/

Enjoy!

A black and grey tattoo os a snake entwined in flames. the tattoo is on an outer forearm, and the dark serpent is loosely coiled and nestled in a bed of slender black flames.

Snake and Flames - Outer forearm tattoo

A fineline black and grey tattoo of a lady's slipper flower on an upper-outer arm. The Lady's slipper is a calm simple design with a single stem emerging from a bed of a few long, dark, broad leaves, with a delicate, fine flower head.

Lady's Slipper - Floral upper-arm tattoo

From my flash series "Our Wild World" best viewed on my instagram stories or in-studio on the first friday of every month from 5-9pm.

420-70 Arthur st, Winnipeg, MB

A small fineline butterfly tattoo. The tattoo is of a small monarch butterfly placed between the inner and outer forearm, flying up and away. The tattoo is rendered with very fine black lines, but also has a darkness about it's darker parts, softened by grey shading.

Monarch Butterfly - Fineline black and grey tattoo

A realistic fineline black and grey tattoo of a duck, similar to a mallard, floating on water. The tattoo is on an upper-inner arm, and the duck floats gently across the water and leads out to the rest of the arm where we can see it interact with other tattoos.

Duck Tattoo - Upper-inner arm

Perch - Upper-arm fish tattoo

this photograph shows the back-side of a tattooed upper-arm highlighting a simple, elegant tattoo of a birch leaf surounded by a wood-chopping axe on one side and a fishes tail on the other. the leaf tattoo is rendered in a traditional but realistic style.

Leaf tattoo - Upper-arm

These previous three photos, the duck, perch and leaf (as well as the mostly hidden axe tattoo in the third photo). were all made across the last couple years and are making for a fine little sleeve/half sleeve project.

This photograph shows a sternum tattoo of a bowl of fire set on a checked kerchief. the tattoo is hand-sized and sits elegantly in the centre of the chest. the flames lick up in a teardrop shape of fine-lined black and grey spikes.

Passion - Sternum Tattoo

I made this tattoo design about four years ago as a simple expression of the body, overflowing with passion. The square kerchief represents the earth, tipped to be a diamond, the active principle.

An Upper-arm tattoo of wild roses filling the spaces between several other tattoos and completing the top portion of a well-tattooed arm. the roses are rendered in clusters of fineline black and grey flowers and bolder blacker leaves

Wild Roses - Shoulder tattoo

If you have oddly shaped gaps in your tattoo collection and would like to fill them with some flowers like this, drop me a line, i always love giving a collection this floral treatment.

A black and grey tattoo on the back of an upper-arm showing a spout in a brick wall releasing a stream of water being playfully caught in a dish further below. the water cascades down in a gentle stream and splashes playfully as if fills the bowl.

Abundance - Back of the arm tattoo

This is another tattoo design i devised four years ago or so representing the universe providing by way of life-giving water. This is meant to be a protective and auspicious tattoo.

a photograph of someone wearing a polo shirt with a button undone showing the head of a loon tattoo peeking out. The tattoo is in a bold black and grey style and shows perfectly out of the shirt in a playful, formal way.

Loon peeking out - Chest tattoo

Another design from ""Our Wild World". See my instagram highlights for more from this set.

A simple forearm tattoo of a small sprig of delicate flowers. the flowers are rendered in a fineline traditional style, with slender dark leaves and fine, soft flowers.

Floral tattoo - Forearm

An upper-inner arm tattoo of a crayfish. the crayfish is designed in a simple symmetrical style reminicent of old textbooks, but rendered in a clean western traditional style with strong black linework and black and grey shading.

Crayfish tattoo - Upper-inner arm

A large outer-forearm tattoo of a hawk with a small songbird in it's talons. the bird is perched on a branch and stoops it's head to the side with a menacing look in it's eye. the perched hawk tattoo fills the available space left between hand tattoos and other tattoos on the inner and upper forearm.

Merlin - Outer forearm hawk tattoo

A small tattoo of a bison on the back side of a shoulder, just above the armpit. the bison is in a dynamic pose, head lowered and legs in motion, as though charging. the bison tattoo is rendered in a fineline black and grey style with contrasting areas od fine linnes flooded with soft grey and areas of open skin locked in by dramatic black shading to reveal the bison's shape.

Bison tattoo - Upper arm

Most of the work I do is custom-drawn, but in my spare time i make a fair amount of pre-made designs for you to choose from if you'd like. Right now, i'm mostly working on the project i mentioned a couple times earlier called "Our Wild World", and it's a collection of plants/animals/fungi/geology from around the Great Plains/Precambrian Shield.

Much of the series is inspired by pre-80's wildlife/botanical reference, like this lovely little canadian school textbook by Elizabeth Burnett Flock, and illustrated by her brother J.H.

I neglected to photograph a few new floral designs, but you can see my black-eyed susan design a bit here, I also added Twin Flower to the collection this week.

Slug and Snail - Tattoo flash designs

Bee - Tattoo flash design

I got sick this week, so I busted out "les centimes" for a little fun.

Down at the studio, I've been trying to get a lending library going, not too much uptake just yet, but if you've got a good book you're done with and you'd like to trade it for something new, or you've got old books you like, but no longer want to steward, stop by the studio Tuesday-Friday, 10-6 and drop 'em off, I'd love that!

The weather's getting warmer, so i'm gonna start getting back into the business of photographing this type of creature again.

Well, thanks a lot for checking out my blog, I really appreciate it!

All the best,

Bram