February 2025 - Tattoos old and new, and some studio shots.

 

Hi, Welcome to my blog.  If you're new here, my name is Bram, and I'm a tattooer based in Winnipeg, MB, Canada.  I specialize in Traditional black and grey tattoos.  You can find me at my studio, Ritual Winnipeg, 420 - 70 Arthur Street, Tuesday-Friday, 10am-5pm.

Here are some tattoos of mine I made or saw across the last couple weeks:

Healed swallow and wild rose tattoos, part of a large collection of work by me across the last six years or so.

Big custom chest tattoo of deer antlers.

Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry Tattoo, recently healed.

Black Capped Chickadee on a pine bough tattoo, a couple years healed.

Rose and butterflies forearm tattoo, four years healed or so.

Cherry Blossom tattoo. 

A healed Parrot tattoo.  I held onto a big book for years just waiting for someone to ask for a parrot tattoo 'casue this drawing was in it.   I'm glad i held onto it!

A fresh tattoo of Bunchberries.  I'm so glad to have these in my repretoire.  Bunchberries are the low growing plants you see along hiking paths with either these four petaled flowers surrounded by six-fold leaves, or they've got red berries instead of the flowers.

Big Custom Eel chest tattoo.  It's nice to have been around long enough to have clients like this that I tattooed ten years ago come back and get a big amazing tattoo like this all these years later.

"The Thinning of the veils" Flash piece.

The Peony, Bee, and these Cherry Blossom Tattoos are on a wonderful new client of mine, Bless your soul Rob!

If you'd like to come get tattooed, or bounce an idea off me, shoot me an email at bram_adey@hotmail.com

I'm always taking new clients and my books are always open, I'm happy to do all sorts of black and grey tattoos.

It always starts like this:  nut butter and honey toast and a coffee, 5am.

Then it gets messy!

I love doing custom work, plants/animals/objects of all types, flames/water/clouds

A custom orchid design.

And I have tons of available designs, if you look back in my posts you'll find one called "Available Designs" and it'll have tons of designs and design ideas for your perusal.

Some flash designs of wolves.

I own a studio called Ritual Winnipeg, you can find me there Tuesday-Friday

We're in this lovely building in Winnipeg's historic Exchange District.

My Apprentice Myes's artwork.

My Current Flash wall.

We've got all the creature comforts!

All around it's pretty lovely.

There are six of us at the studio these days, we're all mostly on instagram, check us out at @ritual_winnipeg

@zefvun 

@ladymyes

@boreal.cowboy_

@bramadey

@doxthrasher

@alyssamayart

Thanks so much for taking the time to check out the blog!

-Bram

January 13th 2025 - The New Year, Tattoos, and Around the Studio

Hi, welcome back to the blog.  I hope the New Year feels as good to you as it does for me.  Things still feel hard, especially with tattooing being slow, and having the studio and all my coworkers to care for, but this new year I feel a sense of calm about the state of things, and I'm excited to be in a moment of focus.

As always, email me at bram_adey@hotmail.com for tattoo bookings.

This client and I have been working together for ten years or more, and so when they asked for a set of knucles a year or two ago, it was a no-brainer.  "kindness" knuckle tattoos for a wonderful old client.

Red Squirrel

Great Grey Owl

These two tattoos, the Great Grey and the Red Squirrel, were both chosen from my books of flash by a new client of mine.  If you'd like to see all my available designs, look back in this blog's history for a post called "Flash Portfolio - Winter 2024 - 25" to see a lot of what is currently available.

Another from my flash designs, A horseshoe and wild clover.

This client is very near to having two full sleeves after ten years of consistent tattooing.  She has come in a couple times a year or so, and I'm so happy and proud of the tattoos we've made together.

Very proud to have made this beautiful dagger and laurel-bough chest tattoo.  Chests are such an honour and responsability to tattoo.  You only get one.

We made this Apple a while back.  The Laurel-bough, Dagger and Apple all have that great esoteric, heavy feel to them while still feeling open-ended, allusory rather than explicit.

A super-powered one!

A cute little whale piece for a mum in my community.

When bookings really slowed down, It was really hard mentally at first,  and I shelved these paintings I had started for a while.  But the last couple weeks I've been back on my routine and it feels nice to see the paintings come-to-being.

In addition to pre-made flash designs, I do lots of custom work, and rarely turn an idea down, so don't be shy, drop me a line!

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One thing that has been a positive about tattooing slowing down a bit is that I've had to take a bit of time as the owner of Ritual Winnipeg (tattoo studio) to begin to develop a bit of a visual identity for the studio distinct of my own art/tattoo identity.  My breakthrough:  colour!  All these colour photos are from around the studio these last couple weeks.

This is Ezra, working on a beautiful floral forearm.

@doxthrasher

They love geese!

Behold: My Stuff

I was hopeful that getting my apprentice Myes started on fake skin would be a smart thing to do, but as might be expected, it's usefulness is very limited... @ladymyes

Ezra's mind!

Myse's colours

@tammykimtattoo

@ladymyes

@ferdelanceee

@alyssamayart

@bramadey 

I own and work at Ritual Winnipeg, 420-70 Arthur street in Winipeg, Manitoba.  We are open Monday-Friday, 10-5.  Stop by if you'd like to check out the studio and say hi (I'm in Tuesday-Friday).

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I think a big part of feeling so good right now has to do with reaching a nice focus-point in the work I'm doing and how to present it, this has always been important to me, whether it was zine, blog, or instagram.  

I realized that this new digital camera i've been using is a synthesis between the point and shoot digital i used to blog with, and my film camera I would make zines with.

When I was first blogging in the mid-aughts, every post would have a photo of a piece of toast or a bowl of oats.  These days, this is my absolute favourite break-fast, toast with nut butter and banana.

Parentally making lunches...

Kate Kitagawa on numbers in East-Asian culture.  Notes while listening to Ideas on CBC.

Shally's cordage

Nothing is cuter than this... 

Since my family got a dog, this is a big part of the blog, Dog-walking photos of the neighbourhood:

Thanks so much for stopping in and checking out the blog.  All the best in this new year!

-Bram