Sorry its been so long. I’ve been all over the place since I closed the studio, traveling the country tattooing my ass off and having some fun along the way… I’m finally getting time to catch up to fixing all my website issues for the moment too, keeping myself too busy. I’ll be posting new pics of tattoos very soon, along with pics from a few incredible tours too. Check back soon for updates…

In October 2008, I decided to close the second RNR Tattoos.  Most people don’t really understand why I suddenly decided to do this, I’m not even quite sure if I to either, but I’m glad I did.  I opened the original studio 3 years ago, October 2005, after being a tattoo artist for only 3 years, thats half my career now.  Some people seem to be impressed by the fact that I was able to build a series of nice  tattoo studios at a young age, but for me it was never intended to be that.  I started Reason Not Rules Custom Tattoo Studio with a few ideas in mind;  build a beautiful tattoo studio that feels like home, have a comfortable place to work, and tattoo with my friends without a bunch of stress and a bossman on our backs.  For a long time RNR Tattoos was all of those for me, without a doubt. I just feel like somewhere along the way it became more too, still with friends and family all around, and still the most beautiful and badass studio ever, but now just with a lot more stress.  I found myself with the realization that I became or was becoming a person that I don’t want to be, and business man more than an artist.  I enjoy my life and do great on my own, the last 3 years with RNR was an incredible learning experience, but not quite the right for me at the moment.  I know that I could have just hired a manager or even sold it , but moving on and focusing on my artwork was my choice for now.  I guess we’ll see where the universe takes me from here…

Disney Bill is a very smart person with a very interesting tattoo collection. He is a retired English professor of Valdosta State University and now spends his time walking around town listening to his headphones, meeting new people, getting tattooed, and mastering the claw machine at the local Winn-Dixie.  Myself and everyone I know that has kids also has a great stuffed animal collection from his skill… great dude.  Bill also spends as much time as he can at his time-share property in Orlando, visiting his most favorite place to feel like a kid again, Disney World, and loves every second of it.

Bill is covered head to toes with tattoos, all Disney characters, which is obviously why we call him “Disney Bill.”  He started collecting tattoos while still a professor over a decade ago and is still going strong with it today, getting tattooed about every week for a few hours at a time.  By no means have I done all of Bill’s tattoos, not even all that many in comparison to what he has and I’m not even the current artist working on him, but I still just wanted to show the world his collection and how great and unique of a dude he is… I also really enjoy looking at his tattoo collection, because you can see how tattoos age and react over time and due to placement… pretty cool…

This tattoo is done on Matt McGinley, an amazing drummer in the band Gym Class Heroes. We started this tattoo on Fall Out Boys, Young Wild Things Tour. This is one of my favorite tattoos I’ve done, a big and bold image of a lighthouse, pretty cool.

The first session on this tattoo was pretty intense, Matt sat for about 9 hours, then got up and played drums for a good hour or so, then came back for another 2 hours or so.  Pretty insane, he got tattooed about 11 hours that day.

We had a few sessions on the tattoo after that as well, adding the color.  Matt came to my studio in Valdosta, Ga and got tattooed a few times.  I remember the first trip down, we went out to the local pub and got wasted to the point of puking out windows and more. Then woke up and went at it hard on the tattoo the next day, tough dude.

Thats a lot of color in one session too, pretty stoked on it though.

We finished Matt’s tattoo on Warped Tour last year, definitely a day to celebrate… about 25 hours total. 

After creating a few designs and starting the clothing company, I teamed up with a few friends and took the clothes out on Warped Tour for about a month.  We started off in the van and trailer for a while and have a pretty cool booth set up, then when the ride was over, the guys in Gym Class Heroes offered to scoop me up and ride with them and sell clothes from their tent, so I did.  It was really fun and seemed like a lot of people were wearing the clothes too, stoked for sure.

I also did a good bit of tattooing on Warped Tour, finished a few projects, started a few new ones and did a few single session tattoos as well. We set up and tattooed Travis McCoy’s hands, doing a cover-up of old tattoos and creating these images of Hall and Oats for him. He also got interviewed at the same time, which was kinda cool.

It doesn’t really make any since, but for about 2 years I’ve had this idea stuck in my head of how cool it would look to have a vneck shirt with a badass goat head on it, the horns going back on the shoulders and all bugeyed and cool.  I dunno, just something about it stuck whenever the idea came to me… So as time passed I continued to get these kinda crazy ideas for more, some cooler and nicer than others, some subtle and some bold, and a few just rude and in your face. Something fun about wearing a shirt that makes a statement, it’s almost as cool as having a badass tattoo that everyone wants to see… 

It was nice to be able to get hands on with the printing process, I learned a lot…

So I decided to start a clothing company, something small of course, and just try to make some cool shirts to start with and see where it goes, why not.  So to start I picked a handful of design ideas and some of which were tattoos I’ve done or started. The tattoo collectors think it’s pretty cool to see their designs printed too, I wouldn’t do that without permission.  The first run of clothes here were really a huge learning process, there’s a lot that goes into it for sure.  I’m stoked to do more and I know they will continue to get better each time, so I hope everyone enjoys… www.forthehellofitclothing.com

Now seems like a good time to reintroduce everyone to my babies. My daughter Saryn Monroe Beasley, my son Jett Danger Beasley, and my other son and newest addition to the Beasley Clan, Edison Vaughn Beasley. My wife Heidi isn’t in this picture, but she obviously runs the show… hahah

I really enjoy doing tattoos that are inspired by Japanese imagery. By no means would I consider what I do Japanese or Traditional in any way, but I like using concepts that come from those styles of tattooing.  This tattoo is also a cover-up, which I think went pretty well, definitely hides and distracts from the original tattoo very well. The water and background was really fun in this tattoo too.  I try to focus a lot with backgrounds, regardless of the style,and I always like developing new ideas with backgrounds, it helps keep tattooing fun and exciting too. Unfortunately I can’t seem to find a picture of the tattoo we covered up, but it was a pretty fun challenge.

I’m really bad about the timeline of this blog, but around the time we opened the new RNR Tattoos, we also had a pretty awesome Halloween Party. I don’t remember much, but a few bands played and everyone ended up red…

This picture pretty much sums it all up, me and Manning, wasted…

This tattoo concept is a little hard to explain, but I think it’s really cool to say the least. The collector, Paul, approached me with an idea of wanting to portray different feelings, such as rage and inner peace or content.  He wanted to use figures to represent these emotions with a more human central figure in a meditative state to represent ones self, something like that. As the ideas grew and the drawing began, it also led to the idea of adding in a universal energy kinda theme with it. That idea sparked when I saw an image and learned a little more about the similarities between our universe and a human brain cell… google an image of “universe and brain cell,” you’ll see what I mean. It atleast sparked a creative thought, which was pretty cool I think. I used more of an energy or inner space depiction on the rage side and a more outer space on the content side. I’ve seen other artists use imagery that involve glowing figures, so I really tried to evolve on the idea a bit.  The figures that were used for this project I photographed myself, using my friend Travis in FFTL as the model, I changed him a good bit, but kinda cool. I had a lot of fun on this project and feel like I learned a lot while working on it.