THE DRAWING OF PATRICK O'DONOVAN.
September 1967 - Art Director, Bill Fallover, had just commissioned my first drawing for NOVA magazine - a portrait of writer Patrick O’Donovan called “God and I” - an autobiographical piece on his perception of what it’s like to be a ‘liberal catholic’. This seemed the best opportunity to indulge myself of my interest in Tattoo art. I had been given a brilliant photograph by John Deakin of Les Skuse’s Tattoo Club in Bristol. Les had won acclaim for being the best Tattoo Artist in England in 1966. The Deakin picture would inspire an entire collection of drawings and prints - it started with Jesus ....
It turned out with the tattoo on the bare torso of Patrick O’Donovan sparks would fly. It gave me grief with him and the editor, Dennis Hackett. Both wanted to axe it. A quote from Pat’s article says it all - “Catholics can be perfectly bloody and must seem at times intolerably dull". The portrait was published but without the tattoo.
This little incident took me by surprise and woke me up to the taboos that surround Tattoo Art. It gave me a brief insight into its subversive power - we started to draw Tattoos. Suddenly, there seemed to be a lot more tattoos - we talked to anyone we met with tattoos and checked out those famously tattooed characters around Soho at the Golden Lion Pub in Dean Street, the French House and the Coach and Horses.
Our good luck returned when in April 1970, NOVAPublished the Tattoo designs of John Dove and Molly White printed on flesh coloured cotton and sheer body-stockings - photographed by James Wedge and modelled by Pat Booth. Fashion editor Caroline Baker wrote: “Give yourself a past with a painless tattoo. Tattoos have been the subject of so many sordid jokes, but some patterns can be quite beautiful in their own right".