About Michael
Michael Canavan is the owner and artist at Tsunami Tattoo studios.
He has been tattooing professionally since 1991 but his interest in tattooing started when he was around eight years of age.
As a child Michael was showing talent with his art from quite an early age, in fact the first picture he painted at school was a green dragon.
It all started when the friend and bass player of his fathers band, who was a tattoo artist, would call at the house for visits and band practice.
It was then Michael asked him to draw a tattoo design on a piece of paper that sparked a life long passion for tattoo art.
Each time he met his fathers friend he would ask him to draw him another tattoo design, to which Michael would practice over and over again until it looked exactly like the design he had been given.
This its self created a chain reaction.
Michael attended Oak Field primary and took his newly discovered art with him to lessons.
With a pencil case full of felt tip pens, his fellow pupils where only to keen to to let him practice this tattoo style on there arms.
This carried on through to secondary school, still penning on tattoo designs on the pupils and friends there.
So as a natural progression, he was keen to become a tattoo artist.
This was no easy task as tattooing was not nearly as popular as it is today.
There was no TV shows or Youtube video's to watch, as there was no internet at this time, so to get the tools needed to tattoo was impossible.
The tattoo business was in a decline and still suffering from the Aids scare of the eighties, which almost ended the whole of the tattooing trade.
This made getting any information about tattooing very hard indeed and finding a tattoo artist willing to talk to you was near impossible also.
Undeterred by all these struggles, Michael pushed on knowing this was what he wanted to do with his life.
With no one willing to take on apprentice's, Michael had no choice by to teach himself the techniques needed to successfully apply a tattoo.
This was the most difficult thing he has ever done in his life, especially as there was information available to even begin with.
With no supply company willing to sell to a unknown novice, Michael had learn how to make the equipment he needed. Starting with the needles, he would need to hand make every set of needles for every single tattooing job.
Then there where the inks that where used at this time.
They also needed to be made by hand and every artist had his own unique secret recipe to make the perfect constancy that suited there technique.
Michael Canavan is the owner and artist at Tsunami Tattoo studios.
He has been tattooing professionally since 1991 but his interest in tattooing started when he was around eight years of age.
As a child Michael was showing talent with his art from quite an early age, in fact the first picture he painted at school was a green dragon.
It all started when the friend and bass player of his fathers band, who was a tattoo artist, would call at the house for visits and band practice.
It was then Michael asked him to draw a tattoo design on a piece of paper that sparked a life long passion for tattoo art.
Each time he met his fathers friend he would ask him to draw him another tattoo design, to which Michael would practice over and over again until it looked exactly like the design he had been given.
This its self created a chain reaction.
Michael attended Oak Field primary and took his newly discovered art with him to lessons.
With a pencil case full of felt tip pens, his fellow pupils where only to keen to to let him practice this tattoo style on there arms.
This carried on through to secondary school, still penning on tattoo designs on the pupils and friends there.
So as a natural progression, he was keen to become a tattoo artist.
This was no easy task as tattooing was not nearly as popular as it is today.
There was no TV shows or Youtube video's to watch, as there was no internet at this time, so to get the tools needed to tattoo was impossible.
The tattoo business was in a decline and still suffering from the Aids scare of the eighties, which almost ended the whole of the tattooing trade.
This made getting any information about tattooing very hard indeed and finding a tattoo artist willing to talk to you was near impossible also.
Undeterred by all these struggles, Michael pushed on knowing this was what he wanted to do with his life.
With no one willing to take on apprentice's, Michael had no choice by to teach himself the techniques needed to successfully apply a tattoo.
This was the most difficult thing he has ever done in his life, especially as there was information available to even begin with.
With no supply company willing to sell to a unknown novice, Michael had learn how to make the equipment he needed. Starting with the needles, he would need to hand make every set of needles for every single tattooing job.
Then there where the inks that where used at this time.
They also needed to be made by hand and every artist had his own unique secret recipe to make the perfect constancy that suited there technique.