In 1975, aged just fifteen, in a sudden rush of blood, sitting alone and bored in his bedroom during the school summer holidays at his parents' house in Crawley, West Sussex, Danny Fuller made his first ever tattoo, at the top of his right arm, with a compass and some India Ink. Not fully realising he was now Marked for Life and instantly regretting his decision in case his parents saw his amateur effort and brought down their usual wrath upon him; he had no idea how that permanent childish scribble would shape the rest of his life.
A few years passed, a couple of dead-end jobs, but the childhood scribble remained - mocking him. It had to go. In 1978, a trip to a tattoo studio in London, UK with a friend to cover that embarrassing mark was the final piece in the jigsaw. He wanted to be a tattoo artist, nothing else mattered.
In this illuminating, sometimes heartrending but also hilarious memoir, you will find out what it was like to be a tattoo artist at the end of the last century. The difficulties, the prejudices but ultimately the sheer joy of being out - alone on a tightrope - where one mistake could bring about a career ending fall.
Danny Fuller visited and got his own marks from some of the best and most renowned tattoo artists across the globe; travelling wherever he thought he might find inspiration during the 1980s and 90s - truly the Golden Age of tattooing. A glorious period when tattoo artists finally dragged this primitive, backstreet trade kicking and screaming, into the adoring glare of the public eye.
During his forty-year career as a tattoo artist, Danny has opened more than twelve tattoo studios including: the Red Dragon, Horsham, West Sussex, UK, Blue Dragon, Brighton, East Sussex, UK, Black Dragon, Horley, Surrey, UK, and he has appeared at the top tattoo expos both in the UK and America. He spent many summers working across Oregon, USA.
Danny has been responsible for many of the firsts in tattooing: he was the first tattoo artist to sell tattoo flash - a tattoo artist's designs - by the sheet at tattoo expos. Then, he was motivated by the number of poor quality handmade jobs - similar to his own early attempts - and alongside a number of his peers in the industry, to recognise that tattooing could decline from the art form it deserved to be if its craft wasn't shared properly. This motivation led to his opening the first professional tattoo academy to demystify the craft. Prior to Danny's determination to make tattooing more accessible it was very difficult to learn how to master this ancient craft professionally.
His memoir is a celebration of the tattoos that create unique looking individuals and a recognition of the artists and of the tribe who have chosen to be Marked for Life. Welcome to Tattooing's Golden Age.
Danny is among the best-known tattoo artists in the south of England. He founded the world's first professional tattoo academy, established three studios in Horsham, Brighton and Horley, published a book on tattoos and won several major awards for his designs. It is fourteen years since he opened the Red Dragon Tattoo and Body Piercing studio in East Street, Horsham and Danny is in semi-retirement, helping out his team when it gets busy or a specific design needs his expertise. So does he sit at home, reading The Telegraph and playing golf? No, instead Danny likes to paint zombies, heavily armed robot soldiers, green goblins in battle, and skeletons holding spears decorated with severed heads! It's only a few years since he started painting with oils, but the art is very much a progression of the designs he has been drawing since he started creating tattoos over forty years ago. "It started with a home-made tattoo that I did myself back in 1980." remembers Danny. "Not many people had tattoos then, but people had started doing some designs at school with basic needles and India ink. I was only thirteen or fourteen, but still, I couldn't just do a cross or something simple - I wanted a castle with a bat, so I had a go."
Lesley Hart is a line and developmental editor specialising in fiction and narrative non-fiction. For the last five-years, she has taught creative writing to adult learners at her local sixth-form college. This has resulted in a wealth of experience and she can edit manuscripts of: short stories, memoir, fiction and narrative non-fiction across most genres. Since 2018, Lesley has been a member of CIEP (the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading) and has completed their courses in proofreading, copy-editing, fiction-editing and advanced skills in editing in Word to hone her professional skills. She constantly seeks opportunities to become a more proficient editor and has taken many other editing and publishing courses, including those with: BookMachine, SYP, Sophie Playle and Louise Harnby.
Simon qualified with a BA in Illustration from the University of Westminster, highly renowned for its arts degrees. He has since worked as a graphic designer, illustrator and is a very capable typesetter. He's also Lesley Hart's right-hand man when it comes to the technical side of book design, typesetting and creation. He has a can-do positive attitude and embraces new challenges.
