Interview with Jonnii Guns
This week we had a guest artist, Jonnii Guns. You can find him on instagram @jgunstattoo or at his regular shop Anthem Tattoo in Edmonton. I fell in love with his traditional work and heard he liked doing sharks so I decided to get a shark tattoo from him on my stomach. Despite how painful a stomach can be I saw this as a great opportunity to interview him while we were working. At the beginning I didn’t know if I would make it to the interview but once lines were in I was able to ask some questions and have a little interview for you guys (I’ll include a photo at the end incase you’re interested). If you didn’t know, Jonnii is from England and he moved to Canada about 4 years ago. Meet the man himself!
Here’s how it went:
What attracted you to tattooing?
“It was really an accident actually. I moved up North to Wales from just outside London to live with my mom and try to have better luck looking for work. I was walking through town handing out resumes and I ended up near a tattoo shop and decided to do a walk in. I was really friendly and talked to the owner a bit, he ended up offering me a job piercing. The shop was in a little seaside town so the winter was really quiet. Sometime in November my buddy at the shop asked if I wanted to have a go of tattooing so I did a little Wu Tang symbol on him and the owner said I could stay on as an artist and that was that. Piercing was ok but it’s a little messy for me.”
What is your favourite style or imagery?
“The most fun is pop culture and cartoons. I love doing pokemons. I like tattooing a traditional style because a lot of people think that traditional is simple but it’s harder than they think. I really love biomechanical but it hasn’t been very big since the 90’s so I don’t get to do much.”
What is your favourite part about Canada?
“Jasper. It’s actually my favourite place in the world. Vancouver was also really nice but I loved Jasper.”
Have you ever done a tattoo in a crazy place?
“I actually tattooed backstage at a gig. I had reached out to Alien Ant Farm in the past so they contacted me when they were going to be in the area to see if I wanted to tattoo. I ended up going to the show and then tattooing the guitarist and the bassist afterwards.”
What’s the craziest tattoo that you’ve done?
“The craziest I’ve ever done was knuckle dusters (brass knuckles) saying girth or glory and it was above a guys dick”
What’s the biggest difference between the tattoo scene here and in England?
“There’s more quality tattooing here. In England every other shop is a scratcher. People tend to give more of a shit here, though it does tend to be more expensive too. There’s more comradery between shops here, there’s lots of shop rivalries in England.”
Napkins
As you may remember if you read my post when Xam was here, we have all our guest artists adorn the pho-skin cat, Napkins, with a little tattoo. Jonnii had some free time this week so he got to add some rosy cheeks for Napkins.
That’s all Folx
I hope you had as much fun learning about Jonnii and some of his experience coming here from England as I did. I highly recommend getting tattooed by him, after all I made it through a stomach sticker without too much trouble under his needle. Check him out on IG or book at Anthem next time you venture to Edmonton!
