The book is a huge combination of comics work, one-off drawings and your tattoo work. How did you go about refining everything down to go into it?

It was pretty straightforward really. Most of it’s colour stuff that I couldn’t afford to print solo. I felt like I knew how I wanted the book to look but I took my time putting it together and failed two deadlines I set for myself. Once I’d collected all the work I pored over it a couple of times and then I asked Simon [Hanselmann] what he thought. He wanted one other piece called Madame Spongebob to be in it, but that was burned in a house fire sadly.

Your tattooing technique is pretty traditional. Tell us a bit about it and how you learned.

It started with my dear friend Oliver Van Der Lugt who had learned from movies I think, and a few tidbits online. I was coming close to my third life expectancy and I just wanted to regain some kind of control over my body. We boiled some needles and tattooed some dumb shit in some very visible spots. From then on me and a few friends – Paul Stillen and Miso – really took it and ran with it. At first it was therapy but the more I did it the more people asked me to do it for them. I travel around doing it now. It’s a great thing to be able to trade for a meal and a place to stay.

I don’t use a gun, I only manually apply each marking with a needle in hand. It is healthier for the skin, causes less scarification, takes longer and you can achieve a finer level of detail. I’m nearing ten years on my first stick-and-pokes and they haven’t changed, so as far as I know there is no danger of them fading or warping any more than a gun tattoo would – despite what the industry would have you believe. I think this slower more hands-on process really suits my interests and skill set.