A black-and-white photo of a person mid-air in a Superman-style body suspension pose, supported by multiple hooks in their back and legs, smiling joyfully toward the camera. They are suspended horizontally in a large indoor space with high ceilings and visible rigging. A group of onlookers—some seated, some standing—watch with expressions of admiration, amusement, and support. The atmosphere is lively and communal, capturing a moment of shared experience and transformation.

One Hour Tattoo – Ran Maclurkin

I’m not sure what I was thinking when I decided to get tattooed again but the day we were leaving Melbourne, I had to let Trevor finish what he had left of the background on my right calf. I wasn’t sure if he was going to have time for a second session so I had made an appointment later that same day with Ran Maclurkin of The Piercing Urge. The tour team and I had spent the day prior to the tattoo interviewing Ran, Matt and Pete for the tour videos and interviews that we’re doing. As I had explained before, I’m getting a series of skull tattoos to fill up the front and sides of my thighs while I’m out on the road. I really liked Ran‘s “Abstract Noir” style of tattooing and wanted to get a piece from him. He’d already tattooed Chez‘s thigh the day before. I decided to ask Ran if he’d do me the honor of being the second in my series of “One Hour Tattoo” video and he said yes!

Check out the video and I hope you enjoy it!

ran

Due to weird inconsistencies with the “Auto-Play”, I’ve moved the video to behind the jump. Click the image to go to the post to watch the video or click more.

The next installment of the “One Hour Tattoo” will be from Josh Roelink at TatuDharma in Sydney! No, I didn’t make these out of order, I’m heading back to Sydney for a couple days before we head off from the land of kangaroos and awesome.

Comments

29 responses to “One Hour Tattoo – Ran Maclurkin”

  1. C Avatar
    C

    You shouldn’t have the videos start automatically since now you have two videos with two songs that are trying to play at the same time. Just a suggestion. Otherwise the videos are kind of neat.

  2. Tobias Avatar

    The videos don’t work in Chrome =[

  3. Molly Avatar

    I love this one! I hope you have plenty of lotion for the trip for all these healing tattoos, haha.

  4. Piercing Pete Avatar
    Piercing Pete

    Sweet 🙂 if you guys want to check out more of Ran’s work go to
    http://www.ranmaclurkin.com

  5. wishfull_girl Avatar
    wishfull_girl

    it sucks loading this page and the videos are automatically playing….

  6. Saint Avatar
    Saint

    What’s the music in the video? I have to know!

  7. Caitlin Avatar
    Caitlin

    #6, it says at the end 🙂 It’s The Last Waltz by Fat City Reprise

  8. Rachel Avatar

    Sorry about the autoplay. It was on for less than 5 minutes before I fixed it, right before I went to bed. I don’t know how it turned back on for Rhys’s video but it’s annoyingly the default for embedded videos.

    If it’s still auto-playing for you please post and let me know, though I don’t know what I can do to fix it since it’s off for me.

    Pete: Thanks for the link, I’ll add it to the entry.

  9. Chez Stock Avatar

    Love his work! I’m so happy I was able to get tattooed by him before we left Melbourne. Seriously, folks… Check this guy out!

  10. Botexty Avatar

    they’re both still on autoplay for me.

    i was thinking “I wonder if she’s going to get any colour” and out whips the red, that looks so badass. Have you brought some ideas with you for these beforehand or are you just telling them “theme is skulls – dazzle me”?

  11. Sam Avatar
    Sam

    Love it! The simple black with bits of red is great. And the little swirls with dots around it are also cool. Did that really only take an hour?

  12. Chez Stock Avatar

    Sam, we timed it and it only took 54 minutes! The tattoo that he did on my thigh (which is pretty big) only took an hour and a half!

  13. Rachel Avatar

    Botexty: That’s weird. It’s not autoplaying for me. Do me a favor and right click on the window and select “view text” and see if it says “Autoplay =false” for you.

    Basically I’m getting skulls and letting the artist run with that so that I get something that’s done in their style. It’s a cool way to get tattooed by great tattooers from around the world that I would not normally be able to get work done by. I’m pretty stoked that Josh is fitting me in as he’s got a closed waiting list that’s 3 years long! That’s on May 4th but I may get something else done when we’re up in Brisbane/Gold Coast area.

    I’m mostly getting work done on the front and sides of my thighs. Rans tattoo was a little bigger than I was thinking but he put a lot of our own conversation into the piece and really made it his own so I let him go with it! He tattoos differently than I’ve ever experienced and it was super cool.

    I hope you guys like the videos!

  14. Botexty Avatar

    okay so they’re no longer autoplaying for me now

    three years! and i was unimpressed my local tattooist (http://tat2it.com.au if you’re still looking for places when you come back over to Sydney) was booked up for eight months, man you’d really want to making that tattoo count if you had three years to think it through!

    that’s what i was hoping you’d say, that you’re letting them run with only basic direction (and approval – i’m sure you’d have different levels of willingness to someone wanting to do a scub-skull as opposed to a depiction of skullfucking on your thigh for forever :-S), as if you’ve got your set idea beforehand you could get anyone to do who works in that style, as it’s just transfering from point A (your head) to point B (paper) to point C (your body). whereas this way it’s a lot more to their personal strengths. i think that’s awesome.

  15. Samantha Avatar
    Samantha

    Rachel: Love the songs that have gone with the videos in this series. Chuck a line in saying what artist & song it is next time!

  16. Juhani Avatar
    Juhani

    What was the song in the video?

  17. Tony Skit Avatar
    Tony Skit

    the video does not work on chrome 🙁

  18. Bethan Avatar
    Bethan

    Both are still autoplaying for me, and mine says “autoplay=false”.

  19. Arielle Avatar
    Arielle

    I CAN NOT wait until this article is off the front page
    because the video autoplaying is driving me craaaaaaazy

  20. Rachel Avatar

    Chrome Users: I don’t know what to tell you about the videos not working in chrome. We’re using the built in wordpress methods for posting the videos so I can’t do anything to change that.

    For people who are still having the videos auto play despite the settings clearly being set to false, what browsers are you using? All you have to do is hit stop and they’ll stop playing. It really only takes a second or two of your time to make the video stop. There is nothing I can do to fix this if it’s an issue with chrome only.

  21. Bethan Avatar
    Bethan

    I’m using Internet Explorer, not chrome. I know it’s not a big deal, it just slows my computer right down which is mildly annoying.

  22. ran Avatar

    soooks…BME supports us all and all u can do is bitch about autoplay………. on my mac and pc it doesnt auto play and works on safari, chrome and explorer…..seriously is it that much of an issue….be greatful people are working hard to share body art with you.

    Ok cheers for the positive feedback, was great to meet the BME crew, ill be honest i was not very versed in the BME ways, but have now had a look around and am impressed with the level the site is maintained and amazed at what we all do to ourselves….. i was honored to tattoo Racheal and Chez both great ladies, who let me do my thing, i hope one day to get over to usa and catch up with them again. xo

  23. Mrs. Penguin Avatar
    Mrs. Penguin

    I use IE8, and I get the autoplay too 🙁

    Other than that, great video!

  24. Rachel Avatar

    Alright. I’ll have to figure out a different way to display the videos then. The way the rest of the videos are requires the files to be a lot larger and we have to upload multiple copies of the video which is not easy with the limited bandwidth that we have for uploading files. 🙁

    I’ll get looking into what the issues are and what we can do to fix it.

  25. Rachel Avatar

    Okay, we’ve installed Chrome and tested it and it works immediately after install without any fuss. I don’t know what to do otherwise to try to resolve the issue other than ask people who are running chrome to check their quicktime settings and please report back to us about it as we’re going to have a lot of videos starting in about two weeks.

    Mike said there was an option that can be set to block quicktime or override settings that I set, such as auto play etc.

    “As for the auto-play, I don’t have a windows box to confirm with IE, but I recall that Quicktime has a setting (outside of the browser — in the actual QT preferences) to disable auto-play or enable it. I think this is probably overriding the option you’re putting on the player.”

    We’ve tested it in IE, Chrome, Safari, Opera and Firefox on both PC and Mac and I’m not able to recreate the problems that people are reporting with it either not displaying the videos at all or the auto-play going anyway. The only other thing that I can do is to upload the videos to youtube but I really don’t want to put BME content over there so that readers get sent over there.

  26. Rachel Avatar

    I’ve made a work around for the autoplay. I just put a screen shot of the video on the main page and now you have to click through to get the video. I’ll do that from now on until we figure out a different method for posting. Either that or I can export the videos as FLV and use the previous method of posting videos. It just means more time spent exporting the videos. 🙁

  27. peteD3 Avatar
    peteD3

    Go Ran!
    a big howdy to all the Piecing Urge crew.

    Pete- thanks again for the Daith

  28. Piercing Pete Avatar
    Piercing Pete

    PeteD3,
    Dude, I cant find you anywhere on the interwebs.
    Send me your iam/myspace/facebook/whatever links would ya!!!!!!

  29. oak Avatar
    oak

    well, it’s working on chrome for me, and it didn’t autoplay.

    great video, i really wasn’t expecting the red at the end and that was a cool touch

Latest Tattoo, Piercing, and Body Modification News

  • Twelve Points to the Sky
    There’s a particular kind of magic that happens at your first big suspension gathering when you arrive with nerves, an open heart, and the quiet hope of flight. Guided by the encouragement of mentor Lynn Loheide and driven by the quiet confidence of belonging, Alex… Read more: Twelve Points to the Sky
  • Ontario SusCon 2025
    In March 2025, BME attended the Ontario Suspension Convention in Hamilton, hosted by the Kevin Donaghy and the Ontario Suspension Collective. We had the pleasure to take part and help document the event, but also run a booth to sell a bunch of old (but… Read more: Ontario SusCon 2025
  • Welcome Back to Body Modification Ezine
    Dear BME Community, We’ve been gone far too long, but BME is back to give people a voice, a space, a community. With time everything evolves, and BME may be different than you remember. Our goal is to stay true to Shannon and Rachel’s values… Read more: Welcome Back to Body Modification Ezine
  • BME Social Media
    Word of mouth has been our method of reuniting the community, and it has brought a substantial amount of us together. I am inspired by your loyalty and I want to remind more people of BME’s existence. In 2020 we gained control over @bmezine on… Read more: BME Social Media
  • BMEShop
    Despite the hurricanes in 2015 which destroyed almost all of what Rachel owned, she managed to save the original inventory from BME. We have relisted some of the stock on BMEShop.com with the hopes you may be interested.  Our first drop includes a selection of… Read more: BMEShop
  • Rachel Larratt 1980-2022
    Unfortunately, when we lost some of the ModBlog content, it included the post about Rachel’s passing. (Original Post) Rachel passed away on June 22, 2022. She died in her sleep. Even now, it’s extremely difficult to write this post. Rachel meant so much to so… Read more: Rachel Larratt 1980-2022