AMAZING JAWS TATTOO: YOU'RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER THROAT!

My name is Grant Blomfield I’m from Watford England,

I’ve always loved films, the first film I distinctly remember watching was Jurassic Park. It must have been 1995 when my dad rented it from the video shop next to his work. At the time, I was a 7 year old boy that loved dinosaurs. I saw these things in a whole different way than just fun animated kids shows.

Fast forward a little while (after I had killed the Jurassic park VHS), I think was one November Saturday night in 97, my mum was looking through the TV guide and saw Jaws was on and said “You have to watch this film! It’s just one film everyone has to see once.” She didn’t tell me anything about it. Just that it was made by the same person as Jurassic park, so from that moment I knew what I was doing that evening.

My brothers where staying and my grandparents house that evening so the TV in my bedroom was all mine. I still remember my mum coming up telling me it was 9pm. So I got up turned the PlayStation off and put the TV to BBC 2. From that black slow opening to the quick underwater scene with the orchestral backing then the first death within the first 5 minutes, I was glued to the screen for the next hour and 55 minutes.

After it was finished all could do was replay scenes and the music over and over in my head. My mum asked me the next day if I enjoyed it and I think she could tell by the look on my face it was my new favourite. So a few days later she brought it for me on VHS. She then told me when we brought it that she has not actually been in the sea since she had seen it.

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As the years went and as I grew up and watched it time and time again I started to notice bits I hadn’t before and understand bits more than I did before. It just kept getting better with more understanding of the characters and there interactions just added to tension building, I knew what was going to happen but it almost felt like a new film.

Going forward, after getting the DVDs/BluRays/4k and digital copy’s over the years and watching all the behind the scenes, making-of, reading books about the film and listening to podcasts and then becoming a musician, I gained so much respect for everyone involved. How they created such an iconic masterpiece amongst utter chaos and disruption, I take my hat off and thank every single one of you.

I watch shark documentaries with my wife and kids all the time and they too are fascinated by them. Just as much as me. One day when they are a little older, I will show them Jaws. They know what it is with bits around the house like posters, figures, funko pops and my tattoos.

I have 3 shark/Jaws tattoos. The first one I got was on my right forearm. I had an idea of a sleeve. Everything I used to love growing up from TV/Films and the idea that it would start at the wrist and go sea/land/sky/space up the arm so it started with a great white shark head coming out of the water (sleeve also included Jaws, Jurassic park, back to the future, thunderbirds, Star Wars and ET).

But over time I always through I want a “Jaws” tattoo and thought it would always the iconic poster image but didn’t really know where I wanted it.

I’d always wanted to put something onto my neck/throat but it had to be the perfect thing. Jump to late 2019/2020 and I had been working my ass off and making my self quite ill. So much so that I started to really suffer with huge amounts of depression and anxiety. Then lockdown hit and I had nothing but time with my wife and kids to relax and enjoy life.

Then one day I woke up and thought I’m just going to do what makes me happy and not worry about anyone else. So started to come up with ideas for tattoos. Originally I was going to just get the shark, then I thought I could get it smashing through the Orca!

I spoke about my ideas with Tomaz (my tattoo guy). We sat down and made it more of a mural piece so you could see the detail amongst the shark and the Orca and I just trusted him to do his thing, we did it in 3 sessions. First session was about 5 hours!

I am so happy how it came out and that I trusted my artist and hopefully it dose justice to my favourite film of all time

Words and images by Grant Blomfield

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