Charlie Sullivan is 31 years old and has been a tattoo artist at the Golden Goose studio in Birmingham for ten years. While most of his colleagues have developed their recognizable style in one genre over the years, Charlie has focused on something more niche and, by his own admission, obsessive – birds. He started drawing as a child, and at the same time became interested in birdwatching, and at some point, these two hobbies merged into one large-scale personal project: to tattoo all the bird species that naturally inhabit Great Britain.
To date, the artist’s “collection” already includes 86 different species. The range is impressive: from the goldcrest, Britain’s smallest bird, to the white-tailed eagle, its largest feathered inhabitant. Among the completed works are the avocet, nightjar, puffin, little owl, robin, and dozens of others. The project has quickly spread beyond the studio walls: videos of the process are gaining thousands of views on TikTok and Instagram, and the waiting list is growing.
How it Works: Gumbox, Fixed Price, and Charity
The most interesting part of the project is not only artistic but also organizational. The client doesn’t choose the design from a catalog. Instead, they spin the “gumbox” drum twice – a drum with paper balls containing sketches of different birds. If a species is drawn, that’s what gets tattooed. If neither option is satisfactory, they can pay extra for additional spins, with all this extra payment going entirely to the RSPB charity fund. The client pays a fixed rate for the tattoo itself, and the size of the work is approximately palm-sized.
This scheme, in my opinion, solves three problems that are usually painful in the tattoo business. Firstly, it removes the paralysis of choice for the client – which, based on any artist’s experience, is the most common reason people postpone booking for years. Secondly, the lottery element turns a visit into an event, not a routine procedure, which works great for engagement and word-of-mouth. Thirdly, the charitable component gives the work a meaning that goes beyond just “a beautiful picture on the skin.”
It is on this meaning that Charlie insists separately. Birds and nature as a whole are in crisis, and he himself earns income from images of animals – and it is important to him that part of this profit returns to the ecosystem. Currently, the project has already brought £2070 to the RSPB, and the fund itself comments on the artist’s videos on social media, which is a rare and valuable sign of recognition for a tattoo artist from a relevant organization.
Work Pace and Personal “Experiments” on His Own Skin
The artist’s workload is currently extreme. On average, he does three bird tattoos a day, fitting them into his schedule between custom orders, and some weeks he has fifteen bookings just for this project. The speed of work also varies greatly: a pigeon, which he’s gotten tired of due to its frequency, takes 40 minutes, while a little owl takes over two hours.
Charlie himself, by the way, doesn’t just tattoo birds on others – he’s covered in nature tattoos himself. “I have tons of birds on me,” he jokes, showing a golden pheasant and other feathered creatures on his own skin. As the final touch to the project, he plans to tattoo the last of the British species on himself – the capercaillie, a large forest bird from the grouse family, listed in the UK’s red list. “It’s just a huge gothic turkey,” the artist laughs, although in reality, it’s a relative of the grouse.
For tattoo culture as a whole, such a project is an indicative snapshot of where the industry is heading. Fewer and fewer artists are content with “I do everything”; more and more are building a niche, a personal narrative, and a social mission around themselves. Birds work perfectly here: they are recognizable, visually diverse, carry symbolic weight in different cultures, and, importantly, allow the artist to demonstrate realistic, stylized, and color techniques within a single unified theme. If Charlie completes the project – and there are more species in the British fauna than he has already tattooed – it will become not just a personal victory, but a ready-made archive that will be of interest to ornithologists and tattoo art collectors alike.