The Story

Every life changing event starts with a death or a bad break up and just when I thought, “this is the worst thing that ever happened to me,” the next thing pops up bigger and badder. After experiencing the grief my brother’s young death I didn’t think I could feel worse than that in fact mentally I knew that a break up could be one of many more break ups and I was selfish for grieving a break up. So a co-worker at the time said that the Renegade Rollergirls of Tucson, or RROT, were having open tryouts at a school near work. I had previously mentioned that derby was something I always wanted to try and both of us decided to go check it out. When I first showed up for practice I brought roller blades and the loaned me some other gear to try skating with them. I immediately notice that the girls were friendly, funny, raunchy, dramatic, moms some of them, with tattoos, liked cool music, all sizes and welcoming.

An interesting article related to this topic: https://derbywannabe.wordpress.com/2013/06/14/roller-derby-league-culture/

I was so excited, even with roller blades, I tried everything they were teaching the fresh meat, (or newbees), even though they told me to be careful until I got the right skates...I was hooked. So I bought gear and religiously showed up to every practice I could because it was the thing that was helping deal with the break up sadness. I was losing weight and becoming strong. Not to mention I was actually absorbing all the teaching I could. I was skating backwards. I was scrimmaging. I marathon skated Reid park with some of the girls. I was about to be tested to play and then in August 2014 while skating backwards at practice I got off balance and fell full force on my right ankle breaking my fibula in 3 places. Only at the time I thought I sprained it so I hopped my way off the track and tried to find someone to pick me up. No one was available so I ended up driving myself home. I put ice on it but the next day when I woke up I was in tremendous pain. My housemate drove me to the hospital where the doctor took x-rays and more x-rays. He said “You need surgery.” They put me in a cast all the way up to my waist which made me very nervous. Luckily after surgery I woke up in a cast only up to my knee.

During the process of healing I was sad to be away from my friends, my team, work and unable to drive. I watched allot of TV, played games on my phone, talked to people on facebook and painted one very big painfully dark painting. A self portrait with my heart ripped out. I also lost my job because they felt that my injury would be a liability for the service they were offering. People said many things to me during this dark time but one thing that stands out. A friend said, “Are you gonna sit there and cry about it?” That made me mad but motivated me and she was right. So I had to work my way out of that…work my way back to walking and embrace the warrior that I am. It was time to jump off and take chances.

Now just a little back story, three years prior to this whole mess I was working and doing an apprenticeship for tattooing when I first moved to Tucson but as many tattoo artist find out in the beginning you must pay your dues. It is like some crazy club that only certain artists have the chance to pursue. Some artists try and do badly or mediocre at tattooing and it’s never an easy art form to get into. So after my apprenticeship I was told I needed more time to develop and basically they unleashed me on the world to maybe do allot of bad tattoos. I was carefully and I used my knowledge to get some of the right equipment and set up a room dedicated to only tattooing that could be sterilized and a few friends took their chances. I began to get better and tattoo on the weekends for the next 3 years off and on.

After I had lost my job I thought well now’s the time to see if my portfolio is good enough. I found a few ads on craigslist about looking for a tattoo artist and I emailed a bunch of portfolios, even before I could walk again after the leg break. Most of the time the shops didn’t respond and some of them politely declined because they were looking for a realistic artist or a tattooist with more years of shop experience. Then I came in contact with Gary Kamin at Old Towne Tattoo. I brought in my portfolio and talked with him for a long time. Mind you I wasn’t supposed to be bearing weight on my leg yet, or driving and I was supposed to wear this big ugly boot for another two weeks. However I was doing yoga and physical therapy. I was walking great way ahead of schedule and I didn’t want my interview to go badly because of my injury. I had already been rejected at a few job interviews because I had to show up with my ridiculous knee scooter. So Gary and I hit it off. We had allot of similar interests and later the boss and his wife showed up, Tony and Lupita Edwards. They were all very kind. I told them my story and showed them my art. They gave me a chance.

The first few months I helped them with advertising and reclaiming their web image which seemed to be slipping through the cracks because former employees were doing some damage to their business without them knowing. I recreated their website azoldtownetattoo.com So I was really hired out of integrity and dedication to working for the team. Meanwhile I’m perfecting my drawing skills in a smaller format. drawings on 8"x10'' paper can be easily scanned and made into a stencil for tattooing. Through the drawing practice process I came up with idea of drawing pin up girls as roller skaters. I was a little derby obsessed because I couldn’t skate yet and I had another surgery to go through to remove screws from my ankle before I would attempt it. Then I got the idea that I would draw all of my RROT teammates as their derby persona and as pinups. I posted on the RROT skate chat that I wanted to do a self imposed drawing project involving my derby sisters and that they needed to give me a few details to get it right. I posted a few pictures of the first drawings. There was Insanity Jane, Gi Gi Scowlin and Harley Spin to begin with. Then I posted a few sketches on the skate chat and a bunch more girls chimed in that they loved them and wanted me to draw pictures of them too. Then as a personal goal I wanted to finish the set with all of my team mates and I said that they could share them as long as they said Brandy Devoid from Old Towne Tattoo drew this for them. After all I was trying to bring some business to the shop. So everyone was pretty happy to do this for me and I sought out to get some information from my teammates that were not looking at the skate chat at the time. Then I completed more teammates and everyone kept posting the work on facebook to their network of friends and before you knew it I had girls from other teams asking me to draw them, guys asking me to draw them as drag derby stars, burlesque performers asking me to draw them. Then I had friends asking me to draw their pet on wheels, characters from their self published books as derby girls and some of the more classic pinups like witches and French maids. I simply added everyone’s ideas to a list and drew them for free in the order received. I have a mini questionnaire I ask everyone. 1. What is your roller derby name? 2. What is your derby number? 3. What team do you play for and what are their colors? 4. Who is (insert derby name here?) 5. What are your skills or super powers? 6. If you don’t have answers for 1-6 make up a real good story for me to get some ideas for this drawing. Help me imagine who you are.

I was getting to know many other derby teams and great stories of people from all over the country. (Don’t forget you could your portrait drawn as a derby girl for free too! Just send me a message on facebook!) I started to realize through drawing this idealistic forms of these girls and guys that was making them laugh, feel better about themselves and making them feel proud of their sport. They also got to know me a little. I told them why I was doing the project and they didn’t have to pay just talk to me a little and let me come up with something. I made better friendships with some of those people I got to know from doing this and many more people were very excited to see my videos when I started skating again. I’m slowly getting back to training with my team and tattooing as I can. The response has been completely amazing. Thank you all for being part of this.

Now I have this gallery and a collection of art for sale and merchandise. Because as an artist we all have to think of how to market our selves constantly out of necessity. If you like what you see on this site, the best way to support it is to buy the original art outright $60.00 each and I’m about to have a list of all the art that has been sold already. These are generally either 9’’x12’’ or 8’’x10’’ signed ink and watercolor on archival bristol board unframed. Get them while this price is still low. Email me for details Filmmaker55@yahoo.com

If you are interested in t-shirts stickers and other merchandize prints of these pinups get them on my redbubble site here: http://www.redbubble.com/people/brandydevoid/shop

If you are interested in some of my older art printed on stuff check out my zazzle site here: http://www.zazzle.com/bdevoid However I have decided to stop using my zazzle site because it runs slow and there are too many ads but, they have some products that other do not have. If you would like to see some of this art on a skate board or a keychain let me know and I will set you up with a zazzle link that has those things. Over all I think redbubble has better prices. I don’t make much money on either but I do get the art to you to enjoy so please support in any way you choose.