Guy gets a new tattoo for every day of lockdown

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By VT

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At this point, lockdown feels like it will never end, and while there is no actual date in sight, we can at least look forward to how wonderful normality will be when this is all over.

And now, to commemorate living through quarantine, one guy has decided to get a new tattoo for every day of lockdown.

Chris Woodhead, a tattooist from Walthamstow, north-east London, had 1,000 tattoos at the beginning of lockdown and since then, he has required an additional 40 since going into isolation with his pregnant wife Ema.

This vicar accidentally set himself on fire while giving an online sermon during lockdown: 

In an interview with the BBC, Chris said: "I found myself pottering around, not knowing what to do and eating all the food in the cupboards. So the idea of tattooing myself every day was to give myself a bit of direction. Without structure people are at a complete loss."

Chris' tattoos are created between 2 and 4 pm each day and are inspired by how he is feeling during each day of the lockdown.

"I find tattooing therapeutic anyway. Right now I'm drawing what's on my mind," he said. "And there's not much else going through my mind at the moment apart from this monumental crisis."

On the sole of his foot, Chris has tattooed "When will it end?"

The tattoo artist has also paid tribute to the British healthcare system, the NHS.

"The thing I find so deeply sad is that it's taken this situation for people to truly appreciate the NHS, and to realize that their jobs are incredibly hard," he said.

On his 12th day of lockdown, Chris added a tiger tattoo as a tribute to Joe "Exotic" Maldonado-Passage - the star of the Netflix docu-series Tiger King, which has become a global hit during the pandemic.

Chris creates his tattoos using a technique known as handpoking. This involves inserting a needle into the skin multiple times by hand, and it operates entirely without electricity.

The tattooist is hoping to get a tattoo to celebrate the birth of his new child, so he will have to stop the lockdown tattoos before he runs out of space.

"I want them to be good tattoos, so to try to keep them exciting, realistically, I've probably got a month's worth of tattoo space left," Chris said.

"If I'm truly honest, I look ridiculous - I look like a piece of blue cheese. There is very little space left that I can actually reach."