Luke Barnes

Luke is a testament to how well Zealand Tattoo can deal with mistakes made by other tattoo artists.On Wednesday 7th of May Luke came in to get tattooed by Mana. Luke is a 26 year old Brit who was wanting a cover up done on his chest and trapezius muscle . The original tattoo was done in Canada and was meant to be a "Maori" tattoo that was freehanded - unfortunately this didn't go quite as planned and Luke wasn't happy with the outcome.Luckily Mana was excited to get to work and Luke had his entire cover up completed in one sitting!He was only in New Zealand for a very short time, 8 weeks in total, and was here on a British Army mission. Luke is a Military Policeman and has been in the army for four years. He was in New Zealand working with the Gurkha Unit who were training here, Luke's job was to police the exercises executed by the Gurkhas.For those who aren't too familiar with the Gurkha regiment here is a bit of background about who they are. The Royal Gurkha Regiment or RGR, as they are most commonly referred to, are a rifle regiment in the British Army and they form a part of the Brigade of Gurkhas. This is now the sole Gurkha regiment in the British Army since the amalgamation of the four separate Gurkha regiments in 1994. The Brigade of Gurkhas is composed of Nepalese soldiers. The brigade is 3640 strong and draws its heritage from Gurkha units that originally served in the British Indian Army. They are famous for their ever present "kukris", a distinctive heavy knife with a curved blade, and for their reputation of being fierce fighters and brave soldiers. They take their name from the hill town of Gorkha from which the Nepalese Kingdom had expanded.Back home Luke works mostly as an everyday policeman, but occasionally he deals with more CSI type work - often involving homicides, suicides and rape.Once he was a professional rugby player when he was back in Uni near Cardiff in Wales. Unfortunately he injured his leg not long into the scholarship and was subsequently dropped by the rugby team. All was not lost though, Luke went on to finish his three year law degree and then found the army.Luke's tattoo took the best part of a day and he was exceptionally happy with the end product - he felt it was much more traditional than the original Maori tattoo than he received in Canada. The cover up was a Maori mask or ta moko and incorporated a few meanings that were important to Luke, such as the idea of new beginnings and also the incorporation of tradition. To symbolise both of these things Luke incorporated the notion of his grandfather and his newly born nephew.