The portrait of Gower - along with the phrase "its the f**king news' - was inked by Whakatāne tattooist Rich Neilsen over the weekend.
The portrait of Gower - along with the phrase "its the f**king news' - was inked by Whakatāne tattooist Rich Neilsen over the weekend.
A fan of Patrick Gower now has the Newshub journalist's face and trademark phrase permanently inked on his body - there's just a little problem with the spelling.
The portrait of Gower - along with the phrase "its the f**king news' - was inked by Whakatāne tattooist Rich Neilsen over the weekend.
However an apostrophe is missing in the word "its" - and will now need to be added at a second sitting.
The tattoo recipient wants to remain anonymous but was "stoked" with the result, and his wife was also impressed.
"His wife loves it, now she wants him to do his whole leg with New Zealand celebrities," Nielsen said.
"I do quite a lot of weird things in that traditional style but as far as portraits goes, that's the coolest one I've done."
The tattoo tribute to Newshub journalist Patrick Gower - complete with a missing apostrophe on the word its.
Normally working in a Japanese-inspired or old-school American style, Neilsen put the offer out on social media last month for a portrait tattoo – with the owner of the best idea getting the ink for free.
"I love doing a portrait every now and again. And I hadn't done one for about six months so I put up a post saying 'the best idea, I'll do it for free'," he said.
He posted portraits of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Billy T K and Kim Dotcom to give people an idea of what he wanted.
"Someone commented 'Paddy Gower', and I saw it and thought 'that's perfect'."
It took about two hours to ink the palm-sized portrait of Gower on the winner's thigh.
"It's quite a slow process, trying to match the shadows," Neilsen said.
"With your inks you're almost guessing the tone of the ink, so there's a lot that can go wrong with a portrait."
Gower famously appeared in a video skit filmed for the Auckland Law School Revue in 2014. It showed Gower reporting loudly in a library when a grumpy student pops up and yells "this is a f***ing library" to which Gower swears back.
Although not quite Gower's verbatim phrase, Neilsen said it had been an artistic choice to ink the words "its the f**king news" not "this is the f**king news".
"We discussed that and we kind of figured "its" would cover all of his quotes rather than "this is" being one singular moment," he said.
He also recognised there was an apostrophe missing, which would be added in due course.
"That's my faux pas but he's a regular guy – we've got a full torso piece going on him – so we'll fix that next time he comes in."
