Under the Gun: Renton Millar

For this installment of Under the Gun, we caught up with Aussie skater Renton Millar to have him explain his tattoo of a clipper ship on the inside of his right arm.

“Yeah, it’s a ship. I got tattoos late in life, like I think I got it when I was 33,” Millar explained. “Because I didn’t have any tattoos, I really wanted to get something I really wanted. I wanted something that had to do with skating or something that was relevant, but everything to do with skating I didn’t really like.

“Pretty much, I went into a competition in Copenhagen, like two years ago, to the CPH Pro. It’s a pretty rad comp, I love Copenhagen, I love Europe, and going to Europe and going to contests have been a pretty big part of my life. I’ve had amazing times going there, and basically, I won the comp, and at that stage it was a real highlight of my life and to do it in a place like Copenhagen was really, really cool.

“I saw the poster for the Copenhagen Pro, and that ship was on the poster, and right then I realized, basically, it sort of had something to do with skating, but it was something that not everyone could just look at and see what it meant or anything like that. It was just for me, you know?

“I know what it is and it just represents skating, and then it’s a ship, so it represents traveling. And then also, my wife, her family is big into sailing. Her grandpa is like a commodore of a yacht club and her dad’s been a sailor his entire life, so there was all of that.”

“Really, I wanted to go out and get a tattoo,” Millar went on, “And one of my mates is a tattoo artist, and since I got it in mind when I was overseas, I wanted to email him. And so I Googled him, and he just happened to specialize in doing ships. His website was inkships.com.

“So everything to do with this tattoo, even though it pretty much had nothing to do with the design — although I really like the design, and I really like basic, traditional tattoos — was just what it meant to me. I’m super stoked on it.”

Missed the last installment of Under the Gun with skater Kurtis Colamonico? Check it out here.

Then, come back to see what happens when Tyler Hendley goes Under the Gun.