Ed Sheeran "fell asleep" during a recent tattoo session, his tattooist Kevin Paul has revealed.
The ‘Shape of You’ hitmaker got Kevin to create a collage of inkings on his chest last year and he spent over 40 hours in the chair to get his unique collection.
Ed, 25, recently confessed that he "passed out" when he was getting an image of the Sagrada Familia, an elaborate Roman Catholic church in Barcelona, etched onto his stomach because the pain was so excruciating.
Despite his admission, Kevin insists of all his celebrity clients Ed is the most "hardcore" when it comes to taking the needle and he even dozed off for a short snooze as he has marking his skin with a design.
Speaking exclusively to BANG Showbiz, Kevin – who has worked on a host of stars such as Rihanna, Harry Styles and James Arthur -said: "Ed is amazing for taking the pain. For a little geeky ginger kid – which was what he was like when I first met him – he used to take seven or eight hours at a time, he was proper hardcore he would proper go for it. Nowadays I probably do three or four hours on him at a time. The last time I did a tattoo on him he fell asleep, he was proper snoring, he fell asleep for about 20 minutes!"
Ed has had his entire chest covered in tattoos that relate to his loved ones and the songs from his upcoming album ‘Divide’ but Kevin hasn’t quite finished working on the collage yet.
The body art expert says the singer/songwriter is planning a big reveal of his chest sleeve soon and he is certain it will divide opinion, just like the large lion tattoo he etched onto Ed’s chest back in 2015.
Kevin – who posts on Twitter on the handle @kp_est78 and runs the Instagram page @kevinpaul666 – shared: "Ed’s not quite showing everything he’s had done yet so I don’t think people quite understand the full effort that’s gone into it or the impact it’s gonna have when they do, people have only seen glimpses of what he’s had done but there’s going to be a big reveal soon. It’s gonna cause a bit of a commotion; some people are going to love it and some people are going to hate it.
"It’s not quite finished yet, we’ve got to get a few more bits and bobs to do, but it’s personal to him and it means a lot to him and as a tattooist it’s my job to make sure he’s happy, and he is. Everything Ed has had tattooed is a storyboard of his life … We’ve done the whole front and a lot of these are about the album, there’s a tattoo for every song on the album and some more family related stuff as well. "Ed has come up with everything, the only tattoo I ever created is the lion, and that’s now been recorded as the most famous tattoo ever done, it had more attention worldwide than any other, it was the top story on some news channels – ‘The Ellen DeGeneres Show’ did a feature on it. Then he covered it up with make-up and everyone thought I was a liar! Then it came out that it was real but I still get people coming up to me on the street and telling me it’s fake. Ed seems to think that there’s not gonna be much bother about it but I think there will, I think everyone will have an opinion on it because of the scale, his choice of artwork and the fact that it’s full frontal. People like to criticise."
Ed Sheeran slept through tattoo, says Kevin Paul
