The pelt of a squirrel hangs inside Shannon Doah’s matchbox-sized studio in Traverse City. “I skinned that squirrel on Christmas morning” says Doah with a proud smile. “It’s harder than it looks.”

Barely over five feet tall, Doah’s diminutive size and penchant for holiday squirrel skinning isn’t the only thing that sets her apart. Doah is professional illustrator and tattoo artist – the latter category, one typically dominated by men.

Fact: Of the 437 licensed tattoo shop owners in Michigan, only 27 percent are women. But Doah says the gender difference doesn’t hurt her business, Acorn (Speak!) Tattoo, and may even help it: “I tattoo a lot of women. And I think it might be a comfort thing. If it’s their first tattoo, a lot of times, I will be doing it."

A Traverse City native, Shannon recently returned from Maine and set up shop in a tiny nook that sits above the U and I Lounge on TC’s East Front Street.

“Being back in your hometown and setting up a business all by yourself with all the money you have – and don’t have – is a little daunting,” she says. “But it’s very exciting.”

Doah learned her craft at the hand of the rather mercurial Watson Atkinson, an artist who had traded his scholarship to the Columbus College of Art and Design to open his own tattoo parlor, Pain and Wonder, with his twin tattooist brother. The pair was known as the Twins of Pain.

“He is a full blown artist. It envelopes him,” says Doah of Atkinson. “He’s very precise. And he’s crazy – but in a great way.”

Like her mentor, Doah is an artist first. She does mostly custom work and shies away from tattoos that come from a catalog. She describes her work as inspired and original, decorative and fanciful. “I think it’s nice to bring other influences into your work,” she says. “It’s commercial art in a way, because you’re designing for someone else. But if someone is like, ‘I just want a Shannon Doah original,’ then I go for it.”

Doah is going for it in a big way; she’s in the midst of designing and tattooing on herself a full “body suit, which is almost everything. I have two sleeves and assorted random tattoos. “[I’m] working on a back piece,” she says. “It’s a process.”

Curious to see Shannon Doah at work? Check out the video above, then view more of her work at www.acornspeak.com.