Weird tattoos

[sbhikes]

How do people get weird tattoos? What I mean is, I subscribe to Our Endless Days and a couple other blogs and watch the tattoos scroll in each day and sometimes they are really super weird. I would not ever come up with ideas like that and I can't imagine if I did that I could ever communicate to another person the details of my crazy idea.

Here are some examples.

What did the customer say? "Please give me a skull and flowers and put an afro on half the skull with the eye popping through? Oh and put green octopus tentacles at the ends of the bones." Really?? How could anybody think of this?

Or how about this one. "Please give me a brown rose with the outside petals looking like a sunflower and the inner ones black like a bowl of hearts with white outlines." It's beautiful but how does one muster the creativity to ask for something so unique?

I didn't even know what this was until I looked at it for 10 minutes. How does someone describe this to an artist? Or do they?

Okay, I want a tiger that's a stand-up comedian with a flower on its chest and a foot standing on a skull. Put a fish swimming up the cord into the microphone.

I'm not criticizing these tattoos. I honestly would like to know how one goes about acquiring such strange tattoos. I could never think this stuff up myself but it would be so cool to have something weird like this.

[TrixieFaux]

Well they aren't called "artists" for nothin'!

I imagine in most of those cases, the customer went to a tattoo artist they already admired and said, "go to town".

Or maybe something like: "I'd like it to have a rose and the shaking hands, but you can put your own spin on it."

[lving4today]

"How'd you get a pizza face tattoo?" Because the artist drew a pizza monster. It mostly comes down to an artist and their style. Others are just up to asking. I told Jesse Gordon I wanted a dagger through something weird. Lets get weird was my motto. I came out with an eyeball being daggered. I think getting weird tattoos are some of the finest. Sometimes you just gotta get weird

[CABS]

I want to get tattooed by Jeff Rassier ASAP.

When I got tattooed by Robert Ryan, all I asked for was a skull with a hand coming out of it. He pretty much took care of the rest.

[taaarro]

I've often wondered the same thing. My guess, as others have suggested above , is that it's just a matter of giving your tattoo artist freedom and maybe specifically asking for something different.

For my ROA back piece, I requested that it not be a simple old-timey one, but didn't ask specifically for UFOs or any of the other craziness I happily ended up with.

[sbhikes]

Do they ever keep these ideas in a folder somewhere? What I would really love to do is be able to ask to see a folder of ideas they've wanted to do and pick one.

[JeffK]

LSD or Pizza Hut or both late at night.

[bongsau]

My belly tiger looks like battlecat took a hit of rainbow coloured acid and stuck his tongue in the electrical socket...i love it!

[tattooedgirl]

Weird tattoos are what makes then so unusual. I would love to have a tattoo that no one else ever got, you know this may be why some of these people are going all strange and weird. Do you honestly think that anyone else would have a tiger that is talking on a mic standing on a skull? Most likely not.

[SStu]

Don't think that the weird ones are always are generated from the customer's desires. It's amazing what comes out of your brain if you put a pencil into your hand and just let it run wild on a piece of paper and without any agenda. It's not always spectacular, of course - but ocassionally brilliance (albiet wierd brilliance) just flows out.

[sbhikes]

I'd be happy if a stick figure came out of my brain.

[CABS]

Do they ever keep these ideas in a folder somewhere? What I would really love to do is be able to ask to see a folder of ideas they've wanted to do and pick one.

Tomas Garcia keeps a book filled with line drawings of stuff he wants to do. He had like 6 designs I really wanted and I only thumbed through 1/3rd of it. I'll be paying him a visit again soon to get more work done.

[ILikePie]

I have a scuba chicken

[rozone]

When I got tattooed by Jeff Rassier I told him to "make it as weird as possible", and his responses was "I only know how to tattoo one way". It's just in him, I guess.

[Kev]

Hell, man- you haven't even scratched the surface of weird. Those tattoos are more stylistic choices than anything else. Rassier, Harrison, Lehi, Lum have much weirder work than that.

As to why, why the hell not? Why does anyone want anything-because it speaks to them.

[chrisnoluck]

"weird" tattoos are always the best ones.