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Hey y'all. Just joined the forum today. Been lurking for awhile though. Got this from Bert Krak last Tuesday.

And another...

Too early for me to have decent pix of this work, I only got it tonight, but if you like Traditional stuff, you may find it interesting. Originally done as an advertising sign by Ralph Johnstone for his parlor in the arcades on south State Street in Chicago, and repainted by Nick Colella as his signature sign at CTC. He's had it hanging there over his work station for I don't know how many years, and in the times I've sat for him, it just kinda grew on me. He told me tonight he's never put it on anyone else, so I guess I got a one-of-a-kind piece of Chicago tattooing history, from one of Chicago's tattooing legends. Nick Colella / Chicago Tattooing Company. I can't recommend Nick enough. He is a wonderful artist, good people, fast, accurate, and skillful tattooist, and an all-around good guy. Anyone thinking of gettinng tattooed in the Chi should give serious consideration to him. I did post this in another thread, so if that's not kool, please, would a mod just delete this. Thanks to all of you who have "liked" my posts here thus far...even if I ahven't personally thanked you all, please know that it is appreciated!

Matt what ever you choose, promise to not use the references that @Hunter Morrow has posted. Yes, art is subjective - but that's not Japanese. Subject matter he's suggested sure, I myself have a Kirin (and a hannya, a koi, a chrysanthemum and a turtle and so on lol) but those images are pretty bad. (Just to be fair though, was anyone else thinking the same thing?)

I know that some of the folks here on LST play in bands, so I made this thread for us to share our music, touring schedules, music videos etc. I play guitar, or at least try to, in a band called Serenity Trace. We play metal/hardcore'ish music with a dash of techno/samples/strings/industrial. This is a song from the full length album we just finished recording. Theory#3 by serenitytrace on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free

@gougetheeyes Sailor Eddie (who has literally become a brother to me) offered me and apprenticeship on June 2nd in Philly! I have turned down others over the years......but it seems to be the right time in my life and the right person to be taught by! I almost said no.....but he really wants me to learn so I am in the process! And although I never intended to ever tattoo (I was very happy just being a canvas) I am very excited and committed to learning the craft to the best of my ability! :)

I run the optical department at the Veteran's Hospital.........24 years ago I wasn't promoted to management at Lenscrafters because I had a visible tattoo on my left index finger....a pachuco cross which could have been cover with a ring or band-aid! Oh how times have changed.......and I almost miss it in a way....the same way I miss the old mystic of street shops before they started turning into "salons" I try to cover up ONLY because if I don't....the vet's want to discuss my tattoos rather than their eye wear! Since I shaved the side of my head and got it tattooed.....I have been wearing wigs to work most days.....or a hat kind of slanted to the side....ha ha ha! I am growing my hair back now though much to the dismay of many........but it is time! I think once someone is around a heavily tattooed person long enough.....and they give them self a chance to know the person.....they don't even notice the person is tattooed after a little while! I guess I am fortunate that I have this job??? I sure as hell do deserve it because I had to work twice as hard to prove myself as everyone else AND I am damn good at my job and they let me know it all the time....so I am very thankful for what I have! I am glad to be out in the non-tattooed world even though it is very frustrating sometimes with all the annoying questions I get asked.....but I am glad I am out there because if people don't get their questions answered then there is no way they can change their perception of someone who is heavily tattooed! And boy do they have preconceived ideas......ha ha ha! I do not personally know another person as heavily tattooed as I am working in a job like I am! Before I had my neck tattooed I called a very good friend in Portland who tattoos and who's opinion I respect very highly and asked him if he thought it was a bad idea....as well as if he thought the tattooer that was about to do it was the right one for the job.....he told me to take 2 hours and really go sit down and think about what i was about to do! I took his advice and did and I realized the gamble I was about to take because I did know if I lost the job I currently had I would probably not find another one like it because of being so heavily tattooed! I have started an apprenticeship and I am actually looking forward though to being in an environment where there are more heavily tattooed and modified people! It's been a long and interesting journey and I really do think it is a little harder for a woman to be heavily tattooed in this society! :)

Is there any thread on this forum that can't be enriched with ICP? I could listen to that Jugalo Island song all day.

I still will say my head was worse! ha ha ha.....heads or tails!

Welcome to LST, and congrats on a badass panther!

suck it up buttercup

I'm not sure if this is the right place for this but, damn fucking chest hair growing back in a fresh tattoo sucks balls. Ok, back to regularly scheduled programming now.

I know a guy that has a Stell cat on his knee from last year or so its awesome I got this little filler from Matt Bivetto yesterday- didn't see it or the design til it was done which is a lot of fun edit- i should note this is REALLY small

Hey y'all. First of all, absolutely love the forum. So glad I stumbled upon LST. Such a great resource. Been lurking these boards for a minute now. Been itching to chime in and throw in my .02 cents. Second, I am super fortunate to live in a city/region that is so rich in tattoo history and culture. I most definitely do not take this for granted. Looking forward to contributing to the boards! CABS

61 reissue sg>boss tuner>rat (sometimes but mostly not)>Marshall plexi reissue. simple as possible. I also have a sunn model t and sceptre but they are in retirement for now. p.s. I am jealous of the classic 30. Play through my friends occasionally and the tone is amazing. His is an older 4/10 before they changed the logo. Love that thing.

Why is that so funny to me? "Lightning, a nice merlot, and some Boz Scaggs in the background is my perfect evening."

@Paul D join the queue. Everyone wants to take pictures of tattoos. It doesn't add credibility to your intentions that you focus on the 'freakish' aspect of tattoo conventions. The few mentions of tattoos on your site/blog make me think you maybe never considered the concept of a 'good tattoo'. Yeah, The magazine @Iwar mentioned and anything they touch, is a crock of shit. If you're trying to 'break into' tattoo photography/documentaries, you chose the wrong door. As a rule of thumb, high quality tattooers and tattoo enthusiasts/collectors don't take kindly to tourists. I like your music photography though.

Thanks a lot...ya know, the damn thing kept looking smaller, and larger, and smaller... When i got there, Nick has the transfer done, and it was about three inches too long for the target area, but is just didn't look proportionate to the sign to either of us. He resized it, and we were both kinda shaking our heads at how small it seemed, and then he started putting it on. All of a sudden, it got a LOT bigger! Gave us both a chuckle for the evening, and I'm really happy with how it turned out. Not everyone's cup-o-meat, but it most definitely ain't yer normal tiger!

Dang.......you could get work from Jack Rudy, Tim Hendricks or Chuey for less than Cartoon!

Ditto. No offense to the art or Hunter, but I honestly tend to be an anal traditionalist when it comes to Japanese tattoos. And those images were...not. Even as examples of modern takes on the subject matter, I wouldn't have thought those were Kirin at all if I just saw the image. Just something for Matt to think about.

Absolutely.

Ouch. Three and a half hours, more or less. Nick is a fucking wizard. Instagram Better pics when available.

As you know, Jill did my back, too. All I can say is that it doesn't hurt now. :)

Jill Bonny

:confused: ;) A panther, duh.

never a bad idea.

Crazy! Sounds like it might be the right time...

IT'S GOIN' DINE.

Welcome...and watch out for Bunny-she'll have you going from feathers on your ankle to a full back-piece in no time! What type of mysticism are you interested in portraying in your future work?

@Dan S I saw that one on Instagram. I couldn't really appreciate how good it is on the small screen on my phone. Nice story behind the tattoo as well, thanks for sharing.

Oh yeah! Niiiice! What are you getting? My Oda Nobunaga backpiece is by Jill as well. She's been shading background for a while now, packing in that black. I remember the outlining being unpleaseant as she moved from the small of my back down lower during 1 session, but when she outlined the actual cheek in a subsequent session I don't remember it being that bad. I mean it hurt, but not as bad as I thought it would. Shading didn't really bother me at all. I hope my words don't come back to bite me on the ass in future sessions Though (head smack! Thwap!!!) ;-)

colin welcome and head to BLackheart tattoo

They've sold 11 million records I believe. THE BOARD IS DOWN WITH THE CLOWN 'TIL IT'S SIX UNDERGROUND WHOOP WHOOP

i guess he's committed himself to tattooing and it seems to be his passion... that and Disneyland. but who doesn't love Disneyland?!! something about LA makes some people do strange things to gain fame or notoriety. haven't met him, so it's hard to tell if he really loves tattoos and wants to be a tattooer... but initial reaction seems like he just wants to be "that dude."

Shunga, Tsuba, Hammer, Scroll, Peach, Benzaiten etc, etc. But it's a good idea to know what it is you're getting rather than just designs you think are uncommon. Popularity of designs changes. over the last year I've done less Koi than any other subject. Including shunga, foo dogs, snakes, cranes, ritual objects etc. But really, you should get more Koi. Nothing goes better with Koi than more Koi. Better still, ask Hunter, I'm sure he knows what he's doing. It's one of my many personal pet peeves when I see a Japanese style sleeve was designed as a collection of random objects, forced together with water or clouds, rather than a single coherent layout. Even when a sleeve is composed of 'scattered' smaller elements like single flowers, masks, lucky charms etc, etc, it's still planned with consideration of the whole composition. A Japanese sleeve, even before it's fully completed will have less 'gaps' than you think it does. The elegance and timeless look of Japanese (or any Oriental-influenced) tattoos comes from the coherence of the overall layout, (worked out over a couple of centuries). I would go as far to say the coherence of the whole of the wearer's body. That elegance and beauty doesn't come from stacking objects like tetris or lego. Good luck.

To prove I wasn't bullshitting on the awesomeness of the bass setup: c'mon I play bass in reggae bands

I was suppossed to become a professional jazz musician, instead I ended up a professional engineer with a gear problem: Guitars: Ricky 360 Les Paul Studio Fender 68 reissue, rewired w/ Burns TriSonics and series switching custom sunburst Squire 51 w/ lipstick pickups '76 Ibanez Rocket Roll flying V Rebuilt/re-wired P-Bass Amps guitar...Fender Super Reverb is my jam w/ a glass of juicy Orange Or-50 bass...70's Peavey 400W superfestival running into a 2x15 ampeg fridge and a 4x12 peavey black widow. Also have a Peavey 400W power amp which I slave off the superfestival and run 2x 4x10 columns with...BASTARD LOUD, i feel sorry for the new neighbours that just moved in! Organs !!! Hammond B-200 Farfisa Leslie 147 100 year old upright Piano just about everything on this list has paid it's dues on the road. no touring anymore, happy to stay home and play/record with my old musician buddies for shits n giggles here's a pic of the 68 Strat and Squier 51 that I rebuilt and rewired...see that engineering degree did come in handy after all

The ass tattoo: a deep and searing pain that lasts for days, a memory that lasts a lifetime.

Actually only the best threads derail so hard that they become....

Well, I guess my sleeve was pretty damn patchwork! I had quite a bit of homemade work on both arms, and as I got a bit older, I started to cover it up. The second pro piece I got was by Dale Grande of CTC, a pair of roses over a banner with my name and my wife's name on it. I was just shy of 21. A year or so after that, I went into CTC with a couple of my brothers, and as long as they were there, well, hell, I had to get SOMETHING! Anyhow, there was a dragon curling around a dagger that I took a liking to, so Dale used it to cover an old nickname in a banner I had poked into my right bicep. Sometime after that, I happened to stop into CTC and took a liking to a parrot on a branch with a flower and some flourishes on each side...that went onto the inside of my lower arm, directly opposite the roses and banner. And there it sat for many, many years. We had five kids, worked a bunch of different jobs, and got some work done on my left arm. Started that with a dragon rising out of a mass of swirling black clouds with a couple of lightning bolts through it. Pretty crude by today's standards, it was done at CTC by, I believe, Mark Miller, on a night that Dale chickened out and stayed home because of a blizzard. It was a coverup of a rather large piece done somewhere very secure that was causing me some trouble in keeping a job. Shortly after that, in 1984, again at CTC, Dale used a composite of a demon's head from some flash and the cover of the face on King Crimson's "In The Court of the Crimson King" to cover a homemade "Death Before Dishonor" around a sword on my lower forearm, just above a panther head he had done as one of his first pro tattoos, also a coverup. When he did the demon's head coverup, he worked it into the dragon on my upper-left arm, using clouds and a design of different sized circles. And there that sat, for many, many years. Maybe ten years ago, I decided to finish out my right arm, and went back into CTC. To my surprise, Dale wasn't tattooing much, but he turned me over to Miles Maniaci. Miles wrapped my arm in onion skin and traced all the work that was already there. I had been researching images from Odinic lore, and had five basic designs I wanted. The first was a shield device worked in gold that dated back to about 900 A.D. that was unearthed in what is now northern Germany, the second was an image of the world serpent found on the same shield, the third was actually two separate sets of Celtic knotwork found in a manuscript in an Irish temple predating christianity, and the fourth was a set of Elder Futhark runes that I felt represented the path of my life, and the fifth was a line-drawing of Wotan seated on his throne with one of his wolves at his hand and one of his ravens overhead. Miles worked on the drawings for about a month, and then called me in to look at them. It took me about a minute to say yes, and we started to knock-out four and five hour sessions shortly after. It turned out quite well, I do believe Miles is a master of his craft, as well as a true artist. And there it sat. Not for many, many years, but about ten. I had gotten divorced, and am engaged to a wonderful Lady who brought a daughter of her own to the house. This last year, we went back to CTC and had Nick Colella, whom I had met while Miles was sleeving my right arm, put a Sailor Jerry piece on each of us, and put an old Black Cat Firecracker logo on each of my knees. Nick's work is a trip. I believe he is one of, if not the, master of Traditional, yes, with a capital T, Tattooing. I went back maybe a month ago and had him put on a "seated eagle", an old piece of Cliff Raven's flash that I had wanted since I got my very first pro tattoo at his shop, along with a group of roses, surrounded by banners with the names of our six kids on them. I go in tomorrow for Nick to put on a very old piece on my ribs, and at the same time, to start planning for sleeving out my left arm. It will be a challenge to mix the Japanese elements that Dale used in his cover-ups, the traditional panther's head, and whatever we come up with. I have some ideas, but I'll just sit on those until after I have a chance to sit down with Nick and see what's possible. Whew! Mucho Typo! Anyhow, yes, a lot of what I have was researched and planned, I pulled art books by the pound out of the library and had a librarian spending damn near full-time researching images from pre-christian Europe for me. Had color plates of all of those elements with me when I went in to consult about the sleeve. But a lot of what went onto my arms was fairly random, stuff that caught my eye and my fancy when I saw it, or that was concocted on the fly by Dale with a ballpoint and a collection of snipped-up acetates. Planning is good, but letting events and your heart take charge sometimes is good too. I sometimes feel sorry for the guys I see now who go in an order up a sleeve ready made when they're like 23 or 24. I think maybe they are missing out on the chance to live their lives, record their adventures and their beliefs, and then, when they're old enough to have lived them and seen the meaning behind them, to link them all together. .02, and apologies for the length!

I think you guy's that are flying into NYC to get tattooed should also visit Electric.The shop is a block away from the train station,and blocks from the beach.They do walk-ins on weekends too.And after you get tattooed,you can take a ride to Seaside and check out the interesting people on the boardwalk.

He said it never got past the outline. Artist asked him to pick colors and he didnt pick any. Hayden, I think you will wind up with something better than you imagined if Grez does it. Go for it. That tattoo can be finished in black & grey.

Gibson SG sovtek mig 60 sovtek 2x12 emperor 2x12 pedals: depend on what I am playing but I have a lot....havent played in almost a year due to just let down after let down with bands and needing time off from playing music/booking shows....i work too much and want to get tattooed too often haha.

Also, nothing like three skinny half-naked white kids crouching in a cave to intimidate THE FUCK outta you.

More stuff

i'm coming this year.

any chance you could switch the trip to oct. for the State of Grace convention!? just sayin...