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Started this Upper-back piece with Valerie at Frith Street yesterday, lines and half of the shading done, three more sessions to go:D:o

Man this is so dope. I love lady head/lady tattoos. 10 hours in with Rodrigo Melo. Finally finished all the background. Entirely freehanded.

Thanks for the compliments @10PieceNuggets @Graeme @slayer9019 @Dhopper @hogg @Delicious All credit goes to Mr.Conn of course. I'm just the lucky sob that has it :)

I have my 8th session on my back this weekend with Jill Bonny and during my last session Horitomo told me he was starting to draw up my sleeves. Super excited except for the fact that I am pretty sure this session is going to be color on my lower back and entire ass.

Finally @hogg Been waiting for that one. Now I want to see a photo of it besides the killer tattoo you have from Theo Mindell on your other knee ;) Come to think of it, I also have a "not very recent" tattoo that I haven't posted before. Chris Conn, Sekretcity.

NYC trip went well. Neurosis show the first night. My wife started her Timothy hoyer kitsune sleeve . We both got a little more work from hooper ( I may be mostly finished with arm/body next trip and my wife will prob done with her arm...pics then) and Chris O finished the bottom of my sleeve....now I need to laser then Start the top later this year. Stoked

Upcomming march I will leave everything behind for an unknown period of time and start living out of my backpack while hitchhiking europe. Started preparing today. Can't wait for the adventures ill have and all the people I'll meet! It's scary as fuck to do this but at the same time so exciting to be living my dream pretty soon! Just sharing my stokedness (is that a word? if not it is now) Take care!

So, this definitely doesn't have anything to do with tattoos, but I thought y'all might get a kick out of it. This was Monday evening, around 18.30. The temp was like five degrees, an it was heading south to minus five Fahrenheit. Cold. We had just finished dinner, and my oldest boy and his daughter and dogs were leaving to go home. he let his dogs out, and stopped to fire-up my car so it could warm-up. When he turned his head to do that, the dogs made book. Now, the dogs. There are two, the older one is a dawg, maybe 75 pounds, short hair, curly tail, yellow looking thing, kinda resembles a dingo. He's a real nice dog, but has a screw loose about running away. When he puts his mind to it, he's fast as hell, and if he decides to go, you aren't going to catch him till he's ready to come home. The other one, the little fella, he's a boxer pup, maybe four months old and 35 pounds, skin n bones. Anyhow, the dogs took off, and by the time my son noticed, they were out in the field already. My place is on the middle of about 500 acres of corn, so it's pretty dark at night. We all got in separate cars and went out looking for them...no sightings, and really, no chance of coming across them except by sheer luck. All of our spotlights were burned-out, batteries cashed, and the cars weren't digging the temperature. My oldest had walked our road, about two miles, both ways a few times, and saw nothing. About 24.00 we packed it in, and hoping that at least the little guy might be holed-up in a barn somewhere, went home. 06.00 Tuesday my oldest gets a call from a Lady, asks if he belongs to a couple of dogs. Yes he do. She was driving up from Illinois to go to work, and when she got to the state line, she noticed sommething odd in a deep ditch. Stopped, backed-up to it, and saw it was two dogs curled up together in the bottom of the ditch. Couldn't tell if they were dead or alive, but she went down and check on them. When she got close, the older guy got up an made unfriendly noises at her, but when the dogs saw the door to her truck was open and the motor running, they decided maybe it would be better to bite her AFTER they got warmed up. Sums it up. She delivered them to my son who had been busy trying to resign himself to them being dead...but was sure 'nuff glad they weren't. They spent the next day racked-out together in my office, the old fella is a bit TOO old for that kind of thing. Thought this was decent...

... unless you're Oliver Peck

That one's easy. Get tattooed.

@Eilin, I kinda want your back now. Even though I'm chubby and a dude.

my 2 recent pieces by Robert Ryan http://www.lastsparrowtattoo.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=13077&c=5 http://www.lastsparrowtattoo.com/gallery/member/12934-gorilla.html&imageuser=4480

I'm not taking anywhere near as big or exciting a plunge as @ChrisvK, but I decided I was sick of making excuses and working a 9 to 5 I don't love, and I'm packing up my things and moving all the way across the country to try and make an honest go at things with my music in a new city with a new scene. It's a smaller leap of faith, for sure, but it feels like a leap of faith nonetheless and I couldn't be more excited about it!

It sounds like you want all of us to join the Hells Angels... which I am totally down for. Just not the motorcycle thing. Those fuckers scare me.

I already follow a bunch of ya'll! My username's ivarro

Outlaw Motorsickle CLUB. Best o luck, Chris, and watch yer back out there!

Man that's awesome. I wish I had that kind of time and money to commit. I'd be all over something like that, but I have a wedding to help plan and save up for next year. I know if I spent all my time traveling to get tattoos there would be no wedding... Life's tough decisions....

Let's amend that to "the worst TATTOO pain a human being could possibly feel." Tell you what, there are whole other levels of pain I hope y'all don't ever find.

Who does your tattoo work? I want to stress that I am saying this with the most possible respect to you and your ideas/body/etc. as possible...I would take a look around this site and find out some more about what quality tattoos look like. There are tattooers and tattoos out there that would far surpass what you thought is possible. Most of these people could probably also articulate your ideas better than what looks like the drawing for your planned half sleeve. Take a look around, ask some questions, and find a good tattooer that does clean work.

I went on Sunday night and had a piece done by Aaron Coleman. The shop was jam-packed with people. I'm sure that they will announce that it was a complete success. Great cause, cancer affects soooo many. I will Louise well in her fight!

Screw this. Who wants to do this? Let's form an awesome tattooed posse and just live and say fuck everything...

Yep, also here's the flash I mentioned above:

Saturday!

Amendment accepted. I have had very large kidney stones before...so I guess I could say I know something that hurts worse.

Outlaw biker gang sounds like fun. If only I had a bike. Or a license to ride one for that matter. In all seriousness I will be spamming you with pictures and stories from my adventures as much as I can. I love this place so I won't want you guys to miss out on my travels

I read that thinking that there are a bunch of ladies on this board who have had children who are reading this thinking youse guys are total pussies.

Jill Bonny and Horitomo...???

Now this is exactly how you come onto this board as a noob. That is a great tattoo.

I fucked up man, I should have gone. I didn't think I'd be up for it after going to SF for 4 days but Sunday the wife and I were contemplating it. We decided not to but both highly regretted our decision by the time it was too late :(

This sentence could only get better if it involved bacon.

@Eilin glad you joined up, making a pretty good first impression! Do we have @Iwar to thank for that? :D

Sorry I'm a total noob at this forum stil, this was meant as a comment on your Conn tattoo: As you already have heard like 100 times, I LOVE this tattoo @Iwar so stoked on my own appointment in may! :cool:

I've been going to one shop (Kings Ave Tattoo) but getting tattooed by different people there. So far just guest artists, but I plan on getting almost all of my future tattoos there by their in-house artists. I have such a high level of trust with them. Every one there kills it and the shop houses a variety of styles if I ever wanted something else. Also, they are super nice and I know I can walk in there and be treated well and taken care of. I feel like getting tattooed by one person has its pros and cons, but I would rather expand my options. Also, I love the idea of "collecting" tattoos. I'm looking forward to when I'm really old and showing a tattoo and being like "got this from______ back in _____" and every one starts freaking out. Kind of like Dan S :)

Awesome man! It's pretty cool that two people from LST are taking up a week chunk of his time... You gonna be around town Sunday at all or are you leaving right away Saturday?

I won't bore y'all with all the gory details, there've been some things I've been super stressed about - a bunch of stuff that all seemed to be going the wrong way, but it all seems to be reversing now and going in my favor! Feeling such a huge sense of relief! @ChrisvK That is SO AWESOME!! You'll have the time of your life!! Take a lot of pictures (and maybe even keep a journal).

^ The grey used in the uniform is absolutely sick man. For some reason that just sticks out to me, makes the buttons and all the decor of the uniform pop even more.

The book came today. Looks like it's never been opened. @irezumi @ShawnPorter No "Tattooed print", but the autographed note to the previous owner makes up for that. ;)

Never liked Martin freeman so was put off watching it but everyone says its good so I better give it a go, still suffering from a skyfall hangover however. :cool:

Agreed! I couldn't tell which way this story was going and was quite relieved to hear that everything worked out in the end! Glad you guys got 'em back, @Dan S. :)

Great story! I'm a sucker for happy endings :)

i wonder how well a woman would sit if she were to get her palms tattooed while giving birth. might just reach Nirvana.

Holy shit balls!!!! WOW. Really excellent...

Oh man I do not envy that 12 hour drive you have. I've got my 2 sessions with Kore Friday and Saturday and in looking at a 6-7 hour drive Thursday morning after 12 hour night shift. Hopefully the weather holds out... Safe travels!

that's like fireball whiskey

That's only a problem the following day, if you wake up with a charge sheet in your pocket!

dude's gotta change his name if he wants to keep tattooing

@Lance, if you have a chance to get tattooed by Horitomo...well, you know how this sentence ends. Have him do your front. Hell, get a big Fudo from him, munewari be damned! You're already weird; embrace it. I might as well jump in here. It's not very recent, but it is my latest. I finished this up with Stuart Cripwell (based on a painting of his) in December, but I never got around to taking pics of it. And I'll just add a disclaimer that it is damn near impossible to photograph a knee tattoo. I swear it doesn't look crooked in real life. :)

I only just found this thread.. awesome stuff. enjoying it. As I had all Japanese stuff on my lower legs I wanted to create a clean finish around the knee. Yushi Takei suggested to use an onigawara mask which I find spot on. Had my left knee done in a 4.5hr session which was ok but had to do some DYI the next weekend which was a bad idea as my knee was swollen and looked like an elephant knee.. but hey, was worth it. Right knee was done by Mo Coppoletta and healed all well.

Velkommen :)

@Hogrider I'm by no means an authority on this stuff, but I'm travelling along the same road you've just started... Part of the reason you can't find what you're looking for is because you're looking for literal or binary meanings. Most of the images you've seen tattooed are taken from Japanese and Chinese folk tales or religious stories. Imagine of you asked someone regarding western cultural art or tattoos: 1) "What does it mean when there's a guy hanging on cross with his arms outstretched?" 2) "What does it mean when there's a woman in blue holding a naked baby" 3) "What does it mean when the muscle-bound guy in the black mask overpowers the brightly dressed skinny man in the clown makeup. The answers depend on your level of interest/sympathy and how abstract or literal you want to be: 1a) It's Jesus. His father, God, sacrificed him to atone for the sins of the world. 1b) The wearer has faith in a religious power higher than himself and possibly feel kinship with or sympathy for the figure and character of Jesus Christ. 1c) The wearer wants to be forgiven for past wrongdoings. 2a) It's Mary, Jesus' mother. The baby is Jesus. 2b) She's a figure of worship because some people believe she should be revered because God chose her as the vessel for his earthly offspring. Her cloak is blue because traditionally goddesses were associated with the moon and night sky. Sometimes it has stars on it. Christianity adopted this symbol to make it easier for people who held older religious beliefs to adopt the new faith. 2c) The wearer may have sympathy or empathy with the concept of being the vessel for divine power or lineage. Also this symbol can have an added element of sadness because we know the eventual sadness and loss of a mother witnessing her only son be sacrificed for the good of mankind - possibly a greater sacrifice than Jesus, some might say. 3a) It's Batman, he's fighting the Joker. 3b) Batman is a symbol of vigilante justice. He works outside of recognised laws to bring justice to a world crippled by wrongdoing. 3c) This scene is a metaphor for the darkness of repressed homosexuality and it's power to overcome the sinister flamboyance of non-hetro feelings. etc, etc. In short, think about what you want your tattoo to 'mean' or 'say' - tell that to a tattooer who knows his stuff and let them find a story or theme that fits your idea. Or just pick one you like from a woodblock print. I try to tell people all the time that western traditional tattooing has just as much symbolism and poetry but nobody will listen. It's all sex, death and the struggles of humankind. Good luck.