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4th session with Filip :cool:

This is the sleeve I started with Nathan Kostechko a couple weeks ago

Now that it is official I can say it out loud. I just got a new job and a massive jump in my job title. Officially the youngest senior level consultant I know! On my way to pick up a box of cigars and a bottle of scotch to celebrate with my dad. Plus I getting a celebrator tattoo in 4 weeks!

I found myself at the Pearl Harbor Gift Shop today where Nikki Lugo put an octopus on my inner bicep. Great job! Awesome tattooer and equally awesome person. She is based in D.C., so if you ever find yourself in the capitol city and want a tattoo - check her out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhw_zbvxvb4

Well, if it's weird, I join you in your weirdness. I haven't been tattooed since February and the wait until May 4th feels crazy long! While waiting to continue/finish my left arm I keep finding reference material for an addition to my right arm and things for my back. Oh, and trying to decide which flash to choose from Dobleman's psychedelic stories sheet...and where I will get that and when. The time elapsed between my first and second tattoo was 14 years. Then another 6 years before my third... Now I can't handle 3 months to finish this sleeve I never thought I would be getting in the first place. Life is funny.

painted this guy last night.

A quick heads up.. I'm going out tonight and I get pished off one gin and tonic so there's a high possibility of drunken ramblings from me later ! You have been warned :)

I am very tattooed..I always felt like the "bad girl you wouldnt want to take home to your mom" if i dated someone without a tonne of tattoos..incidentally I paid for my husband's first tattoo and now he has full sleeves and a start on a half sock by me.lol..fixed THAT LOL

Ages? You use this word, I do not think it means what you think it means. Or someone redefined 'ages' as three weeks without informing me... :)

Got my first skull from Rempe while he was in NYC.

Bored and unmotivated at work this morning so why not day dream about something cool... Convention Website Convention Facebook Instagram: "@bayareatattooconvention" From everything I've seen this is one of the top North American conventions. Anyone else plan on going this year? I think I can convince my girlfriend that a weekend trip to SF would be romantic. And nothing adds to the romance like a fresh tattoo from an elite artist.

Maybe some of you can give me some pointers on getting some ink on my man then. hehe Not that I mind at all. If anything it's really fun when people meet him expecting some punk rocker that's covered, and they get a normal balanced individual. It would just be a bonus. :)

I successfully got a little housed off Oskar Blues G'Knight Imperial Red IPA last night. A hearty 8.7% ABV. Just two had me singing sweet nothings to my cat, but he wasn't having any of it.

In the shop I work in at the moment about 70% of people that come in either want to cover up something terrible or ask about covering something during the time that they are in the shop. It's crazy how much terrible work comes out of shops.

How much do you have left? We have this appointment and another in June and we (I hope!) should be done. Stephanie said that she should be able to finish @Pugilist 's back in that June visit too...it's going to be strange being finished with all this travelling to NYC for tattoos. We have a wedding to go to in September and we need to figure out tattoos for that.

What a nosey douchebag! Are you guys both adults? Sounds like a 5 year old tattling on someone in the sandbox. As for me and superstition, I used to be a Muslim and of course when I converted to Islam my tattoos were all sins. The ones I got before I converted could be excused but any future ones were sins. Also there was a stigma about getting living creatures because there are some super traditional hadith verses about it being an insult to God to draw a living creature because only God can live life. Humans can only make imitations and cannot give life. So after I converted I was very guilty about my tattoos (though I still got them) and would not get living things. Also I would pray everyday for forgiveness for my ink. No offense to the religious here but goddamn the organized religions really have a way of making people think they're s*** bags who need forgiveness. I would wake up every morning and ask God to forgive me for being me. Glad I'm past that and can get tattoos with reckless abandon.

More progress on my arm from Thomas.

He would probably be pissed about anything you chose to do at this point. I have talked about it earlier, but my first wife hated tattoos when we were dating, then as soon as we had a falling out, she went and got tattooed. As I started to get more tattoos, she would get more tattoos, even showing up in shops i frequented. I think she legitimately got the itch, but at that same time was passively aggressively stalking me, man that was a shit show of a relationship. But I guess that would be like the anthesis of what is happening to you. Fast forward a decade and so much has changed, new wife child, and a shit ton more tattoos. I forgot about jacked up tattoos. My wife has a tiny rose on her ankle that was done is someones garage when she was 15. The same dude did what was supposed to be sunflower on her chest, but he didn't know what a sunflower looked like, so she did a quick doodle. Well he used that as a stencil, it looked more like a table and chairs than a sunflower. I encouraged her to come in and get that tattoo fixed, one time when I was getting tattooed and now it looks like a legit sunflower. The rose isn't as bad, but if it were me I would just get a bigger rose over it, but it's her body. Oh I forgot she got some jacked up cherries right before we started dating, and she ended up getting those fixed when I was getting tattooed at Taylor Street in Chicago, turned them into Sailor Jerry Cherry Hearts. She should be thanking me, she has gotten way better tattoos since I have been around, in both quality and design.

@Delicious I would add that just because people love you and our on your side, doesn't mean they know what is right for you. At some point I think we just have to gain the confidence enough to disagree with our family and understand that their preconceived notions of what society deems appropriate is not going to determine your happiness, only you can do that. And disgreeing with them doesn't mean you love them any less, just that you have become your own person. Their is that old saying, you live under my house, you follow my rules. Well I have my own house and I say fuck rules.

With a little luck the pic above will be the mermaid i had done today by Piers Lee who's guesting at Red Hot and Blue tattoo in Edinburgh for the weekend. I'm really pleased with her.. i especially like the placement... its from wrist kinda wrapping to just below the elbow. I love the tattoo and had a really lovely experience. Piers is a really nice guy and took the time to tell me what was going on and what he was planning to do. He took his time with it and i really had fun :)

I believe that was me @Dan S @Delicious To the extent of my knowledge i am the only woman in my whole extended family apart from one cousin (who has a tiny trible symbol on her chest) that is tattooed... That includes men. I started to get the usual grief when i began getting tattooed.. a few colour realism butterflies, a little script that was all seen as acceptable however when i began getting larger tattoos people began to pipe up with their opinions. are you joining the circus? are you going to be a pirate? you are going to look so butch? what are you going to do when this early midlife crisis is over? you look like a lesbian! you WERE such a girly girl and now... etc etc. There comes a point in life when you have to make the choice between expressing yourself how YOU choose to because frankly other people might not be around for nearly as long as your tattoos will be. I've always had hella low self confidence but now when i look in the mirror and catch a glimpse of my tattoos i smile. They make ME happy on MY body. Other people will get over it. Sorry for digressing from the point of the thread. I have had a length discussion about native american indian tattoos at my local shop today and i've realised i am 'supersticious' enough to feel the need to have my indian girlhead and cheif wearing the correct headdress... that's as far as it goes for me though. Tattoos are things i perceive to be beautiful that i want to wear on my body.. n thats about the size of it :)

Tomorrow at noon is the start of the 3rd Annual Daddy/Daughter Tattoo Day for me, and this years should be the best one yet. I can't wait.

All this is true. Like they said in that show "It's where young people go to retire". I don't think I will ever leave. Gilsdorf did move back, but I think he still spends time in Oakland, in fact he is down there right now till the 29th. I still think it is easier to fly down to Oakland to get tattooed by that guy at this point. AWR just hired another Tattooer Josiah Laughlin, he is a solid all around tattooer that does some nice Japanese work. He is doing the dragon on the back of my leg right now at his current shop.

Is it weird that I haven't been tattooed since January and that feels like a really long time? Like I waited EIGHT YEARS between my first and second tattoos, and now three months feels like a long break. What have I become? All that to say that I am looking forward to my appointment at the Rochester convention next weekend.

Terrible Instagram photo, but I left my camera at work. Finished this 16"x20" sheet that I've been working on for a week or so today.

9. Thou shalt not Freak The Fuck Out if you get a microscopic pimple on your new tattoo.

Hey all, I've been lurking around LST for the past couple of weeks now, and finally decided to join. I got my first tattoo on Wednesday, and the forum here definitely helped me make up my mind on what I wanted. I ended up going for a pair of traditional style swallows on my foot, and Sharon from Tattoo 13 in Soho did the rest! I uploaded a pic to my profile :) A bit more about me, I was born and raised in Australia (a city called Wollongong, south of Sydney) but moved to London about 8 months ago (thanks to my English parents, I've got myself a shiny new British passport), and am working and enjoying life. That's it for now I suppose...

Amazing...but FOUR SESSIONS? I mean, I have heard that he is extremely fast and his use of negative space is absolutely incredible, but still...FOUR SESSIONS?

Holy crud @Ben87!!!

At least one more visit but if I want to add stuff then 2 or 3 more trips at least. Plus my wife has 1 to 2 trips left.

@Delicious I was just kidding, sounds like you've got a pretty good plan there.

Dan Wysuph, Ben Siebert, Dustin Wengreen, Sergio Hernandez, Phillip Yau are some of the more underrated folks I'm digging right now.

Some superstitions make me mad because people can do cruel and demented things out of fear. When I was about to get my owl tattoo, I was reading about owls online and I came across this: "While the Greeks believed that sight of an owl predicted victory for their armies, the Romans saw it as a sign of defeat. They believed that a dream of an owl could be an omen of shipwreck for sailors & of being robbed. To ward off the evil caused by an owl, it was believed that the offending owl should be killed & nailed to the door of the affected house." So, people would actually kill owls and nail them to their doors... There were others too, people killed owls in the hopes of either warding off bad spirits or gaining magical powers. So sad. It just made me want the owl tattoo all the more because this is bullshit! No offense to anyone who has harmless superstitious beliefs. I don't believe in them, but it's just the ones that cause people to live in fear and/or do terrible things really bother me. Less offensive superstitions still bother me a little.

Shoot me if I don't go!!! Just heard Shige is doing the seminar this year. Hope they allow non-tattooers to register for it like Horitomo's a couple of years ago.

Highlight last year was meeting Thom Devita.

I'm of the same school of thought. My next session at Kings Avenue with Mike Rubendall will be Tuesday May 7th. Then I break for the rest of the Spring and through the Summer. I'll start everything up again with appointments in October and onward. I was tattooed once in late May and it was unseasonably warm already in NYC. Healing and sweating was just not personally fun for me. Plus I have several travel vacations this summer and I prefer to be all healed to enjoy a good swim and also some sun.

It doesn't matter what anyone else does. All the things everyone else does that you may not like or agree with are just distractions from focusing on your own goals. That's not limited to tattoo sales.

i'm off my face on hot chocolate googling back pieces. hardcore.

last night i drank a 6 pack of left hand milk stout while re-watching grime's and troy denning's tattoo age and then i re-watched chad koeplinger's last sparrow interview and then i watched kore flatmo's last sparrow interview for the first time but i forgot to post here, sorry to let everyone down. it was a pretty relaxing monday night.

Turned out great congrats

a bottle of lucozade, a bottle of irn bru, a black pudding roll and some codiene based painkillers and you'll be right as rain!

It really pisses me off when people say shit like this!! :)

A 50's Harmony is such a cool guitar, you should try to work a simplified version of the full instrument into your design. Below is a neo-traditional tattoo I did a couple years ago with a dreadnought style acoustic.

Getting into lining my paintings strictly with a brush:

slightly intimidated by the talent in this thread but none the less here are a few of my more recent ones

I wanted to address the forum as to not let speculation get to out of hand. I am actually amazed that anyone is concerned about me leaving Chicago Tattoo and the amount of support and well wishes i have received is very humbling. I want to thank everyone for reaching out. I spent ALOT of time at CTC ALOT! from the first time I walked in at 15 with Erik Gillespie and was promptly told to leave to the last 18years (almost half my life) I have been in awe of that place. In awe of the history, the stories, the people, the friends, the tattooing, the flash, the neighborhood. Everything was just amazing to me. I always wanted to be there. Always. I treated it as my own and most people didn't even think otherwise. I have met some of my dearest fiends through there and through tattooing and I owe a lot of gratitude to the institution that I believe I helped build and to the owner Dale Grande. Like all people my needs started to change, my family started to grow and my career really started to get in a great groove. It seemed like the hardwork I had put it was paying off but there where issues that needed to be addressed at the shop that couldn't be resolved. I've sat on this decision for quite some time actually over a couple years. I've done a lot of soul searching and confided in my closest colleagues and friends and especially my wife on what to do and I came to the decision to leave Chicago Tattoo. I wanted to move on still in love with tattooing still in awe of the history and still amazed at 18 years of amazing times some great some not so great. I have a lot of things in the works. Nothing to crazy or unexpected but I can say that I will continue to stay to true to tattooing and what got me to where I am without tattooing I couldn't say where I'd be.

perhaps to justify its characteristics.

Thou shalt shut the fuck up and listen to good advice. Thou shalt not keep blabbing and ignore good advice. Thou shalt lurk long enough to understand good advice.

8.1 Thou shalt not google "Hatchet Man flash" hoping to get a glimpse of the aforementioned Smith Street sheet because you know very well that shit is not on the Internet and you are going to be upset with what you do find.