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got this lined up yesterday by Antonio Roque @ Black Label Tattoo Company in Frederick, MD.

So many haters in this thread. Bad tattoos are poorly done tattoos, styles of tattoos you don't like is merely your own preference and opinion. I love doing fancy lettering. I'll do the block of text in nice fancy cursive and have a great time doing it and knowing that it is a good composition and looks good on the skin. Just did a quote on a young lady's forearm and it looks perfect for the spot and not cheesy/lame/etc. Late last year my lady friend and I went to see Mike Wilson to get some work; I got a bad ass bird and she got a quote from a song and it looks great and he had a good time doing it. She had thought long and hard about an image instead but went with what she knew she wanted. Everybody gets different tattoos for different reasons. I too will sometimes try to talk someone into an image vs a wall of text but in the long run its their tattoo. Don't hate because its not your style of tattoo.

Direct from Bloody Beaumont Federal "Correctional Center".

THREAD JACK! I'm a massive language nerd. Majored in Spanish, minored in Russian, and have studied French, German, Spanish, Swedish, Cantonese, Portuguese and Japanese along the way. I'm jealous that @else and @semele have studied Greek.

Live Updates from the Devastation in Oklahoma City Luckily I am not currently in OK and my family is all safe and accounted for, but I know we have a few Okies on the forum here...did everyone make it out okay from yesterday's tornado? More storms expected today. My thoughts are with my Okies!

I'm into this, I can't be inconvenienced with the urge to poop while on a boat

Because they require a minimum of effort.

I just had the worst heal of my life (which I think probably happened for various reasons not to do with the tattooer)--like today is more than two weeks since I got tattooed and it's the first day that the damn thing looks good again--and have therefore been whining to the mister a LOT lately, you know, the old "why do we do this to ourselves???" stuff. I thought that this can't be worth it. And yet today, looking at how damn cool the tattoo is, and it finally not making me miserable anymore, I started getting the itch again! Already! Messed up. Good thing I have a session on my back coming up in 3 weeks. PS @TrixieFaux - totally bittersweet! I am psyched to finish my back and see what the whole thing will look like, but bummed about the experience itself ending, as it's been pretty great. So I feel you! Enjoy it!

This is getting into a lot of things... meaning vs. no meaning (personally I don't care either way but sometimes when people insist on the meanings of their tattoos it does sound cheesy to me), content (too much lettering & bird silhouette explosions vs. battle royales or skulls)... whether people like their tattoos or not being all that matter... But a bad tattoo is a bad tattoo and everybody knows it. Look at the "worst tattoo ever" thread or whatever it's called. Shaky lines, blow outs, bad proportions...those are bad tattoos. I think it's kind of pointless to make fun of the subject a person chooses to get. But, take music--put two people next to each other, one who is tone deaf and can't sing and one who can belt it out from the soul... nobody would say the two are equal. If someone wants to get a lot of text, whatever, that is up to them--I just hope they get it done by someone good. When I was getting my tiger worked on a couple weeks ago, Shawn Barber was next to us doing lettering down a guy's side. It was a LOT of lettering. He did a great job, the guy was stoked. Could I read it? I don't know, probably not, I don't think it was even in English, but in that case I do think all that matters is the guy got what he wanted. I don't think it would have been any cheaper than getting imagery though. Text tattoos seem to take just as much time and effort--they still require excellent line work. As for getting something because it's cheaper, I think that is just sad. It's your skin for crying out loud! Save up...pay as you go...it's worth it!

@else , sounds like we need to get drunk and try speaking finnish someday! perkele! @hogg , hahaha thats awesome! and yes, småländska sound very hillbillyish :) still cool tough that you know some swedish!

Jag kann tala just et lite svenska. Min förre flickväns foräldrar kom från Småland. My Swedish is pretty bad, and seeing as how the Swede and I broke up about 12 years ago, it's very rusty. Plus, everyone I speak to says I sound like a Swedish hillbilly because I speak with a Småland accent. :)

So are you bootlegging whiskey or have you taken the temperance pledge?

I knew you people were my people. My undergrad was in Linguistics, and along the way I've learned French, Polish (ok this was actually my first language), Serbo-Croat, Spanish, Hebrew and Yiddish, but I've really all-but-forgotten the last three. I dabbled with dead languages in my undergrad but now wish I had pursued them more! I am jealous of your Russian knowledge, @hogg - I am still very bitter that it's my mom's first language, my grandmother was a freaking Russian professor, and I never spoke it growing up. If I were to take up another language, that would be it.

Ah, smart and beautiful...what a combo!

Sometimes reading posts about your awesome tattoos fills me with a jealous rage...

I did! Two semesters of the stuff, going on 20 years ago now though. Showing my own nerdiness, I was within 12 credit hours of a degree in Latin once upon a time... Honestly, I'm really glad that didn't work out and I ended up in Speech Pathology instead!!

Meaning is 100% a construct though... my knee tiger could represent "courage", or it could be about "my relationship with my mother", or whatever... it might be just that it's pretty frkn awesome to have a big ol' tiger on my knee... the meaning in it is what I want the meaning to be. I could get a tattoo of a hairy ballsack on my thigh and decide that it represents my love of music...

The way I got better tattoos was continually seeking out people that have more knowledge than me about tattoos, listen to what they say, pay attention to what they do and visit the people and the shops they talk about. People get bad tattoos because they don't do these things and they think they have it all figured out before they walk into a shop right down to how much the tattoo should cost. You don't have to be artistic or cool or even special to get a good tattoo, and having a good tattoo doesn't make you speical either (despite what your mom told you) you just have to be smart and humble enough to let the people who know what they are doing do their thing and be open to their ideas.

Hi,she is 20 pnds,14" shoulder ht,6 yo,her name is Zephyr she can levitate too ! :D . . . .

I don't believe they have pre-order tix and they don't raise the price on the day of the convention. I can't remember if there's a cheaper price for weekend pass , tho.

I'm in Texas right now but my family and home are in Oklahoma - all of my people are well and accounted for, but it wasn't until late, late in the night last night that I knew for sure. There are a few other Okies here... I hope they were all as fortunate as I was.

Dunno if anyone has posted this one yet, but this is one of my favorite horrible hipster tattoos:

I'm going to be scheduling my chest piece for July with Tim McAlary at GoldRush. I'm hoping for the best with the pain haha. But fuck it, it's been about 7 years since my last tattoo so at this point I don't give a damn about the pain. I'm jonesin' for the tattoo!!!

For smart people, it requires a lot of effort to put no effort into a thread.

Why are threads about bad tattoos so popular?

It looks like I'm little late to this post and hopefully your brother hasn't got some jacked up work. I live in Las Vegas (born & raised) The shops mention above are all rad I.e. Classic Tattoo, Battle Born, Downtown Tattoo. I would personally recommend Downtown Tattoo (the others are rad too!) I like the vibe and got work from a handful of the dudes there. Also, some other shops to check out would be ; Studio 21 (Jason Paxman is doing my back piece) Showroom Tattoo (Bundy and his crew are sweet) plus Chad Koeplinger will be guest spotting their next week (5/24-5/28) an I'm currently broke as hell! Hope this helps.

I took about 1 1/2 years of Russian... was pretty good at Finnish after I'd been in Finland for awhile. Took a semester of Spanish, 2 of Greek, 1 of German, 1 of Dutch... unfortunately, I barely remember any of it!!! Can still get the gist of most romance languages in written form but aside from that all those years of language were wasted!

Um, I love language nerdiness that just went down in this thread. As a reformed linguist, I just needed to give props to @else and @semele on this one!

NOOOOOOOOO!!!!! Was not my intention bro! And there's nothing to jealous of dude! I was at the NYC Tattoo Convention this weekend and saw some stellar tattoos. Just wished I had more real estate to fulfill all my tattoo ideas!

Just got the Born Weird book in today..Now I have to decide what image to get tattooed.

My four words are: Clean, Bold, Awesome, + (body part where the tattoo is)

Bob Roberts panther tattooed by Hiro at Spotlight Tattoo. His photo.

I don't like this complaining about price nonsense. Yes, large tattoos can be very expensive (though because you're not doing them in one shot you're stretching that cost out over months) but there are a lot of truly great, even world-class, tattooers who do amazing small tattoos that aren't going to break the bank. It's a matter of doing your research and finding those artists, and the great thing about tattooing right now is that there are SO MANY great tattooers out there, and making tattoos a priority in your life.

lol ok? anywho, yeah, people should like their tattoos. if they do, thats great. they have to live with it. Doesn't mean the world has to change their sense of aesthetics to fit the person's views of their own tattoo. Lol the world isn't gonna pat you on the back for your tattoo choices. And, just because a tattoo has meaning doesnt mean it looks good.

Eh, it's your opinion, you're entitled to have it, just like others are entitled to have their text tattoos, their tribal tattoos, their tramp stamps and so on. As long as we are happy with what is on our own skin that's all that matters. I'd still much rather have a novel written on my skin that means something to me than a tattoo that I got just because I like the way it looks. I have both types of tattoos and in general, have been much more pleased with the tattoos that actually mean something to me and those are always the ones that have some sort of text in them. I'm happy with them so I really have no clue why I'm trying to justify it to anyone else? Lol. I feel like trying to justify why I got my first tattoo to my mom.

Paul Bosch:

Back of my thigh winning the pain contest so far by a MILE

Well...thats the first intro I have seen that could double as the start to some erotic fiction. Nicely done sir.

Figure as it's up on Xam's Instagram I'd throw this progress shot here too. Colour in a couple of weeks, got all the black done in basically a couple of hours earlier today at The Family Business in London. Man has that shop changed since I was last in a couple of years ago, it's at least doubled in size with a new brighter, modern feeling area built out into the next door shop. Tons of artists there as well now. Photo by xamthespaniard • Instagram

It's odd that you mentioned that, because I came across this video on youtube a couple hours ago :)

i guess my pic was too big let me try this

Just got this googly-eyed little weirdo last night from John Raftery at Fun City. I'm calling him "Elwood." Pretty happy with it.

..and some more progress on the background.

Sometimes it's ok to get tattoos from friends... as long as those friends kick ass at tattooing.

I'd like a Dan S blog with stories and pictures and rants on here.

Thanks for the idea!

Capilli Tupou at Sacred Tattoo new zealand