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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 . . . .

Hello, I'm Charlotte and a novice in the tattoo world. I do tattoos for 2 years now and opened this year my studio in Tarifa (Spain). Two years ago , I was that girl with dreams and plans about the tattoo world, now that I have my own studio, I lost a lot of my "virginity" and have a hard time struggling in this "men" or better said "macho" world. Are there any girls or men out there who can give me any tips or advices how I can survive ? Since I opened my studio , I'm getting bullyed by a college (an older tatoist with 10 years experience) and very often I loose my calmt as I am a temperamentfull girl. I'm soo much in love with this world of tattooing and this person makes what could be a beautifull moment in my life as a hell. How do the girls do in USA ? Please write......Charlotte Moody.

Tu parles bien, @Delicious!

It's maybe a little risky - but from my own experience, I have been swimming in the sea with a 7 day old tattoo that was in the middle of peeling, and I had no problems whatsoever. I cleaned it off with fresh water afterwards, made sure it wasnt sandy, then put some bacitracin on it, it was absolutely fine! No problems at all. Everyone is different...its up to you to give it a shot or not!

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.

Hahaha @semele - I would say that "only" having mastered ancient Greek and Latin is pretty impressive... :)

Why are threads about bad tattoos so popular?

I get to play the same game with my brother, luckily he lives pretty close to Name Brand in Ann Arbor, and plans on moving down to Austin next year. I forsee a brotherly gathering at Rock of Ages at some point in my future.

So jealous! I'm pretty sure I'm the least literate of you folks--I've got ten years of Ancient Greek and Latin, but that's it! One of my first tattoos was actually to mark finishing the summer Greek intensive course. Probably the hardest I've worked in my life so far! I pretend to know Modern Greek and German, but just reeeeaally basic conversational stuff. Damn. I better go get some Hebrew or something in a hurry...!

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!

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

Mr. Flores, you are a huge asset to this community. Every one of your posts in this thread is real solid advice and commentary on tattoos and its culture. New people, listen to this guy! You can't get this insight anywhere else on the internet!

My own personal success story is I had an appointment scheduled for a cover-up for my ankle tattoo with one of the most highly praised tattoo artists in my town. His waiting list was 6 months. I figured I'd chosen well. Because I was so excited with my appointment drawing near, I started looking at blogs about tattoos. I learned a lot in the process. I also started to realize that I had been wrong all these years about traditional tattoos and that I really liked them a lot. I went back to the artist's facebook and saw a tattoo he had just posted and was appalled. I kept looking and it seemed he sometimes did really nice work and sometimes did really poor work. None of it was really traditional. Japanese maybe, but nothing American trad. I started to worry I might be making a mistake. I canceled the appointment and instead make one for a totally different tattoo with another guy at another shop who had really nice work in his portfolio. I got a really nice tattoo. While he tattooed me he told me he sometimes refers people to another shop so I looked them up. I went there for my coverup just to have a new experience, see if I was missing anything. Now I can't seem to stop looking at all these great tattoos and whenever I see this really badly done stuff either around the campus where I work or on various websites, I just feel so bad for these people. Meanwhile I really want more tattoos but am torn about whether I should. Maybe it's okay just to look for a while.

every time someone walks into our shop the first thing they ask for is the price, they dont care to look at our work or view a drawing its just the price. I think that with popularity of tattooing increasing there is a natural increase of tattooers commited more to the money and less to the craft. In my general area there is 4 shops that have some very unexperienced people running them, one is a 22 year old that is barely going to open with zero shop experience, hes tattooed out of his house for god knows how long. Another got fired during his apprenticeship and opened up tattooing for 30 bucks/hr and 20/hr if he finished other peoples work around town. Another guy will tattoo you as long as you can sit for if you give him 150 bucks. What do all of these dudes have in common, no real apprenticeship and no respect to tattooing therefore theyre not educating the client that tattoos arent cheap and should be respected in that sense. You can tell the level of their delusion based on how bad ass they think their cheap work is...they even snub your quality work purely on the price paid for it while rockin some of the worst tattoos ive seen. Its all about the education of the community and the purification of those that are actual tattooers and not just glorified scratchers

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.

Honestly, this is ultimately what it comes down to. I don't claim to have a genius, creative mind, and I'm sure none of the other non-tattooers do either, but at least we have the sense and/or taste to give the tattooers creative freedom. They know what's best, leave it up to them. One of the reasons I'm glad I didn't start getting tattooed at 18 is because if I did, I'd be covered in a bunch of band symbols and other bullshit. Being open to tatooers' ideas is literally one of the best things that has ever happened to me. God damn I am drunk.

I find it worst when its a tattoo representing the very recent and very painful death of a loved one (like a young son or daughter), if it helps them deal with the pain, then that's great, but at the same time for the rest of your life you have a constant visual reminder of your absolute worst moment, that people will ask you about and bring up time and time again...

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

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

some more progress on my back. started coloring the face and sword. done by jess yen. no filter!

Posted this over in the May tattoo of the month contest. Just finished a couple weeks ago. I don't have any real crisp pictures of it. I'm stoked to have it finished. Work by Rodney Raines, Ace Custom Tattoo, Charlotte, NC.

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

My wife and I are attending again this year. We can't wait. A meetup would be fun. Put some more faces to names.

I hope to join the LST Big Cat Club in early November with a crawling jaguar on my left thigh from Jason Brooks. That'll probably be it for me through next year up to my wedding; I'm also in the process of trying to get together funds to open a store. I'll have to live vicariously through you guys for awhile ;)