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Here i am looking like shit after Jordan Baxter from hope and glory blasted this rose over my elbow tonight! its a cover up and i love it!

I'm not sure if this link will work but here's a link to a short instagram video of my completed sleeve. It's still healing so some bits are a little bit pink still but it gives a decent idea of what it looks like until I can get some good pictures of it. This was done in five sessions between October and June by Thomas Hooper. Video by graemedwilliams • Instagram

I went to Ed Hardy's book signing Friday night after work, but I had an hour or so to kill beforehand, so I stopped by Tattoo City on the way. Mary Joy, Jen Lee and Kahlil were there, and Mary was kind enough to offer me a shop tour. I got tattooed there once about 10 years ago, but I didn't get a guided tour of all the incredible original flash (including OGs by Sailor Jerry, Bert Grimm, and several Hardy sheets, some of which were signed "Ed Talbott"). We walked over to the signing, which was great. I got a book, which Ed graciously signed, then talked for a while with the always affable Doug Hardy and saw Ross Jones, Bill and Junii Salmon, Dr. Claw, and Shad (Horitskukikage), who was in town visiting the Diamond Club. Doug and Mary pointed out various people in attendance, including V. Vale (who published the Modern Primitives book), a guy who has a mid-70s backpiece from Ed, and Ron Nagle, a ceramics artist who also did all the sound effects for The Exorcist. So yeah. That's an awesome thing I did (although I was the least awesome aspect of it).

I've been traveling a whole lot recently: spent a week in the Pacific Northwest with my sister--my first time west of Chicago actually. I fell in love with Portland and hope I get to spend a lot more time in that part of the country--surely one day I will escape Ohio? It's so pretty out there! Managed to visit some shops and got tattooed by Cheyenne at Atlas, but it was a family/work trip and it was honestly really fun to go somewhere and not have the trip revolve around getting tattooed. Headed to Nashville next weekend to see a couple Lucero shows and so this classics nerd can see the fake Parthenon! Then New York, again. Fun!

Wauw, there are some truly amazing artwork in this thread - wish I was able to draw cool stuff like that.. I've always drawn realistic stuff (or tried to, anyway), but now I'm trying to find my own style and just do a bunch of different non-realistic drawings.. Here's a mix of what I've drawn this year.. A realistic portrait done with pencils, a coloured portrait and a tattoo machine done with prisma color pencils and two unfinished designs just to try to improve my drawing skills to more than realism..

For goodness sake...across the shoulder/stomach rockers including last names do NOT in anyway even approach the lameness paragraphs of text. If they are well done they can be bad ass. I will always be down to do one of those. I like tattoos that look like tattoos and they fit the bill. Classic as fuck. Maybe I am biased having worked at both white trash and ghetto ass shops...popular them for all especially in the 90's!

Got a couple of filler tattoos last night on my right arm. Both done by James Clements at Fortune and Glory in Shreveport, LA.

Draw me like your French Girls....

I was all set to go for it :-) Her BFF convinced her that the "responsible" thing to do would be to ask for money instead... since when are 18 year old kids responsible????? Her birthday still isn't until next Saturday though so we'll see if she changes her mind. and yes, if I'm buying I get to pick who does it - which is why I was all set to go for it!! Get my baby girl started off right!! - - - Updated - - - West Coast Best Coast!!! ;)

I like to call Stewart Robson "MY Stewart Robson".

Just got this done last night with Todd Lamere from Body Art Tattoo in Plattsburgh, NY. It took about 3 hours. Sorry for the bad pic, I will try and get a better one.

@Dumpleton post it up buddy i always welcome critique, its great to learn from! a classic i changed and painted today

When I first met @gougetheeyes I used one of his tattoos as a reference haha.

no carez. no everz. but seriously. and only because it's late. sure, don't rip a tattoo. it's bad form. but, ideas are ideas are ideas and nothing is new or original. sorry, girl heads that you draw look like the girl heads that chris conn draws that look like girl heads that mucha drew.

New in the last two weeks: From Heath Nock today during his guest spot at Handcrafted Miami: And the start of my back, a Sailor Jerry remix from Chris Buckholts at Howl Tattoo/Gallery in Fort Myers, Florida. Little bit of a cover up in that. Kinda self conscious about seeing my entire back but whatever you guys are kind.

the first question you must ask yourself when seeing pimples is... " Is this an infection?" Followed by my recommendation of immeadiate amputation. Lol jk, it happens to me too. Problably just an ointment issue causing it

I love the glazed/beaten look in your eye ;)

I've had good results with arnica for other things. It hadn't occurred to me to use it pre-tattoo, I'll definitely give it a shot next time and see what happens.

Had a fun day yesterday. Mrs Civil and I have been taking n00b roller skating classes this month and had a really good one, yesterday. Later in the day, I helped set up for roller derby and then attended the roller derby finale/championships. It was AWESOME. The grudge match between two of the teams was an epic battle. And the championships themselves were brilliant! There one team (the Pink Pistols) that usually wins most games and they did again but it wasn't a walkover...the Hula Honeys fought HARD, came oh so close to winning and ended up barely losing, 143-135...

"Yoda-Tude"! Nice...

Port City in Long Beach. Dark Horse in LA. Torch in Anaheim. Sid's in Santa Ana. Flying Panther in SD. Master Tattoo in SD. Too many good shops to name. This is just off the top.

That's awesome, I'm excited to see it!

I can probably do it. But something always seems to come up last minute and fucks my steez up. But if I do make it, I'll be the youngest at 22, @HaydenRose, so don't worry too much. haha

- - - Updated - - - Artist: Jake Lee Shop: Lucky Lane Tattoo

Just finished The Devil all the Time by Donald Ray Pollock which is kind of Flannery O ' Connor meets Natural born Killers . William Gay described it as " Hits you like a telegram from Hell " which is pretty apt as it reads like the World Series of depravity . It's very dark but for all that flows with a beautiful cadence and the intertwining characters blend together in a book that's well written and highly memorable .

here you go @G.Uristti, a nice awkward post-tattoo photo. I'll be there so everyone find me. - - - Updated - - - By the way I am thinking about doing a bar (as we have in the past). Manhattan as Brooklyn seems to far for some. Thinking either Peculiar Pub in Greenwich or Top Hops in LES.

God damned swollen thigh. Tried wrapping it the first two nights and it made my massive thunder thigh blow up twice the size. Everyone at work keeps commenting about my nice dresses and skirts ... I cannot wait to be back in my jeans next week and look like my frumpy self!

I did it. I went through all 402 pages of this thread again and some of the old tattoo pictures I remember being stoked on seeing years ago and they still bring a smile to my face. You guys saved an at the time 18 year old kiddo from making horrible life choices. I love you all and I love this forum. Keep on being awesome!

Kindred by Octavia Butler is a great book. Really anything I've read from her is amazing

One of my favourite things about this place is moments like this where people realise that they've met before because they've been getting tattooed in the same shops by the same people.

Liberty Tattoo

I'm currently road tripping across America with my girlfriend, it'll be about 10 weeks in total, coast to coast, seen some amazing things so far and we've only made it to New Orleans. Still got to head north, she's from Wisconsin so it'll be a family 4th of July. Then back down the east coast. It's quite a country you've got here!

Have you decided yet? If you do pay for the tattoo, does this mean you can choose the artist?

few more from the last week and my Buddy rick williams finished his side of this split!

If you have more tattoo machines than clients, that is too much. Guy who tried to be a tattooer I know, worked one day a week had to bring his own clientele, always had a new machine to show off, never had anyone to tattoo.

If I walk in to a record store and choose to spend my $20 on a Justin Bieber CD instead of the new Bluejax CD, am I "taking food from your mouth" or am I simply choosing not to give you food? Because one of them is clearly theft and one of them clearly is not. If I buy the Bieber CD (or don't) and just download yours, your situation is the same - no one has taken anything from you. Copying someone's tattoo almost certainly deserves a good ass kicking. Depending on your moral system, it may indeed be a corrupt thing to do. But it is not theft, and though breaking copyright is considered a crime, it should not be. Let's look further at what extending copyright to works of art/craft like tattooing would do. Under current copyright law, protection lasts for the life of the artist plus 70 years. If that's how it was back in the day then none of us would be able be wearing Pharaoh's Horses tattoos if the original tattooer didn't license the image. And even he wouldn't have been able to tattoo it without the permission of the original artist (John Herring Sr. [maybe] for you trivia buffs). What if someone copyrighted the idea of putting a dagger through the head of an animal? After that it could be a particular style of rendering lady heads or roses. Next thing you know the only option for all of us is text tattoos of bible verses and portraits of our own kids. And infinity symbols. Thanks a lot, copyright. Further reading on a bit higher level than the simple (but catchy) ditty in my youtube post previous: Against Intellectual Property.

I know this is an old post and probably more of a rhetorical question, but I think I actually have an answer to this question. When people really start getting in to tattoos and start researching them, discovering what good work looks like, seeing what's possible to do on skin, and then realizing that there are a lot of people all over the place who can do solid work, the sight of lots of poorly done work can be surprising at first. It's even worse if you spend lots of time looking at great work on the internet and then see nothing but lots of bad work in real life because. So until you realize that there are lots of reasons people might have for having work you think is bad you are gonna be baffled and post threads like this. Threads like these are valuable, though, because they lead to suggestions like, "check out the band Red Hare," and to learning facts like that Shawn Brown was in Dag Nasty which I listened to as a kid and is a tattoo artist at Tattoo Paradise.

I've decided I want a la-la-lady head from Nikki Lugo at Tattoo Paradise. I feel like my arms are too puny to put one there, though that's kind of where I want it. Lady heads are one thing I would consider getting in color because they look so awesome in color, but I think I'll keep sticking with all black & gray for now. Nikki has done some pretty black & gray ones -- I really like this one: Nikki at Tattoo Paradise

this is the full sized piece that I have as my profile picture: oil and liquid leaf on pine

some from the last week from me my half of a split painting with Rick Williams from Family business in london my half of a split painting with Stev Schettler and just for fun a little bit of Stephen Fry

Never posted this here, Kevin Leary Family Tattoo, Chicago.

I'm really just posting this to get my post count up haha. Apologies. I know most of you are into traditional here, but this was the first proper back I've done and I was fairly happy with it.

I've posted this before elsewhere on this site but it's beautiful and worth a look .

I need to take more photos of my art. I drew up this peacock feather design for a co-worker of mine about 2 years ago. She got the feather tattooed down her right ribcage about a week later. Apologies for the poor photo quality.

Thomas Hooper experimented a bit with video of his tattoos on his blog, but I don't know to what extent he is pursuing that line of documenting his tattoos. I agree that well-done video of tattoos is great to showcase them, but I still think there's something to be said for good photography. Look at Taki's book Bushido and the photos of Horiyoshi III's tattoos in them and how well they show the tattoos and the way they sit in the skin. The photos are really pretty amazing. I think the problem is that we've just gotten far too used to looking at crappy pictures taken by camera phones on tiny little phone screens and while I think it's on the one hand so great to have this massive amount of access to seeing some amazing tattoos that are being on daily around the world, we've also lost a lot. An iPhone just isn't going to give you the richness and texture that a decent camera will, and the nature of the internet, and instagram especially, is that it's very much about immediacy and getting as much information out as quickly as possible which means that amazing backpiece or sleeve or bodysuit (or whatever, even a one point!) that you and your tattooer have been working on for months or years and that you're going to carry for the rest of your life and is going to age and decay with your body becomes this image that somebody is going to stop and look at for a couple of seconds, "like" it it not, then move on to the next tattoo, dog photo, or picture of somebody's pretentious lunch. I haven't tried Vine, mind you.

100% waste of time.

I think you're being a bit precious. I talk about my doctor, my dentist, my physiotherapist, my gym... I don't feel like I own any of them either. Sorry cltattoing - I totally stole your point without realising!

I keep her in a shoe box! "

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.

I very much agree with HaydenRose - people seem to get genuinely offended when, after asking me for the "meaning" of my tattoo and why I got it, I reply that I just thought it would look good, and I wanted to get it. Sorry to disappoint you, but my cat didn't even get cancer or anything. Miami ink mindset.