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Yesterday morning at 7 AM my girlfriend, my cousin, and myself drove down to Richmond to get tattooed by Max Kuhn. It was my 3rd session on my back and we got about 4 more hours in on it. My girlfriend got her stomach finished My cousin came along and got his 3rd tattoo. I just took him to get his first back in June or July from Shrewsbury, then he got tattooed by Lowercase J last month.

I am not patient enough to wait until my tattoo is done or even healed to post so here are some progress shots. Went for about 6 hours yesterday shading in the raven with Kim Saigh. It was fun, as always. Kim is so humble about her own work, always talking about the tattooers she admires. Well, I think she's right up there with them. The cat wanted to be in 2 of these pics and the daughter wanted to be in the other. :D

Today was a good day. My mentor put this fun Bodhidharma on the side of my knee (you can totally tell he started out as a new school tattooer). I then proceeded to tattoo tiny dots on his wife's fingers. No pressure or anything. Jason Setchel - Roanoke, Virginia

Never entered but this was too fun. Vince Leblanc did it from Animal Farm Tattoo in Chicago. Reptillian Mayor conspiracy action.

Had fun re-purposing toilet paper rolls into cute monsters with my kindergartners...also dressed up like a "teacher stereotype" for halloween. That took some explaining to our students. We joked with the class that instead of having a party we were going to have them write a thousand sentences. When they started to protest, we taught them to sing "You gotta fight for your right to party". It was a fun day.

This thread should be called "Please explain to me the basis of tipping?" This subject has been spoken about a few times. You either understand tipping or you don't. There's no magical formula for tattooing. You are giving extra money based on your satisfaction. The key is "YOUR" satisfaction, that's all you need to concern yourself with.

Here are some photos from my session on Thursday with Henning Jorgensen at Kings Avenue Long Island. Brutal 6.5 hour session. Filled with involuntary leg twitches/spasms, especially when Henning worked on the area above the tiger's ear/shoulder. Henning was a true professional and always told me I was doing great even when I thought I was sitting terribly. And @ironchef sent a few encouraging texts that helped me get through it. A full day session is no joke, the last hour was a huge challenge and I eventually had to tap out. A humbling experience. The plan is to finish it next fall with 1 session in Montreal and 1 session in NY. Also I plan on getting a hotel for all future sessions because 8 hours of round trip driving and 6.5 hours of tattooing is too much for one day. I felt like I had very serious hangover the following day.

My wife's Phoenix backpiece was finished today at a convention, she (and I) are real happy with it (well, after it's healed ;-) ) Backpiece was made by Bonel of Corazon Santo here in The Netherlands, which did my two sleeves, and is probably starting my own backpiece in februari :cool:

So today was my second session with Henning on my backpiece and it was a tough one. Started bright at early at 9:30am at Kings Avenue Long Island. This was probably the most painful and longest tattoo session I've ever had. We both under-estimated the time it would take for Henning to finish lining some additional feathers and to shade in the rest of the background. The first 5 hours were relatively low key. The last two hours were terrifying. I now know I will probably not entertain a torso piece anytime soon as the pain from the ribs was just brutal. This was the first time I considered tapping out but I was able to bare down and we managed to finish. Here are some pics. Color next year for the phoenix. Next session will be with Rubendall in December to put more color into the dragon. Big thanks to @Killercook76 who dropped by today for moral support and assisted in taking some pics. He showed off his Garver and Hendricks pieces which were AMAZING. Cheers bro! I love this guy but he "royally" kicked my ass today... Added some more feathers and filling in the top Background fully shaded Right side from Tuesday's session Left side from today

@Wilhell found this on youtube the other day. Unfortunately it doesn't have english subs, but it's well worth a watch nonetheless.

One other thing, Richard read you entry... He said FUCK EM. He has an amazing portrait tattoo of his son on his leg, the tattoo is 20 years old, looks amazing, and done by an ELITE European tattooer, and even though it still looks great. He really doesn't like the tattoo, due to the experience... Just his two cents.

I love this never ending flow of awsome work. Best of 2013 sounds like a good idea!

I guess I will throw my in progress piece done by shige this monday at diamond club tattoo into the mix

Agreed with @dari. Talking about cash carried by you to a tattoo shop and thus potentially by your artist at day's end is not something that should be talked about on a PUBLIC forum. Let's all think on that for a moment and let your imaginations run their course. ...and the light bulb flashes on! Hopefully.

Gratuity is just that, an expression of gratitude. But on the other note, a shop owner has it harder than you think. They are responsible for all overhead, maintenance, extraneous expenses, etc., which may or may not add up to a lot during any given month.

We have a motion on the floor...... And a SECOND.... I vote YES. LST please chime in!!!! I like the Battle Royale of this year's winners!!!! @hogg and @ivarro what say you?

Would be nice to see a "tattoo of the year" or "best of lst" thread.

showing progress on my back done by jess yen. i lost count but i think we are about 25hrs or so in.

So many killer tattoos so far, and I don't want to win, but just to make things fun, I'll throw this one in the ring: Done by Chad Koeplinger at the Montreal convention in September. Also because of this forum I have this impression that Scandinavia is full of super nice people with jaw-dropping tattoos.

I will give this month a shot with my healed Fudo Myoo-girl done by Claudia De Sabe, at this years London tattoo convention! Yet another girl head in my collection and it's definately not the last! :eek:

Hello Lilly and welcome to LST. I'm curious about your idea of starting with something, as you put it, "generic" as your first tattoo because it sounds like you have grander tattoo plans. If you want something bigger and bolder, start by getting something like that. As for the ideas you have, I don't think they would make for good tattoos. White ink tends to age poorly, and if you're concerned about keeping your tattoos concealed--and I think this is a totally legitimate concern, especially because you're young and you don't know what your life is going to bring you--there's a lot of space that is easy to keep covered by clothing on your torso and upper thighs. The Peter Pan one could be done well, but you'd have to go a lot larger than the side of your foot. You could do a nice thigh piece of that. If you let us know where the middle of nowhere in Canada is, I'm sure we can recommend good artists near you.

Okey, this is my last try for a while. Done by Mike Rubendall in the end of September.

Thanks for the credit, @Iwar! It can be bought on DVD on this website, LA VOIE DE L'ENCRE Lardux Boutique

Gorgeous work on that raven!

I sit in an unassuming street shop ....... My home town of Fall River, Massachusetts .... Not exactly Beverly Hills.... The shop is called Up In Flames Tattoo. We are a small group of friends, all from the area..... Nobody specializes, but we all enjoy both Traditional & Asian styles..... Like Good Time Charlie said "give em the haircut they want" .... I'll do classic Bowery designs or baby momma names......... Eagles to infinity loops.... We take the street shop attitude pretty seriously...... I haven't got an online album of sorts with my work ......but please feel free to check my INSTAGRAM out....I keep it current...and entertaining..... @followmrbruce I don't think you'll be overwhelmed, but I try and do good stuff..... Thanks for looking .....

Yeah THE Natas Kaupas! I met him skating in germany and he gave me a little sqiggler. He is definitely not a tattooist but I was still stoked to have a mark from him!

I know your pain,when I was getting my sternum done I had to stop my tattooer and told him I had to go to the toilet... I just stood there looking in the bathroom mirror asking myself "what the f**k am I doing to myself" hahah such a goose.

If there was ever a time I wanted to cry during a tattoo...

Absolutely incredible backpiece @Reyeslv, so much detail. @ironchef, Awesome post and excellent/brutal progress in such a short time. Seeing the background come together and be completed makes it all worth while I bet.

I'm with it, @Reyeslv.

My first impression of you was as follows: "Man. JSB looks just like Kevin Smith"

its not until july, norwegian air has cheap flights from the bay starting then. so quite a bit of time until then. BUT i talked to bryan yesterday and in january were finishing my cobra we started at the convention, and the next day were going to start my back!

It's gonna feel like eating ice cream compared to what you got on your torso.

Starting a large tattoo on my stomach next week. Its going to be awesome!

Apologies for the janky-ass picture, I had to take it myself. It's on the back of my arm so it took a lot longer than it should've to actually get the fucking thing in the shot. :p

A little humility goes a long way. . . Sounds like a rough experience. The "vibe" an artist has essentially ends up in you, from just sitting and getting tattooed, the "experience" is important, it should be a comfortable, and pleasant one, "a good time", cause shit hurts... There are plenty of tattooers out there, it's hard finding good ones, just go with what your gut says, because it would suck to hate yourself, if the artwork is just as unpleasant as the artist.

I've wanted tattoos forever and my parents have always tried their best to dissuade me from getting any, to the point of threatening to kick me out. The summer after I turned 18, I decided I wanted a tattoo to memorialize that I was going away for college and to try to remind me to stick to my values (I've been straight edge since I was 14 and wanted something to kind of rebel against the traditional college lifestyle). I told my parents I wanted to get one and told them what I wanted (the Minor Threat sheep) and they were actually okay with it, a lot more okay with it than I expected. My dad has 4 tattoos, so he kind of gave me the whole "It's going to hurt soooo much, it's your funeral" speech to discourage me, but ended up saying it was my choice. My mom has always been into art, but not tattoos, so she was a little more hesitant. She ended up being okay with it because she said it was "cute" enough. :D My mom actually went with me because she was worried about me passing out on the drive home, and she did better than your average mom. The place I went to was 2 levels, the first floor was like the lobby and the tattooing happened upstairs; she waited downstairs and wasn't your typical mom hovering over the artist. They both were happy with my second one I recently got. I'm not sure what's caused them to change their minds, but it seems like they've slowly come around in the past few years.

So I think i'll start this one off, looking at past winners though it's a bit bloody intimidating!! Here's my humble offering, done by Gre Hale at Rain City, Manchester, UK as part of an on-going sleeve: I'm so stoked with it :cool: Thanks for looking and i'd appreciate any votes!

Now here's the right thigh, work by @Stewart Robson

There was a lot of discussion about not talking about finances on LST in the early days, can we consider this thread respectfully semi-closed? Every shop/city/local tax board has different customs, you can always ask helpers if unclear.

The Tim Lehi tiger wraps around the front of my shin and the tail goes up the front of my thigh. I love Tim's tiger's so much, they make me angry. Grez did that Durga on me earlier today, I'm waiting for the swelling to hit. He's real light handed, so I'm sure tomorrow will be worse than getting tattooed. I know pic isn't amazing, I took it myself with iPad, heels touching, and toes turned out. If I just stood straight on, they could see each other, but we couldn't see them. That picture really does a disservice to the tiger, you can't see the awesomeness of the colors of the face or how it flows, but it's probably better that way. I know it would only make @hogg angry.

Here is a terrible photo of what I got from Tony Nilsson while at NY Adorned over the weekend. Great dude and a really humble young tattooer. I'm stoked I went and got something from him while he was here in the states. Being that I really don't post all that much I've gotten a little behind, but I have some new stuff from Grez, Steve Boltz, and Bob Roberts that I'll try and get some photos of as well. It's funny because I am not a fan of forums or posting pictures of tattoos online in the slightest, but there is something so enjoyable about this site that I find myself always coming back and wanting to share. The tattoos that have been getting posted all over this forum are really mind blowing. There's too many people to mention, but I've been real jealous lately browsing around. Hopefully, whatever I throw up someone enjoys 1/100th the amount of how I feel about the O'Donnell or Rubendall (just to name a few) pieces that I get to see on here.

great info you have posted in this thread,thanks :)

So Navarro has been hanging around the Suspension community, hanging from hooks* and generally making something with a pretty interesting history about himself. I'm watching my friends make absolute asses of themselves sucking up to him. People who would hate Janes or RHCP's music but seem intoxicated by a celebrity paying attention to them. And I told my girlfriend tonight that Ladyface was on the most recent season of Sons of Anarchy (we just started watching) and she japed "Why is it that he ruins every single thing that I love!" *commentary on suspension and how you think it's icky isn't why I posted, so just look at this as another reason to think Ladyface is a douche.

I don't understand. Why are we not allowed to talk $? It can only be good for the artists if people understand generally accepted etiquette... I was just wondering this the other day. I have always tipped, but those were guys tattooing out of other peoples shops. Does the same go when you are paying hundreds an hour to a guy who owns his own shop? You don't have to give me a $ or % amount if it's breaking some rule, just wondering overall.

i painted this shitcatbird yesterday. definitely was fun.

I talk about my recurrent rash, does anyone want to see it? Never a taker... A vague reference to a boil on my scrotum that needs to be lanced has yet to fail. Rob