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I sat in the chair for 4 hours last nite having an old fu-dog freshened up. My forearm is still swollen and bruised up here and there. I have the 2nd appointment for early 2014 to finish the whole forearm. Rob

21 Vintage Postcards Of Krampus That Will Haunt Your Dreams Pretty fucked up... But it could make for some killer tattoos.

Krampus rules. Here's a cool Krampus tattoo by Steve Byrne:

Well LST, I am happy to announce that after a brutal session we have finished the motif on my back! Not going to lie there where some moments when I wanted to tap but half way through Hiro dropped into the shop just to see it completed and that gave me what I needed to keep on keepin' on. All I heard was the door open and the war cry of "No Pain, No Gain". I nearly laughed but figured it wasn't the best time. Funny how the little things can keep you motivated and focused. I would have been pissed if I was so close to finishing and tapped on the final leg. I'm so wiped out but am also on that high that's probably going to keep me awake most of the night lol. Don't worry I'll post pics as soon as I can ;) and @RoryQ I don't think there will be any hard liqour tonight, I am well and truely spent.

Same site has a bunch of other rad sweaters

Living in austria puts me smack down in Krampus territory. In the bakery/cafe where I work we've sold hundreds of krampus cakes, chocolate thingies and whatnots. Some of the cakes were creepy as fuck and for some reason the little kids love them. They would make for good tattoos tho!

Hey guys, here is a link to the Catclaw Blog that shows the progress over the first two days if anyone is interested ２日続ã‘ã¦ï½œCATCLAW TATTOO-Z I'll wait until I get home and see if they have posted the final pick and I'll put it up :) After some sight seeing today I feel like a grandpa but I think I need a nap lol. I fly out tomorrow and should be hitting it, but I am buggered!

This is my favourite. Chris Trevino is a machine.

I just made my appointment to get my life-ruining hand tattoos from Thomas Hooper. It's gonna be way cool.

Knee hurts like fuck! 5 hours on this by Piotr Deadle :)

Just finished last night! Chris Garver , Invisible NYC Timeless tattoos Rock!!

got this today from justin hyde my cousin got this one from him

Souvenir piece from my trip to Japan last month. Completed by Mutsuo at Three Tides Tattoo.

So during my trip to SF back in October. Our first area we ended up in was Mission, and I was so inspired by the murals painted there. I took a lot of pictures and decided I wanted one of the beautiful traditional roses tattooed on my arm. We went to Oakland at Temple Tattoo, I wanted to visit this shop anyway because well....its fuckin historical. So there was only one artist there that day, Jonah. I asked if he had time for a small walk-in tattoo, and showed him the pics of the murals. Ended up being him that painted those murals! :) We definitely made each others day! So he drew up a rose while we were talking to him, fuckin awesome experience overall. Having someone with 15 years experience tattooing me was epic and especially in that shop. One of the best trips ever. I have to go back to California. <3

I have a large peony to the side of it now (see above), done less than 2 years ago. The original tattoo was done in late 1982, almost 31 years ago! Fortunately there wasn't much dark shading in it and the brown went right over the black hair. The dog itself is a light purple, which will come out when it heals up. The flowers will be done in pink and other colors and I'm going for the sleeve. It was done at Studio 69 on Long island, NY by Gina Sherry. I have forged a great relationship with her over the years. She was totally psyched to do it and we made up a lot of the details as we went along. Rob

Thanks mate, interseting stuff. I also really like the small tattoo under the sleeve. My tattooist told me about this tradition, not many people are aware of it so it is quite rarely seen especially by western artists. Here is mine Now I am considering these type of roasary/beads.

Imo it doesn't just demean the artform, but is a step towards undermining the whole craft. The more people who do this kind of thing, the more people will expect tattooers working for nothing. @Graeme noted earlier, that "Given that it's a pretty nasty feature of contemporary capitalism that it's even harder to make a living as an artist, illustrator, photographer, musician, writer, etc. because increasingly fewer people want to pay for that kind of work." Which is spot on. I make my living as an artist/illustrator, and I get request to do freebies all the time. Make me wanna fucking puke. Just last week a danish music festival contacted me: "We would love to have you decorate one of our bar areas, but unfortunately, we do not have a budget for this, but there will be lot's of publicity". Seriously - these guys have a million dollar budget, but expect me to work for nothing? Fuck that. It's come to a point, where I don't even write anything back - I just send them this:

Yup, totally )

Finally making a trip down to Electric Tattoo in NJ and getting tattooed by Robert Ryan. I'm going to be at the Philly convention at the beginning of February, so i'm just going to NJ the Friday of the convention. Probably not going to make any appts for the convention but we will see.

I took this photo and a bunch of others at the New Jersey State Fair in Cherry Hill. It was August 12th, 1990. It was a blast meeting Jack Dracula. He had such a crazy mystique about him. There were all kinds of crazy stories about him and I was afraid to meet him but he was a fun guy to hang around with for an afternoon. He rode back into town with us and told us old corny jokes. RIP Jack Dracula and Sonny Tufts.

This is Karen Roze. I have been tattooing since 1993. I own Sacred Rose Tattoo in Berkeley and Albany. I am terrible at the internet so excuse me. I have already been flagged by just trying to say hello in my first post! Ha Ha

That turned out great, but I think the original looked really fuckin' cool for a thirty year old tattoo! I really dig how the long fur looks when it's a little "blurred" from old age too. I would definitely have kept it if that was on my arm.

Finished my first session with Katja Ramirez at Perfection yesterday. I'm super happy with the result and I'm going back for another round in February.

Hello to everyone! Just wanted to let everbody know, that I joined the forum. Like the title says, I'm currently living in Denmark, although I might be moving to Sweden some time next year. I'm currently working on getting an apprenticeship up there, and things aren't looking too bad at the moment. I'm a passionate tattoo enthusiast, who used to be a graphic designer 'til I got fed up with the whole cooporate minion life, so I quit and started working full time as an artist/illustrator. Personally, I've never really used tattoo aesthetics in my work, but since a possible opportunity arose to get into the tattooing world arose a couple of weeks ago, I've tried it out. You can take a look at my feeble attempts further down in this post. Anyways, I wanna to study a whole lot of history, and since my favourite artist at the moment is Cap Coleman, I'm wondering if any of you could point me in the right direction? I've been searching for books about him, but can't seem to find much. Any hints would be greatly appreciated. Cheers

Hi all! I've finally decided to stop lurking and join the dark side. Name's Alex, 25 y.o., female, Russian/Australian. Currently freezing my arse off in Moscow. Obviosuly in love with tattoos )) I'm a kickboxer and a kendoka. Also, I'm a total guitarhead particularly obssessed with basses. I work full-time in HR area and also teach English and Japanese for some extra cash (gotta pay for all the tattoos I'm getting, haha). Latest achievement - starting my full back piece last week. Yay!

I'm a big fan of these and plan one for my wrist also to complete my left arm . Here's more from Ivan Szazi and Rico Daruma -

Hector Fong

Oops let try that again

Thanks for sharing that link @Fala ! It's a very good in-depth read and gives me some ideas for future work. @TaeTae I like that two bonji characters in the middle of chest. Never seen the characters on top of one another.

I think that Mike on Munewari Minutes discussed this a bit, and provided links: Munewari Minutes September 2011 posts. That's all I've got.

Amazing! I doubt I will ever do my hands but if I was going to do them I would want him to do them.

I always find that the best way to find out is to call the shop and find out first hand. They're all solid dudes over there at ROA, so it's worth the call for that alone.

Got this one done about a month ago. Sorry about the quality of the pics, heh

Just finished my first session with Tomo from Yellow Blaze. Super sweet dude with a magic touch. Plus the place itself is incredible - located just up the road from Yokohama's Victorian-era studios where all the Euro(-trash) royalty got inked in the 1800s. Got a few weeks for the ink to settle and then back for the colour...

First time posting hopefully I uploaded the image correctly. Finished this little guy in the summer.

I got this from Chad Koeplinger earlier this year. I love it, and I want to share it with you:

Second session just finished on my thigh. 6 and a half hours in. Swollen, bloody and inky but here is a pic. Tried to get some details in on the right side pics.

Just had reconstructive Jaw surgery a couple of days ago to fix my underbite. happy to finally have it after four years of braces. unfortunately I'll have no money for tattoos for sometime as the surgery was quite expensive. heres a picture of the X-ray, the titanium plates remain in my face for life

whoa! just smoked tooo much afgahni hash....whilst being pretty drunk....this might be interresting...better watch story of ricky...yes.

Funny thing is one time I was at a public function couple of years ago and there in my official government capacity. Think town hall style type of meeting. Most times these things are pretty civil with people inquiring about quality of life issues and who is responsible for such and such. This go around I get the luck of the draw and it's a tow truck driver (a business type which my agency regulates and oversees) and he's laying into me saying how terrible we are and I'm sitting up there all high and mighty and looking down on him cause he's an average working joe with tattoos on his arm. I told him he was wrong and we treat everyone fairly and he was mistaken if I'm judging him on his appearance. He continues to rant and said he noticed me sneering at him when he first walked into the meeting and gawking. I tell him if I was staring, it was probably more in admiration of the artwork on his arms and I basically tell him he is unfairly judging me based on my professional appearance to which I take off my suit jacket and role up one of my sleeves to expose my 3/4 sleeve. Couple of people in the audience laugh, some applauded. He catches me at the end of the meeting and apologizes for pre-judging me and states he's just frustrated with the regulations thats putting a strain on his business. I give him my card and tell him to call/email me so we can discuss his concerns further.

For some reason the Krampus pics are cracking my shit up! Maybe it was the Miley reference at the beginning. :-p

Jonah's a rad dude. He's from the Bay Area originally, but he was tattooing out of Invisible in New York for a while before heading back to California. Really solid guy.

Guys, scratchers fucking suck. We all know it. Lets just do our best to talk about good tattoos. We don't need the negativity this kind of bullshit brings.

I got them in SF back in 90-91. I called Freddy Corbin to do them but Daniel answered the phone. Just a matter of chance I ran into Freddy at the Haight Street Fair in 88 when he was handing out cards to "Find Your Tattoo Reality" I still have it in a box somewhere.

I'll second that. Unless there are three-boobed aliens there. Then I'm down.

Thank you for the kind words @Lance , Yes the wife and I are in London. Last getaway of the year. Start the front in March in LA.

Got my leg and cheeks drilled by filip about a month back, the inner thigh and butt crack/tail bone have to be pretty high on my list. I still find the healing and swelling 10x worse to deal with IMO. Getting my sternum done was pretty grueling too.

KING MOONRACER right in the neck maaan tattoo made in Edmonton, AB by Shawn O'Connor @ Ink Machine