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This weekend I had the pleasure of meeting with and hanging out with LST posters on two seperate occasions. On Friday me and @Pugilist had dinner with @eisen777 and his lovely wife, and on Saturday we had drinks with @Mark Bee and @El Dolmago. I've met a few people from here, and it's always a really good time. So far, the people here are a warm, smart, funny, easy to get along with bunch, and that I get to see some amazing tattoos in person doesn't hurt a bit.

So I have put on a bit of weight over the last couple of years, started aout 4 months after I did the Tough Mudder, and my most recent blood work came back with everything in the really not good zones. So I'm really starting to try to change diet and everything around and my wife has been working to encourage this. To this end she hit me with a great incentive. If I can trim down to a washboard stomach and keep it for a while she won't complain and I can go get a giant chest piece wherever I want. So, all y'all out in SF be prepared for me to be out there in about a year when I'm all trim and booked with Scott Sylvia.

No, you can't.

got tattooed by boxcar the other day. inside of my thigh area

I thought this was going to be about So, You Want to be a Tattoo Artist?

My girlfriend stumbled across this gem last night. This would make a good gift for your friends or favorite tattoo artist... "Tall, dark, and lethal... Trouble just walked into Nicholas Rixey's tattoo parlor. Becca Merritt is warm, sexy, wholesome--pure temptation to a very jaded Nick. He's left his military life behind to become co-owner of Hard Ink Tattoo, but Becca is his ex-commander's daughter. Loyalty won't let him turn her away. Lust has plenty to do with it too. With her brother presumed kidnapped, Becca needs Nick. She just wasn't expecting to want him so much. As their investigation turns into all-out war with an organized crime ring, only Nick can protect her. And only Becca can heal the scars no one else sees. Desire is the easy part. Love is as hard as it gets. Good thing Nick is always up for a challenge...

Had a nice little walk in not knowing what the fuck we were gonna do until after a couple of ales again. I'm enjoying these little pieces ATM. Keeping us interested before we get back to slamming fields of colour on my right thigh/ arse cheek. Anyway, eagles..skulls..daggers? fuck it, throw em all together mate! :)

Joining the ribcage tiger club with this little guy. Taken from Yoni Zilber's IG, and done yesterday while he's guesting in Asheville. Super nice and humble guy. Couldn't have asked for a better experience. Might be a new B&G enthusiast because of it. He has got some 20+ year old B&G tattoos that look no older than 5 - heavy and fine line stuff. Simply amazing. With that said, I will probably not get any more torso pieces for a long time haha. It was so worth the pain though.

Rich Hardy posted this on instagram today: "PERTH 2013 Pinky Yun, mid 70's One of the best eagles I have ever seen!" Instagram

Daisy was such a sweetie - It was lovely to meet up with her people too @Graeme and @Pugilist !

You are right! I have snubbed the lovely and remarkable Daisy - a lovelier dog is hard to imagine. After seeing so much of her on Instagram, it was nice to get to meet her.

Aww, everyone is so sweet and it was nice to hang with all of you too! Hope it happens again soon. Although @Mark Bee, I am a little disappointed to see that your comment snubbed a certain other member of our family that you got to hang with too. :)

@eldolmago and I second this. We had a great time having drinks and talking tattoos with @Graeme and @Pugilist. We look forward to doing it again (possible August) and for certain in early September. You couldn't ask for a more chill, interesting, and friendly meet-up.

As I was leaving Walmart tonight there was a older gentleman named Art running carts/security. He was happy to tell us all about getting these done on the west coast in the '40s. The rope was to protect him from drowning, and he's happy with how solid the panther still is.

I had my first really open antagonistic stare this week while in Quebec City. I sat down for breakfast and was reading the paper when two unpleasant people made a show of staring at my arms, sneering and then giggling derisively at me. It was weird and I feel sorry for them that they have so little going on in their lives that they tried to make me feel badly about my tattoos. Its fortunate that I do not give a damn what they think of my tattoos, or me, for that matter. I thought about it for a minute, grabbed a second coffee, and relaxed and enjoyed the paper before having a lovely day exploring the walled city with my wife on our anniversary. I've had others stare and clearly not like what they see, but never quite like this. What sad people. I was embarrassed for them. Solution? Get more tattoos. By the way, this was not representative of the people I met in QC. Apart from them, everyone else was friendly and accomodating and I'd go back in a heartbeat.

I've been lurking for a while, just soaking in the atmosphere, but I suppose the time has come to formally say hello. So, hello! I'm tattooed (a little), but I have bigger plans (don't we all?). A little background - when I was in my mid-teens I decided I wanted a tattoo. I was underage, but I approached my mother and told her. I'd grown up around tattooed men (think old Navy type) so to me marked up skin was the norm. My mother said she would consider taking me to get a tattoo. The following day she and my grandmother came home, both sporting tattoos of their own. Apparently they wanted to beat me to it! I was so shocked and actually thought they were transfers to prove a point. No. My grandmother had got a tattoo. Needless to say they couldn't stop me after that. I was taken to the same shop five days later and got my first one. It was flash, not what I would pick now if I could go back, but hey, we live and learn. Anyway, great forum and community! I love the banter and knowledge you guys seem to have. Hopefully (when the time comes) I'll be showcasing my own new ink. :)

Just a couple jobbies I had done in May and June respectively. Vial from the Death Becomes Her movie by Veronica Stice Arya Stark ladyhead by Lizzie Renaud Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

We had a great time. @Graeme and @Pugilist are even cooler in person. Plus as he said great to see those tattoos in person. Its great to talk about tattoos with people who love it as much as us. Most of my tattoo conversations are with people who are not very into them and those are mostly frustrating. Even more bummed to be missing the convention now.

@misterJ thanks man! Looking forward to seeing progress with you back piece. Go to the thighs and don't look back. By the way...thought the area around the love handle area hummed a little more than the area you are worried about. Just make sure he uses a rotary so you don't hear it coming :) @suburbanxcore thank you brother! Some of my progress shots are in the thread but not all of them. Rodrigo Melo of Northstar Tattoo NYC is doing the work. @Cork next round of green should put it on point...can't wait! Kept the patterns to the minimum, colors as few as possible, and strong. Mike

Grabbing and touching without consent are not cool. I'm an unattractive male and it's happened to me plenty. I've been sitting at dinner with my wife and felt my shirt sleeve being pulled up by a stranger so they could appease their curiosity ...and I don't think we should be telling girls that if a man invades their space and ownership of their own body they should find it charming or flattering. No one else should have control over what they see of you, least of all men over women given the track record and the culture we've created.

The current idea is koi, skulls, water, and Mike's choice of flowers/leaves. Sometimes I imagine a dragon though.

I got into the most prestigious school of journalism in my country! After both written and oral exams, I finally got the email. I was accepted. Now I just wish I had some money so I could get myself a sweet victory tattoo! :D

I like the theory, but I prefer to choose an artist with a style that matches what I want. I would be nervous having an artist do work on me if they were out of their comfort zone. Luckily I live in an area with a lot of talented artists covering many different styles.

I don't know what I can add that hasn't been said already, but this the damn internet, and everyone has to listen to my 2c if they want to or not. Backs take time. Artist/client travelling, money, holidays, vacation, etc.... Just set a pace that you can tolerate and then stick with it, that's my recommendation. While getting my back done, I see more and more other guys who just haven't been able to make progress on theirs. I've asked Dana how many backs he has in progress, he doesn't even have hard number with all the guys who are still in progress over the course of a decade. People drop in and might only get work once every 2 years. He told me about a guy he worked on recently who he hadn't seen in almost 5 years. One guy with a half suit (not the term but I can't remember it) from Shinji Horizakura took 7 years.

Reading this thread and the other back piece threads makes waiting for February 2015 even more difficult! Still have plenty of time to flip flop on ideas...

Eff what you've heard. Don't worry about what is common. Get tattooed for yourself without concern for what other people do. That starts with not caring whether how you approach it is similar to how others approach it. Before there was an internet and the false assurance of general consensus there were people getting tattooed any way they could. Don't worry about whether it's normal, just worry about whether it will work. The one thing I would say, as a tattooer... do not compromise the image. Don't go the cheap route, sacrificing the quality of a permanent tattoo on your permanent body to meet your temporary means. Your body is forever and you will regret it...eventually if not instantly. And when you have an artist that you trust to do it, take his or her advice. They may say to hold off til you can afford a large enough portion that it will look fluid in the end. Don't try to get one corner done, then a little over here and some in the middle if it will look like disjointed sections poorly stitched together. Always be thinking of the whole. Some styles can be tackled in sections but much of the beauty of a back piece is its wholeness as a large piece. Sometimes this means a whole outline of the principle image has to happen first.

Will this be your first tattoo? A back piece is a huge commitment. Have you thought about getting a smaller tattoo first? A smaller piece will help you get an idea of the pain/discomfort and how to properly care for a healing tattoo.

Hey Dude welcome! I have a piece on my back from 3 years ago that was left to add more too as we went. At the time I was unsure of how to progress, and then my tattoo artist moved 3 hours drive away. But I am still in touch with him, and he touched up the original recently to make sure it was looking good ready to be added to. I plan on having him and his sister do a collaboration on it to complete in the next year (she is his apprentice but is pretty amazing!). So you are not the only one who might have something spread out. I can only afford to do it bit by bit, and prefer to have longer sessions to get more done in 1 go, which means longer to save! But I have also been getting other work done in between, with different artists I wanted to collect. Dont worry if your story isn't the same as someone else getting it smashed out in 6 months of mad sessions. As long as you found a great artist to do it justice, then let it take the time it needs to save for the best of the best. You will not regret it! :)

Yeah, pretty much. Just passed 3 years sober but I can't seem to lose all my durgs knowledge, ha

@Branny212 If you're anywhere near Victoria, I would recommend going into Government Street Tattoo and talking with them, especially if you want to go traditional. GOVERNMENT STREET TATTOO - VICTORIA BC Tattoozoo in Victoria will also give you a great tattoo. Black and Blue Tattoo in Nanaimo is also a really great bet if you're more up island.

lol 8 pages and no Crass !! No Crass LoL Some ENT Doom

Yozin Bunshin. I believe he is early 30's and does tebori! The man did one of my all time favourite suits.

Today a little bit of everything has been done (in just 2 hours), red in the arrow, the glove, the shoe, the nails of the fox, even more red in the man's face etc. Next time we have some small things to do (which we couldn't do today because it's in parts that were not fully healed from the previous session, and to tidy everything up. I talked to my artist about the 'blank' part in the fox, and aked if he was planning on keeping it this way (as i think it looks a bit 'unfinished') but he gave me a firm 'yes' so I guess that's how it will stay :)

Got a new job. Broke up with shitty bf. Discovered jagerbombs. Looking forward to starting my tattoo fund for whatever my next tattoo may be.

@CultExciter .... No I am not! I am using 4 hamsters and a big wheel they run in which hooked up to a motor from a small wind turbine! It's not great for long tattoos but it works well for small kanji and doing lettering! ;) As long as they are happy and running I can make money! But mostly I use magic.....he he he

It's always helpful when sleezebags wear their sleezebaggery on their sleeves.

Got this from Eddy Deutsche yesterday, gonna add a body and some more to it in another session, which is gonna be awesome. Very happy with it as it is now though. Sort of a bad pic, but you get the idea

Side of my head is tattooed! For me it was the most painful tattoo I have gotten.....but I hear others say it wasn't bad at all! Mine was done in two sessions and the lining was not too bad.......the second session of shading and blending was horrible! Pink Tibetan Snow Lion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Lion

Tony Hundahl Rock Of Ages

@Cork thanks, and this is something I never pictured saying to another guy. looking at your butt makes me nervous. The way Rubendall has been packing in solid ass black, I can only imagine how brutal it's going to be below the waist. I don't know if I will go simple extension of the background with maybe a flower or two, or add some more features. He said my thighs and butt are roughly another half back piece so I think that leaves me open for some serious options.

Hmmm... The plot thickens. Pics or it didn't happen!

I agree with everyone else so far @DevilMan The fox looks great. Your skin is a perfect pale white so it makes it look like the foxes breast is done. That's supposed to be a compliment..... haha. @misterJ Not moving for 2.5 hours is a good sitting. Hopefully you ride that excitement all the way til the end and you don't start to get worn down. Great to hear that you're going to the thighs. Solid decision. @MikeL Now that I can see the bigger resolution, I can see why he's not keen on keeping the olive as is. Brightening that up with some other green will certainly add a little flavor. I love those robe designs.

I like just how off the map this style of tattooing is. It takes a decent amount of artistic vision to do something like this well and I feel that it definitely has to match the personality of the client. I know for sure that it would never suite me but I can understand the appeal of it.

Because this thread makes me kinda jealous, I don't check it as much as I should. @DevilMan I like the fox a lot the way it is. There's a lot going on in that piece, and that lets it breathe a bit. @misterJ I can't wait to see how this progresses. @MikeL I feel like I missed some progress shots along the way, and I love how it's coming together. Pretty burly and super readable. I love it. Remind me, who is doing it?

Cruised out for beers and food last night. Young lady serving from the bar asks, awesome tattoos. She extends her hand, I shake it like I would anyone else. We chat for 5 minutes about tattoos. She pulls up her own sleeve to show me her sleeve work. She thanks me for the time, I say.. No! Thank you as she served me a beer for free. A pleasant, genuine exchange with respect which should be consistent with every engagement...in my book.

Cruised down the road to put fuel & air in the motorcycle this morning. Said to the Misso, be back in 15. Thought I'd extend the ride a little further. Next thing I know I'm banging the motorway north, then hit the Glasshouse Mountains, thought I'd better roll through a couple little country towns...oh, fuel stops needed & rolled a smoke. Not a cloud in the sky with a little nort easterly blowing @ about 17 degress. Rolled down the mountain, back on the motorway banging 6th gear cruising at $1.20 back to home. 4 hours later and 350 K's. Yeah! That was fuckin awesome. Not a care in the world.

It took me 10 years to bite the bullet and breach the collar. I thought neck tattoos would be a big change in the way I am perceived...by my family, friends, clients, strangers...overall it has been very positive and has complimented my personality and confidence. I mean the majority of my body is tattooed and covered. Why? Because I love tattoos, the commitment, the experience getting them, the healing and the aging. So why should I be afraid to let that show and hide who I am - an illustrated person. We use our hands for so much in our daily lives. I think hand tattoos are a very expressive piece of real estate (as is the neck line) - as a lot of these hand tattoos in this thread demonstrate. I am not sure for myself at the moment however, I feel it would be distracting for me to wear...not ready for the big stuff yet haha and I think personally the wait to get hand-blasted will be all the more rewarding. I think the outside-in approach of the younger generation...well...I think it trivializes the overall experience of getting tattooed. But everybody has their own opinions and reasons for getting tattooed. My feelings toward tattooing my own hands will likely change in the years to come as my tattoos age, my coverage increases (real estate decreases!) and my life-situation develops. Patience and waiting is part of the tattoo experience for me, much in the same way that spontaneous tattoos have their place as well. And there will be something satisfying when my skull and hands (in that order lol) are made. I think I will likely drop my sleeve cuffs down onto my wrists first and then maybe consider a smaller standalone pieces on my hands (instead of a full mitt style). I work as an professional engineer. I work for a smaller consulting company and have a flexible job. I am happy I waited, I don't think breaching the shirt line earlier on in my career would have been a wise decision. I didn't have the life experience and leadership qualities to backup my eng work and overshadow a rogue appearance. Now I am older, more experienced and have the respect of my peers in the industry for the good work and professionalism I have demonstrated. It is only recently that my clients and work contacts have started noticing and I have not been shy in asking about my tattoos (but, god, why does everyone have to refer to them as 'taaaaattz'?!?, really dumbs it down yknow) There is a time and place however and that is where you say "yknow I'd love to discuss tattooing with you at a later time, but perhaps right now this project meeting is not the appropriate forum". You'd be surprised how much respect you get as a young tattooed person from normals when you take charge of poorly timed conversation like that. On the flip side, when I am on a construction site for an inspection, the trades people comment on the tattooed engineer and frankly make me feel more welcome than say the engineer dork in pleated dockers who is too proud to get his shirt dirty. Tattoos make you an interesting person "maaan I bet that cat has got some stories mhmmm" but generally that is because you were an interesting person already before the tattoos. /and now...back to the thread...post some more great pics of hand tattoos ! :cool: - - - Updated - - - Awesome! love the space and size around your tattoos. Nice placement, and the tattoos are grrreat

Alright, luckily we got started late and could only do 5 hours. That was enough. I made the mistake of going in on Sunday for a deep tissue massage. That made everything extra tender and sensitive for Tuesday. Never get a massage before a tattoo. Just don't do it. This session covered hair, robes, wind bar/cloud touch-ups, adding orange to the fire. Also a healed butt shot. From Instagram danahelmuth; (Damn, looking at my butt up close, look at that scar tissue on the red in the snake! He beat me up.)

Boy needs to plan ahead. But hey, he should fit in around here because he's got Ok, so that was a waste of 10 minutes of my life.

Tattoo Zeke Owen’s Column ASK ZEKE WITH ZEKE OWEN This one’s from the legendary tattoo artist dates back to May 1998. Dear Zeke: I want to pursue a career as a tattoo artist very seriously. I am currently an aspiring artist with no tattoo training. How do I go about it? —Chris Sisler, Vacaville, CA Dear Chris: I’d like you to know, Chris, that my editor goes through all this mail out in California, picks out the things he wants and sends them to me. So I don’t have a lot of choice with really picking out my mail and the questions that I’d like to talk about. In other words, it’s just random and I don’t say, “I don’t want to answer this, I don’t want to answer that.” I say, “Oh there’s a juicy one,” and go on. I just have to take the ones that he sends. First of all, I’d like to tell you a little story about something that happened to me up in Seattle, Washington, one time. And I might start this little story out with a caption that went, “So you want to be a tattoo artist?” By the way, did you see in local business magazine that tattooing is now the sixth largest growing business in the United States?! Well anyway, next to my shop—my shop was on Skid Road. Skid Road was named originally as the logging road way back in the 1800s when they used to skid the logs down the road to Peugeot Sound to put on the ships. Well, anyway, I was out on First Avenue in Seattle for a little while and it was really neat. One of the coolest things that I used to see up there was that the people from Alaska and all over up north used to come down and put their money in the bank and go to the poker rooms and live in the old, beat up, stinky, I mean really stinky hotels right down there on First near the Pike Place Market and Skid Road. And this one guy used to bring down, every year, a couple of typical sled dog looking dogs and they were probably three years old or right around there. And he’d stay in one of those Skid Road hotel rooms where they let you have anything—I mean anything. And in the morning, you’d see the dogs and this guy from the Arctic Circle or someplace, down on the sidewalk and the dogs would both have collars on and each collar would be attached to the other one, kind of like Siamese-twin collars. So, consequently, he’d have one dog on the port side and one dog on the starboard side and they’d both be leaning in about ten degrees against each other and that’s they way he’d walk. Man, it’d be funny right there at the beginning of winter. They’d be falling, a struggling and a pulling. But, after a while, after a few months, winter would start winding down and they’d go down the steps and outside on the sidewalk just in unison—just as happy as they could be, with their tongues hanging out. And they’d run down the street when he’d call them. It looked like he was training them for sled dog work, but I’d never seen that before. It was really strange to watch them. Next door to my tattoo shop in Seattle was this old bar called the Forty Niner Tavern. And that’s exactly what it was. It was full of all them off the ships and miners. Honest to God they still have mines up there, of course they’d be there for the winter. And Seattle was kind of growing in those days, they were building all over the place, so we had a lot of steelworkers. And the tavern used to open up at six in the morning, and I know that because one of the opening bartenders used to be my girlfriend, Carol. And I’d be over at the arcade—it was open 24 hours a day with a pool hall, and the little guy who ran the grill—and I’d get her home fries and scrambled eggs and coffee and go over to the bar at six in the morning. And the place would be so smoky from cigarettes, it’d be the middle of winter and there was no movement of air in there, and the fire would be going and it was just thick with smoke. And the sun would make rays through the front door and the first few tables had a spotlight like one of the helicopters that flies over the lakefront when you’re out there barbecuing and partying. Anyway, I was in there and it was packed with all the steelworkers in there partying and doing shooters before they went to work up 20, 30 stories. They’re as drunk as hell going off to hang steel up there. Somebody ought to write a book, if they haven’t already, about how these guys used to save each other’s lives from falling to their deaths by catching them on the floor underneath. Anyway, I was sitting there drinking my coffee and I’d just finished my scrambled eggs and home fries when all of the sudden the most horrible, putrefying smell came into the place. God it was horrible, you know? And I looked around. I once had tattooed a South Korean Sailor for two gallons of kimchee because he didn’t have any money—this was back in the 60s—and he brought me this two gallon can of kimchee and I tattooed him and he went back to the ship. I had zero communication with the guy. So I put the bucket of kimchee—after taking out about a quart size jar of it—and put it in the reefer box in the Forty Niner Tavern and we were looking in there. We thought that was it, because it can get pretty foul sometimes. But that wasn’t it. And I looked up toward the front of the bar, and in the middle of this blazing sunlight cutting through the cigarette smoke here sits this old wino. He has a Korean War era watchcap in a shade of green that was particular to that era with flaps hanging down over his ears. And he had two or three suits on underneath his big overcoat, because it was below zero degrees outside. And his hands were just—you couldn’t tell what they were because the guy was so grimy. He had on big, heavy army wool pants and I looked down and I could see steam coming off his right boot, this old army boot. And the guy’s face was leathered and beat up. And he had his hand wrapped around a double shot glass of some kind of wine or something. With the sunlight on him, he’s just sitting there with head down—he’s drunk about half of it. And the steam coming off his shoe was coming off a freshly laid turd. Somehow, before he had sat down, he had crapped in his pants and his turd about the size of a scoop of vanilla ice cream had slid down his pants and landed on the toe of his shoe. Just balanced there. And the stink was just ripe. It was horrible. And the funny part was I was only one who got nauseous—ready to get sick over it. The rest of the seamen that were in there—a couple of guys from the hotel, a couple of Indians, all these steelworkers, my girlfriend Carol behind the bar—when I pointed it out they said, “My God, there it is, it’s on his shoe!” They all turned and broke into a rolling laugh, but they weren’t sick. It didn’t bother them a bit. They thought it was funny as hell. Well, I didn’t think it was very damn funny. So I went over to the guy and I told him, I said, “You’re gonna have to get up and leave this place and take that fucking thing on your shoe with you! Get outa here!” Anyway, he drank his wine, got up and walked out the door real slow, with his head bent down. Poor guy, he looked like a refugee from WWII, with that shuffle, like those guys with the tattoos on their arms, given that number from Hitler. Out the door he went, and that stinking thing on the toe of his right boot. But you know, that’s all part of life of being in a tattoo business. So I thought about that for many, many years. And there’s not a real point to all this that I’m telling you. But before you do anything—before you go about planning a big career move into the tattoo business—you really ought to find out more about what it’s all about. Where you want to go, what you really want to do with it. I mean, do you have any tattoos? In other words, before I give you directions to build a bomb you better know what the hell you want to do with the damn thing after you get it finished. Because most of the people who got into this business have a real kinship with their customers in that it really gets into their blood, so to speak, and you keep coming back for more. They stay in it. And I’ve seen real good tattooers just go nuts. Actually, one of Mike Malone’s that came in my shop, what was his name—from Germany—Freddy or something. Anyway, he went back to Germany and he was one of the very first ones on the crack of the wave of the tattoo scene and he took Germany by storm. It was 24 hours a day and it got to him so bad that he had a breakdown and went off to the hospital. And I haven’t heard anything from him since. Mike will know what I’m talking about. But the point of it is I can tell you right now, don’t take it on your own to try and do this or experiment with anybody. And here I am telling you exactly what I did, and a lot of others did, experimenting on their own. I can’t say it’s a mistake but it’s just a better approach to go into a shop of maybe the guys who’ve been doing your tattoos. I’m sure you have a bunch, right? And talk to them. Bring your artwork in to show. I’ll tell you what, there’s been a phenomenon in this business that went right past me. I missed it. Only just now am I getting to find out about what’s going on. I call them entrepreneurs. They have a job with the transit system or maybe they’re in the bricklaying business in the daytime and they have ten or fifteen tattoos, so now they decide they’re going to have a tattoo shop. They go down to Ocean Boulevard in Jacksonville, Florida, and they rent a little store. They put an ad in the paper and they hire six or seven guys and they give them 35% of the gross to sit in there and tattoo. But if they don’t have the equipment, by God, they send off to somebody up north and buy all the machines and the designs and the tools to do the work with. And that’s one way to do it. And they just get together like a big Chinese cluster-fuck and sit there and mark each other up and everybody else that comes in the place. But that’s one approach, I suppose. I think it’d be better off though if you did find somebody who had a reputation and they would sit you down and let you watch and talk. That’s really the way to get started. Hand to hand—kind of like the old-fashioned apprenticeships used to be at the shoe repair shop. After about a year, they eventually let you put a heel on somebody’s boot, you know? And also, this is another kind of business where you want to get next to the best person you can. If you have some serious art abilities or training and everybody goes “oooh” and “aaah” when they see your painting, then evidently you’ve got the kind of ability that you need today to succeed in the business. Most of the old time guys are what we call mechanics—take a pattern, slap it on your arm and follow it along. There were some guys that could make it look like Rembrandt. You could tell, it was sort of a mechanical follow-the-dots sort of a deal. But today, when you’ve got so many great people, it just blows me away. I never knew Brian Everett was an oil painter or a portrait artist before he got into this. I just didn’t stop to think like that. The scope of the way I thought was pretty much limited to the tattoo community that I developed myself in. And it didn’t include people like that. And today Mike Malone says I’m the last guy to find out anything. I don’t know—he’s probably right. But today I’m beginning to find out these people in fine arts are getting into tattooing. I’m beginning to think, is there more money working in tattooing than there is working in the art department at some big magazine? And evidently some of them actually like tattooing. So then again, you have to think very carefully about what you say or what you do around this or any other business. But especially in tattooing, because most of the people who are in tattooing are pretty down to earth. There’s not a lot of fiction in tattooing like a lot of people would think. When a guy comes in and you work on him two or three hours and he gets up and runs out the door with your money, that’s pretty real. It’s not a real good example either but—also I don’t just sit there when I’m tattooing somebody. I’ve got something to say. I ask them what’s going on and you get to hear a lot of what’s really happening in the rest of the world. The kind of people I work on are everything from deep sea divers to CEOs of major corporations. But again, you need to learn or find out more about what tattooing’s all about before you decide I’m an artist and I want to be a tattoo artist. Find out something about it first. Go to a tattoo convention. There you go. Hang out with all those drunks after the tattoo room is closed and they’re all in the bar slinging shit at each other, wrestling around in the parking lot like Bob Shaw and I used to do, drunk as hell in the grease. Things like that. Then that’ll give you more of an insight and whether you really want to be a tattoo artist or not. See ya. —Zeke.