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I'll enter this one because I love my eagle. Happy to see her every day, and she has a name :o By Chad Koeplinger at Congress St. Photo from his Instagram.

Throw me L side in. Crocodile (from my Croc fighting days :)) & my ugly looking bat. Tattooer CP, Australia. @polliwog. I love that Eagle. F_uck_ing rad.

Had a consult for my back, got it traced, and we're going with a tiger fighting a snake with wind, water, and maple leaves, starting July 24. It's going to be so rad, I'm really excited to get started.

Guess I'll throw this in for this month. The only black & gray piece I have, and hopefully not the last. By Yoni Zilber.

Picked up this lil' thigh giblet while on vacation in Japan in 2013 from the (then) Hiroshi Hirakawa at Three Tides Tattoo, Osaka

Had my consult with Hooper Thursday. 1st session is Oct 20th.

Filler done by Chad Koepinger a couple of months ago:

little dragon foot by Chad Chesko at Fat Ram's Pumpkin Tattoo in Boston, MA:

I just found a 1978 Triumph Tiger 750 that was found sitting in the USA now imported to Australia with only 4,600 miles on the clock (7,400 km's). Brand new paint, new rings. I'm gonna view it tomoz morning, and if I can get if for what I'm expecting...that will be fuckin' awesome!

Rob Mopar is doing a guest spot at FTW through Saturday. Neither of us were doing much yesterday so he made these ladies for me. His instagram is @rwmopar if anyone is wondering.

Yesterday marked 1 full year of living together with my girlfriend and we still like each other.

Experience tells me otherwise, but I'm happy for you.

My wife and I are celebrating 16 years of marriage having been told by everyone we were doomed from the start since we were young, foolhardy and poor, I've had some really good single malt scotch lately (Talisker Storm and Ardbeg Uigeadail), my frustrating bike (66 Triumph) is about to be back in proper action soon and I've lost 60 lbs.

Grez just made this one on me a few hours ago... I'm in love.

Head tattoos are generally for the kind of people who don't seek the opinions of others or have to consider how to hide them.

ok, I wasn't really gonna out it on the interwebs but me and my so kinda recently got engaged and shit...now i need a captain of a ship to wed us...

Got this one from Stevie Edge to top a good week of getting tattooed.

Just had a chocolate peanut butter milkshake

Here are the rules: The tattoo picture that gets posted in this thread for July 2014 with the most 'likes' for the month wins! The contest starts on the first of the month and ends on the last day of the month. Your tattoo picture must be posted in this thread (both tattooers and tattoo customers can win) in order to qualify. Include with your photo/post...tattoo artist name & tattoo shop. You MUST be the one who has the tattoo or did the tattoo. You can 'like' as many tattoos as you want. It can be a finished or in progress tattoo. You cannot enter the same tattoo in more than one contest.

As I walked up to the gas station today, I noticed my reflection in the door. I realized I may be a little hipster, due to the way I dress. And on several occasions, I've found myself thinking "I wish hipsters didnt ______. I did this/that before hipsters ruined it." That and I look at my reflection in doors as I walk up.... Pretty much realized i might be a douche today. Fuck.

I am new to tattoos also. Just started last year. This is a great site with plenty of people wanting to help. Being new, I had to learn what is "reasonable" in the tattoo world. Reasonable pricing, time frames, pain, what can and cannot be done in a tattoo, quality, fading, etc.. You cannot believe everything you read on the internet or read in discussion boards, but when everyone is giving you the same advice, odds are, it's good advice. One of the funny things about getting free advice on the internet. We sometimes discredit it because it's free.

If you're going to Jess Yen's shop you'd be foolish to get a backpiece from anyone but Jess Yen. Foo dogs are a great subject for a backpiece, especially with peonies. You should probably listen to your artist when it comes to placement. But if you can't afford a good backpiece, don't get one. Now is not the time to go bargain hunting. My advice: Get the best tattoo you can. Money is secondary. If you can't wrap your mind around that one, you're not ready to make that kind of commitment. The reason many tattooers can't quote you a price up front is because it's hard to know how long a piece of that size and scope will take, but I'd guesstimate you're looking at least 25-50 hours – 100 on the outside. Hourly rates are mostly meaningless because some of the best artists are very fast and some newbies are very slow. By trying to get a bargain you could end up with a mediocre to bad tattoo that's way more expensive than the one you could have had. Take the time and save up while you make up your mind. And/or consider getting one foo dog on an arm or a leg and take it from there. From everything I've read, however, you're probably not ready. Feel free to prove me wrong but don't ignore good advice from people who know more than you.

Just got home today from 6 days spent in Berlin. Love that city! Shared a bed with a new acquaintance for 4 nights, biked around a bunch, met cool people, ate awesome food, saw the ethnographic museum and Pergamon, hung out with a friend from back home and stayed for two nights at my X's place. Life is too good sometimes

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. :)

Got an appointment tomorrow afternoon to get my hotstuff and leg tattoos touched up by OllieXXX...and likely a spontaneous draw-on banger (not sure what but I am in the mood for a tear-out!).

@Graeme Well played, sir! Well played.

Awesome! Thank you. I will wear the t-shirt with pride on the streets of London.

keep researching and keep saving. if you are looking in the LA area check out place like Onizuka Tattoo, Dark Horse, and Small Paul at True Tattoo. and visit the Perserverance exhibit http://www.janm.org/exhibits/perseverance/

I just take to the chair and let the tattooing begin, at the end of the session, I ask how much and fork over the cash. Some artists will give you a firm-fixed-price on a big piece, others won't. In the end most of us work well with artists that we've been with forever.

My buddy (short-lived poster @huggernaut) has an appt with Grez tomorrow. I'm super jealous, but it's ok since my appt is two weeks from today!

So June didn't exactly break the record for most contestants, but man oh man, those who submitted had some killer lookin' tattoos! However, @ThatGuy stole the victory with this utterly stunning back piece by Valerie Vargas of Frith Street Tattoo in London. Congrats!!! Please PM @steve1461686340 with your shirt info (size and male or female) along with your address. New contest will be up shortly!

This all sounds kind of impulsive or made up.

Honestly, if you're not willing to take good advice from your artist about design and placement there's really no need for this thread to continue past this point.

guy at the newspaper did this of my daughter. Going to see if I can get the negative of it to make a poster to hang in her room. Finished our eight performances yesterday, and we got so much positive feedback. Several people came more than once, some came almost every night. The last four shows were all sold out.

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

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

This conversation about taste and whether 'traditional' American tattooing really can be described as timeless is so interesting. It also ties in a way to a conversation I was having with my grandfather a couple of weeks ago after I showed him my tattoos for the first time. He's 89 years old in November and got all of his 4 tattoos during the 2nd World War whilst stationed in Germany. He has a crawling panther, an anchor, a swallow and his favorite, an eagle on his bicep. He got all of his tattoos in 1944 and he still loves all of them to this day, he says that getting the eagle was one of the best decisions he ever made 'its given me so much joy over the years'. Interestingly though I asked him if he ever wished that he had got more and he said no, he got just the number he wanted and stopped there. Now this is a guy who has lived with his tattoos for 70 years now, tastes have changed, fashions have come and gone and through it all he's remained stoked with those four tattoos he got in the 1940's! This got me to thinking about my own approach to tattoos and how different it is to his, like most people on this forum I'm always planning who I'd like to get tattooed by and have pretty much mapped out my arms and torso in my mind. But its easy to forget that those images of heavily tattooed sailor from the 1940's actually made up a tiny minority, my grandad was considered pretty heavily tattooed at that time. I wonder with the whole traditional thing whether we are chasing something that didn't really exist in the way we think it did, and whether he might be onto something when he said to me that if you want to continue to love the tattoos you have through your life then sometimes less is more... That being said its not advice I'm going to take, I cannot imagine a time when I won't want to get tattooed. Sorry if that was a bit of a rant and off topic, I just thought it tied in with the flavor of the thread.

@cltattooing 's work on the back of my thigh. Done last week at Clubhouse Tattoo in Oakland.

Those are so nice, @cltattooing.

Congrats @ThatGuy !

@cloudkicker I would go down the route of doing 2-3 hour sessions, at the moment you have no idea how you will cope with a hour never mind 8, get the outline done and maybe start the black shading, and see how you feel then, Then your getting tattooed every few months and can watch it progress rather than a bit of a stop start journey I havnt touched my back yet, so I'm not a expert, but I love watching a back piece grow on instagram

Hope you've got the blinds closed!

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

Half of these are gonna look like utter shite in five years: The Top 15 Tattoos on Reddit | Tattoodo.com

Its been a busy month for me, got my 3/4 sleeve finished and was incredibly lucky to get a cancellation eagle with Valerie Vargas. So here is the first one... Valerie Vargas, Frith Street Tattoo, London.

My artist finished the eyes of my dragon last. He said once the eyes where done the dragon is alive and to continue tattooing it would cause the dragon pain.