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Hung out with my buddy Joe today. He's like a mentor, older brother, super cool uncle all rolled into one. Joe's responsible for introducing me to Henning and putting me on the path of my ongoing tattoo journey. For fun we snapped off this pic of our Henning backpieces. Both our sleeves are also by Henning. Joe has awesome work from Tin Tin, Aaron Bell and Mike Rubendall as well. Enjoy!

Been a while since ive checked back on here but heres a few pics of the panther and the parrot i got from Chad K at the Amsterdam convention back in May, its really hard to get a good picture of a shoulder but Chad drew the parrot to fit the space perfectly. Also a Mum heart i got as a walk in from Jordan Baxter at Black Garden a couple of weeks back, picture pinched from his instagram.

My 10 year old niece was telling me her ideas for future tattoos... And they kind of kicked ass! She wants a dragon on her right arm, with vines & leaves wrapped around it. Then, she wants a wolf fighting a snake on her left arm. On her back she wants a hippocamp (horse/fish hybrid). She's thinking maybe a griffin on her thigh. I was like, "Damn! I might want some of those, too!" Wonder what she'll be thinking in 8+ years...

get two sessions of laser treatment, to lighten the tattoo. wait 6 months to let the skin settle, find a competent artist, and maybe get a rose tattooed over the top, classic, timeless, represents love and could possibly tie to growth etc. a colour tattoo will work way better to cover this design than a black & grey one. that's what i'd recommend

That there's being exposed to a good insight. My 10 year old son is the same. He's constantly talking about his future body suit. How he's gonna slam a huge battleship across his back, full flight eagle across his chest, lightning bolts and skulls. They're funny as. When we returned from riding one of the motorcycles the other arvo and as we're rolling the bike back into the lounge room, my 9 year old daughter looked at him and said...Dylan, I reckon when your older, your gonna be a tattooed biker. The boy just took one look at her and simply said...100%.

I have stopped drinking alcohol while I'm working 6 day weeks and am amazed at the difference I'm feeling after only 3 weeks. My head is so clear and focused, my anxiety has pretty much taken a back seat and I'm making great gains at the gym. Really excited to see where this takes me.

I don't do tattoos,but I paint...

Just got back from a pretty great trip to see family in Newton, MA, Cape Cod, Martha's Vinyard, and Springfield, NY. Last night we ended the trip with our annual Red Sox game at Fenway Park. That didn't go so well for the Sox, but we had fun. My friend got a foul ball. What did I miss around here?

I know ya said at 1st ya didn't wanna go big, but then now thinking something large that would extend high. That was my initial thought when I 1st read your post. Go big, sleeve out the leg solid.

We grew up with some heavy dudes in the early to mid eighties who got into tattooing their faces and shit, but typical jailhouse style. I can honestly say but, that face portrait I have never seen anything quite like it. Truly unfuckenbelievable.

I took the plunge - I called SOG. Molly and Taki are out of the office, but they are passing along my info for a consultation. ::happy dance:: @cvportagee, @Lance, @TrixieFaux - thank you for the replies and the info. You've all convinced me that this is possible and doable flying in and out for a quick trip. I had planned to fly out to CA in the fall - I'd love to make it a combined trip! So excited!!! ^^^Word. Yes, I would regret it tremendously. And that pretty much makes the decision for me - Monmon cat and tebori if he wants!

I'm sure it's frustrating paying more than you initially expected to pay for that tattoo, but a couple of things stick out here: 1) if you go to a different artist to finish the tattoo, you might not have a consistent quality throughout the tattoo, especially when you seem to be happy with your existing work; 2) maybe I'm not understanding this correctly, but it really rubs me the wrong way that somebody offered to finish a tattoo by a local, available tattooer at a lower rate. To me, it doesn't speak very highly of that second tattooer's integrity, and while I'm sure stuff like this happens all the time, it isn't an approach to getting tattooed that we really condone here.

Can we get your niece on here to give people advice about what tattoos to get? These are all killer.

Personally, my phone has become a repository for screen captures for all the tattoos I am in awe of. I've spent a few lunch breaks browsing on my phone taking note of the amazing tattoos, tattooers out there and subjects that inspire. It's no substitute for a good publication with high quality photos though. But it's lead me to learn about or see more work from artists who are not published as much and also find out about tattooers from other countries who have never been published, in my case, in a US publication for example "kojiichimaru" who until IG, I had never seen published anywhere and "gasentat2" who've I've only seen published in a Japanese publication on backpieces. BTW, I'm "lgoda" on IG.

I finally got booked in with Steve! Can't wait!!

This might be the only appropriate time in life to say "...what she said." ^^^

Fixed.

green machine still experimenting a bunch but i think i've finally got the hang of how to lay out a page (borders solve everything)

I've never seen a tattoo shop rated below 4 stars on Yelp, meaning that everyone must be getting really great tattoos. The thing that bothers me most about Yelp is that so many of the "bad experiences" could have been made better if the reviewer took 2 minutes to be a human being and talk with somebody at the shop/restaurant/whatever rather than go home - or whip out their phone - and write about it. Or to just chalk it up to having to interact with people you don't know & shug it off if it's small enough, which it usually is. ("The cashier looked like she was JUDGING ME!!") It enables a lot of the most irritating kinds of modern-day behavior. The flip side is that it can name & shame businesses that racially profile, etc.

I'm amazed at your use of upper case letters. It is Very Difficult for Me to Type Like This.

We Can't Help You without Knowing the Quality of the Work. good Luck.

Started my ribs/the rest of my leg with Dave Cummings. I'll be in Montreal every two months to get this sucker done. Super stoked.

Big fan of this site and finally decided to join. Been getting tattooed since the 90s and have only been tattooed in the New England are. Living in NYC for the last few years and have decided to start getting work done here. I'm think of going to Mike Perfetto to start of my NYC collection. Best, Justin - - - Updated - - - I would love to see any and all Mike Perfetto tattoos. I've seen the Indian Chief, Panther Head that were posted on the TAM blog. I'm thinking of going in and picking from the flash collection. It's been like….17 years since I've done that and I'm kind of jonesing for that kind of experience.

@Cork Ha I'll definitely let you know! Just the chest for now.

When you also consider the neck beard this guy is working on, this truly is as horrifying as it gets.

And I thought the guy with the panther head on his face I used to see @ unemployment was fucked for life....

With the ratio of the size of the root ball to the size/height of the tree required, the tree will go most, if not all the way to your knee. Otherwise it will look like a squat ugly bush.

David Carson is coming back y'all. (Not that he ever really went away, also, I hate Sagmeister).

90's Raygun Magazine LIVES!!!! ;-)

You can have it lightened so that you'll have more options for a cover-up, especially if you don't want something super large.

nothing wrong with some shitty DIY brotatz but this is taking it a step too far. Someone needs their fingers broken

Have you considered laser treatments?

Find good reference, tattoo or non tattoo related and try and draw exactly what you see. That's a good starting point. Practice it as often as possible. If your drawing is close but looks off, don't fix it. Redraw it.

I was ready to go for tebori if he mentioned it, but when I got my monmon, there was no mention of it, he was setting up his machines before I even went into his little room. At one point another artist came over to check out what he was doing and Horitomo was showing him this new machine he was using and telling him how good it was. I figure, if he wants to use machines, he should! Tebori would be a cool experience too though. So basically, I am of no help!

Congratulations!

not finishing the tattoo is the cheapest option.

I just had my first tebori session (shading in the hair). I found it hurt less than electric tattooing and it was nice to not hear the buzzing of the tattoo machine. Pleasantly surprised!

"What's the toughest thing I could possibly get, so everyone can see how nails I am?" "I know, A Panther" "Wait, with a fucking dagger through it" Haha, my conversation with my girlfriend before getting my panther was almost verbatim. Tattoo (and photo) by Erik Gillespie, done at Great Lakes Tattoo

I spent the past weekend in waaay upstate NY harvesting herbs, hiking, and roasting a pig on a spit in a cement cistern, with friends/family. Pretty awesome.

You get what you pay for. It's permanent and on your body, how much is that worth to you? Don't skimp. There's probably a reason why your original artist is tough to book with, most likely because s/he is that good and highly sought after. Go original or go home.

That sounds really not cool to me. Stick with the original artist.

You have to love Mark Twain.

I just watched this past season. What a complete waste of time. HOWEVER, I do love watching the l live finale shows because they are so poorly done and the truth of how bad Navarro is at his job is revealed. Also, this show is so incredibly boring that the editing becomes a character.

Big fan of kojiichimaru he was a good find!

I've been thinking about this. Personally, while I like instagram and the access to so many pictures of great tattoos, word of mouth recommendations are key for me, and I think a tattooer would have to be doing something really special for me to want to get tattooed by them solely on the basis of their instagram account. I also realise that I've been getting tattooed for long enough, regularly enough, and geographically broadly enough that the pool of tattooers who I've either seen tattoos from, or heard good things about, or had the chance to meet at a shop or a convention is pretty large, and that this isn't everybody's situation. I think what I like least about instagram is that the volume and nature of it makes tattoos kind of disposable. I think it's pretty much useless for large tattoos because you can't get any meaningful sense of a back or a sleeve on a tiny picture. You can't capture the detail of a large tattoo on a picture that fits on a phone screen, and you can't really get an idea of how the tattoo fits and flows with the body. Small tattoos seem more suited to instagram in this way. The volume though...like what does it mean when you can see dozens (if not more!) really great tattoos every day? Do we get a better appreciation for the tattoos, or is it just that we glance at them for a couple of seconds, hit "like" or not, and then scroll down to the next one? There have been so many times that I've seen something really cool on instagram and I'll think of it days or weeks later and I can't remember who did it and I can't find it again. Whereas there are tattoos in tattoo magazines I have that I remember even though I maybe haven't looked through the magazine in a couple of years. So basically, instagram is a really great tool in a lot of ways, but like everything with the internet, it tells us a lot less than it maybe appears at first.

Really good! @Graeme Well done. Couple of my latest efforts Worked with Jake Arnett on this sheet, In my opinion his paint and tattoo work is so good, It was an honour he wanted to paint a sheet with me. This sheet will be hanging up in my house before to long.

I did! Kind of. I made it to Three Tides in Tokyo where I had a wonder experience all around and ended up with a nice little dragon head by Ganji. [/img]

Uh oh.