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No it isn't! I picked up this hoju from Ishmael Johnson at the Montreal convention yesterday. I wasn't intending to get tattooed this weekend, but I've been really into Ishmael's tattoos for a while now, and he had availability, I had a strange spot on my arm, so why not get tattooed by him instead of just liking his pictures on instagram like a chump? It was fun times. I'll post better pictures when healed.

Yeah, going all three days is EXHAUSTING. It was really a lot of fun though, got a great tattoo, saw a lot of great tattoos, showed my butt to people I hold in very high esteem, hung out with friends, made new friends, and all around had a great time. It's weekends like these that make me feel really fortunate to have a part, however small, in this crazy tattoo thing. Here's a picture from our LST brunch meetup on Saturday: I've probably said it before, and I'm sure I'll say it again, but y'all are a great bunch of people: smart, funny, interesting, fun to hang out with. I'm proud to call you friends.

Too excited about how cool this looks to not share it. Please excuse the redness and peeling. This was the progress from my second session with Henning. About 11.5 hours total now. One more short session needed to color the tiger and the last few leaves.

My never-ending front piece by Tomo...

I got this urn from Ron Henry Wells at the Montreal Convention (I can't get these pics to be upright, but you get the idea):

@BrianH - you saw his butt. You're now either friends or enemies.

@Graeme I'm not ready to commit to friendship. Can we just be casual acquaintances?

I love that, @cookietruck. So rad that you got an Irons design from Bob, too. I got this from Ben Grillo yesterday: He applied it with a single needle and a shoehorn. The photo does it no justice; this is far and away my most detailed tattoo. I can wait to see it healed.

I had an absolutely AMAZING time in Montreal this past weekend, as did my wife! Thank you so much to @Graeme, @Pugilist, @Shaun1105, @BrianH (and Taylor) and @mitslam for a great brunch and great conversations. I was on zero sleep due to a bit of insomnia and some hard partying neighbors in our hotel. Going into a back session with Chad was terrifying under these circumstances, but Graeme, Anna, and Shaun kept me calm and relaxed! Thank you so much!!! I CANNOT wait till next year and plan on staying a few extra days next time. Thanks again guys. Great memories and talking with you all felt like hanging with old friends. It truly did. @Graeme, @Pugilist, @Shaun1105, and @BrianH scored some amazing work, which i believe has been posted in the latest tattoo thread. GREAT TIMES!!! Rob btw- @Graeme, @Pugilist, and

Here's my Valerie eagle

"

got an old man tattoo from an old dude.

My peony I got from Glennie at the Pearl Harbor Gift Shop yesterday. It is really fn hard to take a picture of the back of your arm. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

How'd it go, @TrixieFaux? Haha. So this weekend I finally put something on one of my arms, and then promptly went out and bought a couple of very light blazers/cardigans to cover my upper arms in warm weather. Our workplace has very inconsistent AC, so warmer months will definitely be tricky. It's funny how over the weekend half of my work tops suddenly became a problem... It also makes me laugh to think how all of my students always seem so proud to show off their tattoos, but I spend so much energy covering mine up! Ah, to be young again... :) Anyway, I have a couple of male colleagues who wear suits every day, year round, which is something that I have always found baffling about male dress (how do you DO this and not melt?) So I figure I should survive needing to wear shirts that go down to my elbows.

@exume You for sure should! He's really nice and he's doing really great tattoos. He has a lot of amazing tattoos on him as well, including one of the best panthers I've ever seen. Dave Lum did that one.

This one's my favorite: "

Got this from Rich Hardy. Zeis redo from the 50s.

here's my tattoo from cole dunn that i got today at the meeting of the marked. hard to get it all in one shot because it's caps my shoulder off pretty good but you get the idea.

Hey! I've been thinking about this for a while, I bet there are more LST-members on https://www.couchsurfing.org Let us link together and help each other out! Good for finding sleeping spots and company when visiting other cities for conventions or getting tattooed. Great idea? Yes. Here's my profile: https://www.couchsurfing.org/profile.html?id=5HBY048N0 I'm in Stockholm, Sweden. Also made a group for us that we can join and find each other easily: https://www.couchsurfing.org/group.html?gid=95733

It was super nice to see you guys, and I am sure you will be a master yogi in no time. :)

I basically have the eagle off the mexican flag tattooed on me, but I imagine you could do a lot of fun things with golden eagles and even Hawks. - - - Updated - - - Ashley has a few of these hawks designs drawn up, this one someone is doing on their rib.

@keepcalm is a perfectly reasonable person in real life. Albeit, that dire wolf she keeps by her side bites pretty hard.

Now I finally understand your username.

Badass!!!!

You need to be confident in the imagery you choose for something as powerful as a backpiece IMO. The tattoo will give strength because of that personal connection to the imagery or it may end up making you feel uncomfortable and awkward after the novelty wears off. I think it is great that you are having this dialogue - on this forum - but more importantly with yourself. You need to listen to yourself if you are feeling conflict about the idea, because that conflict could become greater when you are in the midst of the project. To relate to my own experience. I am about to start my backpiece journey. We are doing something chinese themed, I've been training kung fu for a decade and have many experiences to compliment the image we are choosing to work with. I feel it represents my passion, loyalty and devotion - to both my kung fu discipleship and my commitment to tattoo. On the contrary I have a new student at my school. Super nice guy with a fresh looking dragon sleeve, some very nice work. He told me he is starting his backpiece of Guan Yu (sic). We were suspicious of him understanding Guan Yu's history or the weight of having a tattoo of the chinese diety "God of War" on his back after training kung fu for only 1 month. After all he called him a warrior-guy-with-a-guan-do-blade. But in the end it it is his journey and his tattoo he has chosen to wear. And the sketch he showed me looks great, going to be an awesome tattoo. So you can either "own it" and live, breathe the tattoo, aspire to the imagery or you can just have cool wallpaper art on your back. I think both trains of thought are ok, but *you* need to be ok with it. And the tattooer needs to agree to put it on you in the first place. Sometimes a tattoo, is just a tattoo. But for something big and bold on your back, well I for one just don't want any old tattoo, I want something powerful with a personal connection. I stumbled on some excellent info re: japanese style tattooing on Clark North's website. There is some excellent insight here on wearing a big powerful tattoo image that I think can be extrapolated beyond the japanese style and about tattooing in general. THE JAPANESE STYLE TATTOO EXPLAINED - Clark North Tattoo & Art - Las Vegas

I was getting excited reading the young tattooers post, but it only takes one Henning piece for me to remember the some of the best advice about getting tattooed. Don't ever get tattooed by people under 40. Obviously not literally, but to see how someone has perfected his craft over decades, it doesn't get much better.

Finally finished my left knee ditch, drawn on. Right knee ditch healed, from the Black Heart line book on Walk-In Sundays. Both done by Jeff Rassier at Black Heart in San Francisco, CA.

@Graeme I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE. We all know homey doesn't work in a shop.

Why not ask some of the more experienced tattooers at the shop you work at for drawing tips and advice?

Something postitive from my side... I work at the national air traffic control center in Switzerland, as an Aeronautical Information Management Controller. Sounds pretty uptight, right? I had some doubts if tattooing my arms would be a no-no. However when I learned that they hired a girl with neck tattoos, I went for it. Here's the exchange from a superior several management layers above me: Her: New tattoo? Me: Yes Her: Ooooooh show me! Me *shows outlines of Oldschool Pirate Girl and Ship Halfsleeve* Her: Wow thats beautiful! But you get it colored in, right? Me: Sure I do Her: Cool you have to show me immediately then End of story. Also, several coworkers who have expressed prejudice against tattooed people actually admire mine. Work relationship has not changed in the slightest, but instead even improved. A lot of coworkers now come to me for recommendations. Nice talks ensue.

Instagram does nice b&g realistic work. Instagram does both color & b&g realism.

start of something cheesey... to go with something corny... :p

@Graeme that's awesome! I need to get up to FoCo sometime and start something with Ish. Thanks @bulldog, stoked to keep working on it

Great description. It feels like my back has been waiting years to get this piece done, and it's finally getting its way.

Thank you to everyone for your input - I think everyone had a really really valid viewpoint. One thing I did forget to mention - The goal of my collection is to display the caliber of tattooing in Southern California - via my favorite artists - the majority of which happen to be past or present Tattooland artists or loosely affiliated with the shop or the Beatniks. I have a little work from Jack Rudy, and when my torso is done, I hope to have work from Ben Grillo, Corey Miller, Espi, Lil Roy, Chuey, Robert Atkinson, and Tim Hendricks. I think that a Chris Brand backpiece would be a perfect compliment to the collection. Based on the input....I think I'm leaning towards going for it

Henning is a master. That is perfect, @BrianH. Congrats!

@Jackrabbitt666 You have your location set as London, if that's the case phone Frith Street and book an appointment no?! You may have to wait a few months, no more than three I would imagine, maybe not. Keep an eye on the FST twitter. I got a cancellation spot and ended up with an awesome hand sized mermaid/seahorse combo the same day I enquired. I have never found it as hard to get an appointment anywhere as people make out on twitter/facebook/instagram (side note - if you are using these as your means to book an appointment, that's your problem - pick up a phone) Hope you get your tattoo! Eagle and skull, what's not to love!!

What an interesting question. Are you trying to identify a murderer? Is this the only photo of the top-secret russian super spy-assasin who killed the Malaysian prime minister? Hmmmmm?

So far, for the first 4 weeks at my new school I have kept covered up with long pants and long sleeve shirts...even on these 90-100 degree days. I do have working A/C in my classroom so it only gets hot outside. Well, I got some cropped pants yesterday that show the bottom of the monmon cat tail and I'm going to wear them tomorrow. Yeah! Livin' on the edge!

Corbin, Deutsche, Leu, Mike the Athens, Luke Atkinson, Rubendall, Maurico Teodoro, Garver, Jack Rudy, Brad Fink, Horitomo...... - are someone this forum getting tattooed by one of these??

With a process as important as getting a piece of artwork permanently drilled into your skin, how could you NOT use a professional tattoo designer?? Online of course. Face to face interaction is so last generation

Back to kinda where it all started for us hey KBee. I think when we all make that decision we're going heavy, we think we must put a lot of energy into it, over thinking, complicating it, when the only complicated part is really being steered in the right direction, then it all just falls in place. I love that. Just doing it easy, enjoying the experience again, the vibe, the smell, the sound. On that, how could one sit in a shop with all rotary machines working? The silence wouldn't seem right.

When my best friends husband died unexpectedly she asked if I would get a matching tattoo with her to honor him. I said, "Absolutely!" It was supposed to be a grasshopper on our right foot. We searched for hours until she found the image she wanted. About a half an hour before we were to go to the shop she pulled a T-Shirt out of the drawer, paused, held it to her chest and starting crying. She looked over at me, held up the shirt and said, "I changed my mind. I want to do this instead." It was his phrase, he said it all the time 'It's all good'. I never wanted any writing or anything like this but now it is on my foot and I don't regret it for a moment. Truth be told, at the time, I would have had 'Live, Love, Laugh' tattooed on my forehead if it meant relieving her grief for one second. That same friend was diagnosed with cancer in May. When she told me about it I took a sharpie and drew a line through 'It's all good' and wrote 'Fuck cancer' snapped a pic and text it to her. She responded, "Tee hee. No no mama put it on the other foot. I don't have time to die." She had her last radiation and chemo treatments yesterday and the tumors have already shrunk over 90%. The moral of this long post, sometimes tattoos are just tattoos and sometimes they connect us to those who help us walk through the darkest shit in life. Sometimes a bad tattoo can turn out to be your favorite. Lest we not judge what we don't know.

So not been on here for a while but I have finally had the 3rd session on my back after a short break... I went on holiday. It definitely felt like we hit quite a lot this time round but it might just be that we were moving a little bit all over. So to add to the conversation going on above I definitely prefer to gradually work from one area to another rather than jumping all around. Suddenly moving to a new spot really sucks. Anyway this is how the progress is looking.

Got this started last Wednesday by Mike Stockings, he was guesting at Black Garden Tattoo in London. Few more sessions to go and other bits and pieces to add! Super happy with how it's started.

The winner of Tattoo of the Month August is @KBeee for this beautiful tattoo by Paul Anthony Dobleman. Congrats!! Please PM @steve1461686340 with your shirt info (size and male or female) along with your address. New contest will be up shortly!

Bethenny, if you really want your back done then do it. We all might whinge about how bad a backpiece can be while getting but i promise that all who have finished a backpiece would do it again. I myself am about 1/2 way through mine and although it sucks getting the work and healing it the satisfaction of seeing perhaps the biggest piece of art you can do on your body is awesome. I dont look forward to my fortnightly sessions but once they are done I cannot wait to get home and see the progress. The end result is well and truely worth it. Btw @Cork love the work, great detail and colours. I wish I was that far advanced with mine. - - - Updated - - - This fortnights update. Most of work was done on right side arse cheek and thigh but shows how he merged the original 3/4 sleeve into the backpiece.

Was told I might fit in over here. Back piece done by Josh Damnit Classic Tattoo Upland CA. Took about a year and a half (slow and steady). Couldn't be happier with it. Tribute to cousin who passed.

Started this little guy with Chad today at Lifetime Tattoo in Denver pic stolen from his instagram