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here is some from my trip to the states in September that i haven't posted yet , titty grabber by Hilary Fisher white , Cherub by Jason Ochoa and the witch by Dan Santoro. Ive haven't been on Last Sparrow that often lately but its good to see you guys and girls are still getting sick tattoos. also sorry for the sideways flicks

Here's a pic from my most recent session with Fill Wood @Black Crown Tattoo in Leeds. Instagram We'll be starting colour next time

One of my favourite artists!! Love his work. - - - Updated - - - Holy s**t!! What a difference. What is it with italy and amazing artists?

Franz Stefanik from the Okey Doke in Toronto.

this is my back, done by Russ Abbott, I think right after it was finished, roughly 5 years ago now I think.

I'm not sure if I ever posted a picture of my back when it was finished. Anyway, here it is. (found a better picture)

has this been posted before?

@abees drool! You've got quite the collection there.

My wife cannot stand my tattoos. She likes tattoos just not on me but i am heavily tattooed. She has none and doesn't want any. Thing is, she doesnt resent me for them, loves me for who i am and won't stop me from getting them. In the past i would get chewed out but eventually she just stopped doing that and would act like there was nothing there. I personally don't feel bad about it because a) it's my body b) she knew who she was marrying. She's gained a good amount of weight since we got married 8 years ago and i never mention a thing even though at 39 i am in the best shape of my life. I think that weight gain will affect her health more than tattoos will affect mine in the future.

I'm lucky enough to have a home gym set up and most of my lifting is olympic lifts + deadlifting + some hypertrophy work. One artist that did my full sleeve kept me covered up for 7 days straight in loose fitting clothing and no gym for 7 days. Another just told me to wait a few days and keep the tattoo exposed as much as possible. Like someone mentioned earlier, i think it really depends where the tattoo is located. Hands/feet i would wait just because those are difficult spots to heal on their own let alone with a ton of movement.

Thigh is my least favorite to heal and tattoo...crispy city

You cannot control people's opinions. I went from no tattoos to 5 in the past year. Shoulders and legs, so they are easily hidden. This past summer I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt. A casual friend told me I've changed a lot. I asked what he meant. He stated I didn't think you were the type to get tattoos. I asked him if this was winter and you never saw my tattoos would you say I've changed a lot ? He replied "I guess not " No one at work or any customers/clients know I have tattoos. Appearances do matter. How you dress, how you groom yourself, your tattoos. Look around to decide what your appearance should be and don't just look at your co-workers. Look at the supervisors, managers and bosses. I'm entitled to get tattoos if I want. But I don't expect people to share my point of view or opinion on things. I have a good job that pays well. It affords me to get good tattoos by good artists.

Just got this blaster today by Ron Henry Wells while he's in town at Lombard St. Tattoo. A somewhat new take on his drippy wolf designs - I'm so happy with it! Photo taken by Ron and stolen from his IG - Instagram

Awesome! I just re-watched this tonight because I'm seeing Filip this weekend to finally start colouring in my backpiece with him - finally! Somehow I ended up at this video while gathering my thoughts on colour options. All I can say is, for those who've spent some time with him this is a good representation of his flexible and inquisitive mind, together with his humble nature. I'm always doubly humbled as to how, after a couple of hours with him, you stop thinking of FILIP LEU and he just becomes Filip. It's a special skill I'm sure gathered from years of interacting with people in a certain state (frenetic, groupies, then in long periods of pain etc) but I'm always pleased to interact with his mind and how thoughtful he is about many things. Though we often disagree! I think what makes him a great tattooer, aside from the obvious, is his genuine humility. It always strikes me as something which surely must enable him to learn from the people he meets, and at the risk of sounding cynical & bitter, is what stops over confident young guns from becoming better. I'll keep saying it again and again, the best tattooers are always the ones who'll look you in the eye properly when they shake your hand. Anyway, enough mythologising. If you want some work from him, just ask! I think he's happy to take on work he fancies. Now onto some colour decisions for my back...

Watched it a couple weeks ago, it's great! He and his family are extremely approachable. I was introduced to him by Kurt who has sleeves/back/thighs done by Filip. Was great getting to talk to him, and it was interesting to see the amount of respect and admiration he garnered from other artists at the convention. One artist I spoke to said they were too nervous to go talk to him! Here's a picture I took of the backpiece that @Graeme posted Filip, Loretta and Titine signed a book for me as well!

Got my lemur rose morph yesterday... it's a partial cover up, I'll get another soon with background to cover the rest. Also, the tattooist is going to go over the purple in a darker shade once healing is done in order to fully obscure the design underneath it.

xray vision...of course ;)

I wanted to see it again too :) I love that tattoo.

Any LSTers have this awesome Stewart Robson backpiece I am obsessing on (circa 2011)? I really need to see the finished pics. He's like crack. I can't give him up. I don't want to travel for work anymore buuuuut....

Few hours of shading progress yesterday by Will Lollie at Empire in Asheville.

here is my finished panther and roses tattoo by Jebb Riley, done at Congress St Tattoo in Portsmouth, NH. (finished last friday) I keep forgetting this is actually a coverup. The butt / thigh covers up an originally well done celtic knot that was touched up HORRIFICALLY by another artist after I moved from miami to NY in 1995. Lived with it for almost 20 yrs before covering. Not sad to see it go. Very difficult to photograph as it wraps around my arm and starts at the top of my shoulder, ending below the ditch in my elbow. Jebb did a nice pic stitch so I stole this from his instagram. Still, with the glare, and the bleeding, this pic doesn't even come close to doing justice to it. Started in July of 2013. Panther outlined right before my second and last session on my chest with Chad Koeplinger (he was running late, so why not?). Sessions were spaced very widely apart due to me starting my backpiece with Chad last year. Jebb has been very understanding. Total time on this is about 9.5 hours. Jebb Riley is a super great tattooer and and even nicer dude. Super stoked with how this all came together.

For first timers of the Philly Tattoo Convention... It can be a bit much. Think 800+ tattooers. And pit bull rescue booths with dogs wandering around. And Al Fliction from Stink Master. And Dante from Clerks. And Eddie Munster.

got my hand tattooed by max kuhn yesterday

my back piece by Chris O'Donnell

Finished my back on Friday night (well, Saturday at 5:30 am). It was a hell of a ride - it took almost exactly a year of sessions every 2-3 weeks. We'll do a final session after this heals to tie the bow on it. This tattoo was made by Sean Zee out of Brick, NJ from pictures I've taken while scuba diving. I gave him 50-some pictures and a wish list, and he selected about 15 shots to create this scene. These pics were taken on 4 continents from 1998 through 2013 using (mostly) a Nikonos V underwater camera with an SB-105 strobe, UW Nikkor 35mm, 28mm, and 15mm f2.8 fisheye lenses, Sea & Sea (no relation) macro kit and Nikonos closeup kit. Sean is a great guy, dedicated and amazingly creative. It boggles my mind how artists just "see" stuff like this and make it happen. He put up with a lot of questions and "what ifs" and "why nots" from this nearly virgin canvas (as he likes to say, "this woman only had lil kitty paw prints on her shoulder before this"), explaining to me all the ways this tattoo would NOT work, and ended up just putting it on the table that it really needed to be a full back if I wanted so many references. And to prove it, he designed the whole thing superimposed on a picture of my bare back and emailed it to me. I remember the moment I saw it for the first time and it shorted out my brain. I committed to the full back about 20 minutes after I got the email. (And I admit at the time I did not understand in the least what I was in for...) Kinda funny, thinking back on it, how all the chatter and uncertainty and 14 years of wanting some sort of tattoo with my eagle rays were completely silenced and resolved in a heart beat. Anyway... So, the critters making appearances, starting at the top right and going clockwise are: two moon jellyfish, two Moorish idols, two clownfish and anemone, a batwing coral crab and mustard tube sponges just behind him, a leopard moray eel, two squirrelfish hiding in red sea fans that cross my lower back, a sea snake in lettuce coral (very poisonous, which I didn't realize until after I'd crawled up in his face to take the picture and then been admonished by the divemaster after the picture was developed), a queen angelfish and a hammerhead shark. In the center are two spotted eagle rays and the broken mast of the Nippo Maru, a Japanese supply ship sunk during WWII by US forces in Truk Lagoon, Micronesia. When I look at this, I don't just see a tattoo of fish. It's a diary of my favorite diving experiences. Each part has such different memories of the location, the people I was with, and the experience on that dive. (Yeah, poisonous sea snake. Whoopsie on that one. And the clownfish was actually guarding a little ring of day-old eggs. And trying to photograph moon jellies in a surge without being hit is like playing a 3D video game. And that I really really wanted my spotted moray eels but Sean said the pattern wouldn't age well, so with resigned sadness, my handsome spotted moray had to morph into a leopard moray. Sniff Sniff.) All of this flooding my brain at the same time. And then I get this goofy grin on my face thinking about walking around with this huge awesome back piece that anyone I know would be shocked to learn I have. He put up a little video where you can see the ribs, too: Video of SeeSea's Back. Healed pics coming to an LST contest near you. I want a T-shirt, dammit :D

It's done. We're done. Except for a touch-up and tweaking session after this heals. Did the left ribs from love handle to arm pit (none of which you can see here), detailed the 3 fish on the left, finished up the eagle rays, ship wreck mast and the blue. Right now it's 29 hours after we finished and I'm still trashed. Healing this one is going to be special. But of course, since it didn't show up on his Instagram, all I am left to share is an in-progress pic he posted about 7 hours in! (Which coincidentally was the same time I was complaining over on the "Thread to post while getting tattooed" thread that I was running on fumes.) This is just before the final push to finish the eagle rays, ship wreck mast, blues and highlights in the middle. (Funny enough, at the time, I didn't realize it was also the final push to finish THE WHOLE TATTOO!) We're taking healed shots in a few weeks and I'll post the final results. For now, I'm just gonna curl up on the couch and nurse my tattoo flu.

I wouldn't go poppin' a can of spinach right now... who knows what might happen!?!!

Got my inner forearm tattooed yesterday. 6 hrs spent on it and today it hurts like an absolute beast and my forearm is so swollen that I look like popeye. Bad times. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Carried on to Italy from florian Karg to Silvano Fiato today :) What a true gentlemen and artist! Just came out from his studio. I only went to join the face to my knee but he insisted on working on me for 5 - 6 hours for free including the knee joining. He always thought the first piece I had done by him was very plain and didn't push his skill level and wanted to at least do as much with her as he possibly can. So he reworked her face some, blended it into the new piece, ready for the final piece at the back next year. Personally i liked the previous one but now that he has added more shading and depth I much prefer the new piece. Once the swelling goes down and redness it should look awesome. He went over the house in places to make it darker but he couldn't continue or put any white in her eyes, lips or house as my skin is too raw. He will see it all healed next year and add more to it. To be honest I have had enough of being tattooed, feel really drained and tired. I am going to make my new appointments for late next year and take a year out, I think my body needs it :) He didn't touch the train as he said when this settles and heals it will be the right shade. Personally I love the depth he has given her.

You are assuming that everyone out there has a creative mind and/or appreciates art. It ain't so.