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I've been holding out on posting pics online of my Shaolin backpiece progress. But now the 'blackground' is just about complete and the time felt right to share my progress. This is 5 sessions deep, about 19hrs and we are getting some wicked momentum. Tattoo is being made by Steve Batt in Edmonton, AB. Thank you all for your LST kinship through this experience!

This is my frontpiece by Marius Meyer. We finished it about a year ago. Two sessions and a total of seven hours if I remember correctly.

Had my 4th session on my back with Chad K this past friday at Congress St Tattoo in Portsmouth, NH. I'm sure several have seen these pics already, but I love this thread and wanted to join the fun even if it's not a "full" back piece. Could not be more thrilled with it. I love Chad and I love this tattoo. He thinks only 2 more sessions till we're done! I think it helps that I'm a small guy. Less to color :) Lying down pic was taken by Chad night of, and the standing up pic was taken by my wife the next morning after that dreaded first shower. Lighting is terrible in the second pic, but you get the idea. It's so freaking bull shit that the pics always post sideways. trying to attach link to gallery photo which I think i was able to fix

My Raijin and Kirin by Dave Cummings at PSC, in Montreal. It's all don except for some background to tie in my rock of ages below it. Stokes.

looks good on you... by Matt Dunn, Rabbit's Den, Milltown, NJ about 2 weeks healed - crappy pic fully healed on the other side... by the same artist... also crappy pic - gotta say my pics of my tattoos never do them justice...anyway

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Got the peony on the inside done last night. The color is more like the first picture. That was the last part of the cover up. I have two more appointments to do who knows what. Expand the peony/water theme across the top of my back and around the frog that's back there, and add to the cherry blossoms on the other side, peonies and other flowers and wind bars. Whatever we figure out. He also added a little white around some of the cherry blossoms and outlined the blue peony again in some spots.

It's been a while, but I just recently got back to reading the forum and looking at what other people are posting as far as new work. By way of jumping back in, it seemed like posting what I've been up to since I last participated in this thread is the right way to go. This might be a bit of a long one. Sorry. Sometimes you're in New Orleans. Sometimes you end up with a butterfly. Brent at Uptown Tattoo did this one: Jake Miller from Cathedral Tattoo in Salt Lake did this little ditch guy for me: I did a bit of a run of appointments at Great Lakes Tattoo. Erik did this one: Nick did this one: And Matt did this one on my calf: Javier Rodriguez at LTW in Barcelona made this crazy tiger head for me: John Raftery, who is also at Cathedral in Salt Lake now, did this snake while he was still in New York at Fun City: Ben Haft at Fun City did the tops of both of my thighs with a sinking ship and a rose of no man's land: And finally, Mike Suarez at Hand of Glory in Brooklyn was able to squeeze me in on Saturday and do this on my shin: I picked up a few little bits of filler here and there, too. Next up is getting my left knee done, I think. All of this has really just motivated me to start thinking about back/chestpieces. Further down the rabbit hole.

My current project 2 sessions and 6 hours in as of last night. I'm pretty happy with it so far Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I am training to climb Mt. Rainier at the end of August. It's a three day climb. It's kicking my ass! It is also severely cutting into my forum-browsing and tattoo-getting time, the latter of which is probably the saddest thing.

Thanks for looking. In progress neo-traditionalish Japanese sleeve. Done by Shawn VanOven at the Shamens Den Binghampton NY.

Had my 2nd session with Thomas Hooper yesterday. Mostly dot shading and mostly sat okay for it. Much easier than the line work during our first session.

Technically everything you have personally consumed or been near is now linked to cancer. It is an extremely unfortunate situation and I'm sorry you are going through it. Also it is a lovely tattoo and the scar will only add to it's beauty.

Just booked the final session on my back! March 18th to clean everything up, add more black and detail it out. Several places along my ribs and (UGH) love handles the blue color fell out. I have a problem with some lighter blues. Ironic this is an underwater tattoo, right?

Got a call from King's Avenue today to fill a cancellation for this Saturday, so I'm actually sitting with Grez the this weekend and next to keep chippin away at my arm. I haven't really posted many pictures yet, but after Saturday the 14th, I may end up posting a few.

Update: Hey, guys. I just wanted to thank you for your advice. Yall's words of encouragement were in my head before I lied down. I don't recall any endorphins kicking in, mostly sucked the whole time, haha. My body shook the entire time and I cried about three times, but he got the outline done in 3 and a half hours and I'm still alive and excited about my next session! Scales and shading in the clouds are next. Hopefully I'll be able to push through it. [/img]

I did much research before deciding to do my coverup. After watching television shows showing what could be done, it was encouraging while at the same time, you don't want to trust just anyone. As great as the internet is, I have seem far too many bad cover ups although many were simply amazing. My first attempt at research was disheartening as after asking several shops, I simply got too much conflicting information, people simply too eager for business, or simply my gut telling me something wasn't right. Finally I saw some coverup work on a tv show mentioning an artist from Dallas. After a quick search I found that he was a few miles from my house. At this point I went to his shop, but he was on the road. Talking to the shop manager and explaining my situation, I mentioned that if possible I would like to do a Captain America tattoo. Once I said that, I was quickly able to set up an appointment with the owner/artist. Although very high in demand, apparently if you are wanting something that they want to do as well, I have found that artists can shift schedules if there is a type of tattoo that they want to do. Fortunately for me, I later found that the artist was a much bigger superhero fan than myself. Over the next month, I spent wakeless nights admiring his work and many of the comic stuff he has done and spend many hours downloading comic images trying to conceptualize what would work for the coverup. My consultation finally came and after asking me what I wanted, I kind of hesitated with questions as to what my limitations were. His response was, not to worry about it, just tell him what I wanted and he would make it happen. So, I gave him my top 3 comics. We set an appointment and I left trusting him to come up with something. It was kind of crazy committing to something without knowing what exactly I was going to get until I showed up, but I trusted my instincts and research. I was straight up blown away with the results and feel I learned quite a bit along the way. - Older tattoos are better candidates for coverups than relatively new ones - Non-recognizable shapes are easier to cover than geometric shapes I don't know why some artists try to just go for the simple black out with no detail, like a panther head. You do not necessarily need to go darker for coverups, blues rock! - You should anticipate going at least 2x the original size. Bigger is better - Detail will help draw attention away from the orginal tattoo, so some slight detail show through - At least for me, the skin where the old tattoo was scarred and bleed a bit more than fresh skin. These area scanned more. Anyway, if anyone has any questions, shoot away. PS.. I was still a little bloody on the yellow lines, but you get the results.

@marley mission that is dope man. Kudos on the new piece.

Steve's vision was to keep the background heavy and simple to really draw the focus in on the monk. I've got so much colour and wild shit going on all over my front that the simplicity and blackness on the backside balances my suit and really ties everything on my body into it. Visually, its pretty intense to have that much black gradient covering the area. Lots of water, rocks already on the arms (Steve did the R side in 2006, Miles Kanne did the L in 2007) and on my legs (by OllieXXX, Casper, Shawn Oconnor) which he capitalized on and the clouds and horizon lines along the top half all blended together better than I anticipated. It was an interesting challenge though to make my limbs made by different tattooers over several years all blend and look cohesive The rise and fall of the waves and motion of the water on the butt crack and cheeks is one of my favourite parts of this piece. Thanks for the kind words and likes LST budz :) - - - Updated - - - I think for a typical full back the scale might be slightly bigger, but we were limited to a narrower canvas for the design since I already had existing pieces on my ribs. So the monk got scaled back a bit to allow for a more cohesive, fuller blackground. I think the scale/perspective works great with the surrounding works, but most importantly fits my frame.

once more into the ring... by Matt Dunn Rabbit's Den Milltown NJ 6 hours on da ribs reference art by David O'Keefe not the best pic - about 2 weeks healed edit: i think this pic is showing sideways - i made the change and you can see it rightside up if you tap the pic again - anyways...cheers

That this particular brand of ink is linked to cancer.

no biker backpieces! tattoo that bum! ;)

You know they won't give you ^ two shirts, right? :D

Inconceivable. If there's one thing I have learned at Last Sparrow it's that every tattoo has to have a meaning.

So sorry for the delay folks!! Been super busy these last few days, and the contest totally slipped my mind. Anyway..... The winner of Tattoo of the month February 2015 is my Norwegian buddy @Kai Eirik Espedal with this amazing dragon back piece by Marius Meyer. Congratulations Kai!! I look forward to checking it out in person some day soon. Please PM @steve1461686340 with your shirt info (size and male or female) along with your address. New contest will be up shortly!

Here's a teaser. All the linework on my left leg is complete, and some of the dots/shading - but quite a bit of both remain. I've got another 10-12 hrs booked for April and June - so I'm hoping by end of summer I'll have a completed and healed half squid pant. - - - Updated - - - Whoa. Sorry about the huge photo.

Because it perpetuates misinformation and incorrect perceptions. If you don't understand why that is inappropriate then you are in the wrong place.

The latest addition to my Simpsons in Space leg sleeve. Work was done by Rev. J.R. out of Vicious Ink in Rochester Hills Michigan.

Booked all the tickets for my next trip yesterday. Flying to Barcelona since it was cheap, taking the bus the next evening to Toulouse to get tattooed by Guy Le Tatooer, meet up with two friends and have a good time. Two days later I take a long bus ride up to London where I spend one day before finally getting on the last bus that will take me to Edinburgh. On the sunday my backpiece gets finished by Iain and Rudy and on the monday I fly back to Stockholm. I get to hang out with my girlfriend for a few hours before getting on the night train to spend easter with family and relatives in the very north of sweden (above the polar circle). When I get back to civilized parts of Europe again I am moving in with my girlfriend, in her apartment in the city center. Spring looks like happy times. Edit: actually this was not something awesome that I did. I did however plan and book the trip and me and the girl did decide that we want to live together. That's pretty awesome.

Tattoos are permanent. That's the whole point. If you can't handle the commitment, the no-turning-back, maybe you should reassess why the hell you are getting tattoos. They aren't for everybody. While I applaud the scientific development of no-laser-pain-free removal, I worry about how a low cost easy-removal-remedy will trivialize and water down the tattoo culture and make tattoo even more accessible than I believe it should be. Kitchen tattoo party mistake? Sexy 90s lower back tattoo got you down? Tribal armband not so cool anymore? No worries! Rub the snake oil on and goodbye bad decision! Maybe this product will be a good thing though. Allow serious tattoo folks to delete some of those not-so-awesome tattoos and upgrade with nicer work. And then we can all have the perfect "collection" :/ I say learn from your mistakes, blast over and get more. I don't think I will be re-writing pages in my colouring book anytime soon. Even my scrappiest of tattoos I still love and actually love them more for the imperfections as they/I age. On the other hand, this PhDude is about to patent a goldmine. So go and get your tattooed lumberjack look and tea-cup tattoos, the future is now!

I would tell her to go slow so she doesn't end up with lots of garbage on her by 19. No text, no 25 lines of poetry/ prose/ stories/ song quotes etc. No neck or hand tattoos. Who knows if we will even cross that bridge My little girl rubs my arms its very funny that she is noticing that they are different and doesn't get why it doesn't come off.

Haha, I know @OutOfIdeas, still fun to compete!

That's the same day I go in for my second session for my sleeve :D

@bongsau, Dude that is awesome! I am super excited... My back piece is now officially going to be a full back piece instead of half :D

My friend, Jay Ryan, does some screen printing workshops at his studio in Chicago (the bird machine) and my wife and i went up last year for a weekend visit. We were lucky enough to get to do it on the same weekend when he had a show opening at Rotofugi of his paintings. Also, Aaron Horkey was Jay's special guest at the workshop and the print we made was a collab between the two of them. It was very awesome to be able to learn the screen printing process, watch Jay and Aaron cut rubylith, and take turns with 8 other workshop students manually pulling the screens and working a semi-automatic press. The print is titled, "Ouroburos".

Nepok, How are you hanging? I hope well. My co-worker had the same reaction to red. Her body eventually rejected the ink completely and healed without no red in it. She is now looking to do a cover up. Keep up with your moisturizer and your doc. Take care and good luck. Edit: Old thread revived by bump... :)

Or better yet. Go to a shop and look at the flash/paintings on the walls.

The internet is kind of a shitty place to find tattoo design references. I would recommending buying some tattoo books instead, and then consulting a tattoo artist when you have an idea of what you want. Check out the "Tattoo Designs, Books and Flash" subform here. Here's a recent thread that might be helpful: http://www.lastsparrowtattoo.com/forum/tattoo-designs-books-flash/5944-post-your-book-collection.html

My consultation is in a week! I can barely contain my excitement and nervousness. I am really fucking nervous. I am a total wuss about getting tattooed, this is going to hurt :(

Thanks for the warm welcome! :) Yes, I know Tattoo Nouveau, about a decade ago I got my chestpiece done there by Chriss Dettmer before he opened his own shop. Since then I hadn't been there, but remember that the overall quality there is superb! I work at Jungbluth Tattoo in Hamburg under the wing of Luis Bruna. Sadly, there are pics on the homepage I'm not proud of, most of them were taken months ago. The guy who takes care of the page isn't the fastest one :rolleyes:

Thought it was time to bump a positive thread back to the top. I'm reluctant to say that I've learned anything from tattoos yet, but one thing I did notice is that old Asian art is suddenly a lot more interesting. Previously I would've found something like Chinese silk paintings beautiful but not viscerally exciting - which I think also has something to do with the way it's often presented in museums. I've hardly been to a large number of art museums worldwide, but in the US it seems like the Asian art wing's often hushed, dimly lit and under-trafficked - like, the part of the museum you walk through or past in order to get to the Picassos. But the link to tattooing has suddenly made me really excited to look at things like cast-bronze deities, or Japanese board game designs (there's a whole room of them at the MFA that's fantastic). That's due to looking at the Perseverance catalog and the tattoos that posters on here are making or getting. I hope this doesn't come across as patronizing! - - - Updated - - - Rereading this thread, I just realized that Pugilist said virtually the same thing in her first post - durr! So I guess this is a longwinded way of saying, me too.

Welcome from a fellow kiwi. Good luck for the results, I hope everything is OK.

Awesome pic! Oh, I can't wait. This will be me sometime in the future. Consult in April!

Pic of me getting worked over by Horitomo if anyone is interested. https://instagram.com/p/zjCmORIcF9/?modal=true

By Brian Via, about 4 hours. Definitely my easiest tattoo thus far, and yet also somehow my most bad ass. :D

I still believe the most effective method of tattoo removal is the belt sander...

Agreed. One of the things I've always loved about tattoos is that they require commitment. Its not something one can just walk away from. Even with lasers being an option, they are still expensive and painful. I respect folks who've gone the laser and replace route. Its still a hard process that also demands commitment. If all it takes is a bit of creme and a few weeks, then it really opens the field up to anyone. Is that all bad? Probably not. It might mean a lot more work for tattooers, which would be good. That said, I can't help but think something is (potentially) being lost. From another angle - how does it affect me? I'm still thinking this through. I'll still be getting tattooed. I love the art, and I love the process. I enjoy the shops, the conversation, and the people Ive met along the way. So, I'll keep on doing what I do. Of course, maybe this is all bunk and it will never arrive on the shelves of Wallgreens (or Shoppers for my Canadian colleagues here).

Yeah man It is worrisome what these advances will do...so if tattoos aren't permanent anymore and the tattooer/client has a magic (and cost-effective) "undo" button I wonder how the trendline for workmanship and quality will be affected? Getting a dumb-dumb stick n poke or joke tattoo really isn't that big a deal anymore, in fact it's pretty common at the moment. I guess that's my issue - tattoos, to me, have always been permanent. That is the best part. They are forever. and if we keep making things easier and painless to undo it will really trivialize the whole experience. Kinda like marriage I guess. Just too easy these days to get married and divorce when you find something better or have a change of heart. I dunno. That being said, my tattooer was telling me about one of his pals. Had a bunch of coverage and so-so early work, lasered it off, got a new suit, lasered it off and is getting a new world-class suit from a master. Three bodysuits, insane! I would be interested to see what some of the tattooers around LST think about the development of these products. Maybe it's a good thing and has it's place. Everyone (well almost everyone) deserves an awesome tattoo and something like this may make that more of a reality for people who truly want some real-deal tattooing.

Yes. Artist says allergic reaction to something in the ink. Dermatologist agrees. - - - Updated - - - Coconut oil is no miracle of any kind. Its a moisturizer, anti bacterial, non pore clogger.