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@Mark Bee you can't seem to go wrong at The Pearl! Love seeing your already impressive collection grow. - - - Updated - - - I can't believe I haven't posted these here! I got my butt snake colored in at the beg of feb. Basically I got home from my tattoo trip, and my dog had a big sudden health issue that had to be dealt with STAT! So I didn't even think about it. Pics attached. I'm booked for more at the beg of Apr too!

Some more pics!

so today on Kauai we participated in the dog field trip program with the Kauai Humane Society today,they let you take a dog out for the day with an "adopt me" vest on and they supply leash/water/water bowl/treats/potty bags and we took her on a hike and to the beach all day today,her name is Jillian,what a cutie. we had a totally great day with her. It gives the dog a chance to get out of the kennel for the day and it exposes them to more potential adopters. Shelter Dogs on Field Trips | Kauai Humane Society . . .

Met with Carlos Torres in Paris after the convention to finish this little side piece. Fuck me this did really really hurt!

Got an appointment with Johan Svahn, a guest artist at Kings Ave during May. He'll be extending my sleeve to the forearm with a snake wrapping around. so stoked Here's one of his snakes: https://instagram.com/p/uu-GA7EC5r/?modal=true

Bowling pin eagle.

Contain the excitement pre tattoo? Hi all, My name is Nina and I'm so happy to fianlly be here. I'm a bit of a weirdo, so I've been planing my double 3/4 sleeve tattoos for about 23 years now. Sounds extreme but that's how I roll :). Actually, I have (with much pain) purposefully kept virgin skin for THIS one endeavor. Unfortunately severe health issues took over my 20's, paying off said medical bills took over my 30's. So now at 43, I have the health, time and money for a great artists. My first sitting is April 10th and I can hardly concentrate on ANYthing else. I am obsessed now that MY time is finally here. Lucky me! Any ways, thanks for listening to my newbie babble.

Session #6, 3.5 hrs, 22.5 hours total. Completed the blackground yesterday on my Shaolin backpiece after a really intense session. This was the heaviest session in my 12 years of getting tattooed. Inside the crack and underneath the butt cheeks, down the back and insides of the thigh. All the way. It really comes down to mind over matter. The pain was very sharp and the skin is very different in that nether region thus a spectacular array of sensations. But moreso it really messes with your mind to get tattooing in that very private and sensitive area, doing your best to be loose (not too loose, wink wink haha) and relaxed while your mind is frozen at what your body is undergoing. I'm still feeling mentally scrambled the day after. Unbelievable experience, some very serious tattooing. You really have to let your inhibitions go and have full trust in the tattooer. Steve really helped me push through and said I did really well with the sit. Really learned a lot about myself through the vulnerability of this session. I was chewing down on a towel for the last 30 minutes. But I did it. Exhausted and spaced out afterwards and now I've got this swollen black ass, shit-my-pants shuffle walk happening, at least for a few days. All the way! me-"I can do this" steve-"You are doing it man!" me-"I'm doing this!" steve-"You did it!" I've been sitting fairly regularly so I'm going to take it easy for a bit to heal and re-calibrate. Off to Jamaica in April to relax as my alter-ego Ras Colouring Book on the beach. Then a couple sessions in May to blast in all the colour and patterns and saturate some of the black again. This was a milestone tattoo session for me as well. I hit my 201st hour of total tattooing on my body over a 12 year period. I'm wearing a full body of tattoos now, all pieces new and old interconnected neck to ankle. But I left a few choice silver-dollar sized spots to tuck in a few mini collector tattoos ;) And the Ramones kicked on as I crossed the 200th hour marker...

Who is this "shige"?

i flew out to london over the weekend and rich hardy did the second session on my back :)

Inspired by Bradley Tompkins' BRIGHT_AND_BOLD takeover, I decided to make an account that features good, healed and settled in tattoos. It's really niche I guess, but I have always enjoyed seeing tattoos that have been lived in, and I'm sure there's a few others out there like me. I am also hoping to maybe get some enthusiasts to do takeovers and show off a few of their tattoos, accompanied by stories about their experiences getting them. The account is called "Lived in Tattoos" (@livedintattoos). Check it out!

http://www.lastsparrowtattoo.com/forum/tattoo-after-care/32-best-post-tattoo-care.html

lol i've been getting so hooked since then. i still revisit that one too to look through all the artist suggestions again. im glad i found this forum - mad helpful community

Really bold, traditional roses

Biomech rip-out.

Another session down with Grez on my arm. We finished up shading the eagle and added some brown into his body, as well as finished a bunch of clouds on my upper arm. I'm going back Saturday and I assume we'll move into more of the lower arm. Making some good progress. Once it gets to a solid point I'll post some pics. Pretty soon.

@bongsau YOW! that's gonna hurt. An ass-crack milestone though! Guess who's scheduled with Shad @ Diamond Club at the beg of April?! Super stoked to start my back! Well, I'm not starting it. I'm starting the as yet untouched side! I think there will be more butt outlining, too :/ and also possibly some outline on my leg?! In any event, looking forward to showing you all my butt again. <3 ;)

I know she's been mentioned before but I think Kim-Anh Nguyen (https://instagram.com/kimanh_n/) deserves a little more exposure. She works out of Seven Seas Tattoos in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Here's a couple I stole from her facebook (https://www.facebook.com/bleakandblue):

My advice might not be what you want to hear. But the best thing you can do now is to put it off. Give it a few more years. And I don't mean ponder and think about it for a few years, I mean put it out of your mind. Live, experience, and enjoy life then come back to it when you are 24-25. Nothing, absolutely nothing, will give you the insight that that experience and time will give you. You'll be a much more complete person and, hopefully, won't need to turn to an internet forum for advice on your tattoo. At that point there'll be no hesitation if it is still something you want and you'll be ready for it. In all honesty, you're 19 - you will change sooooooooooo much in the next 5-6 years. Trust me, wait it out. Edit: Also, welcome lol

Finally got around to taking decent pics. Sorry if this is posted in the wrong section.

@peterpoose, Thats just plain awesome.

Awesome and wish me luck people. Just applied on becoming an Adjunct (Part-Time) College Professor. Hoping things work out so I can quit my current job and focus on getting my MBA degree.

Feel free to bump an old thread if it's covering a subject that you want to further discuss. No harm in that @xcom!

This last time I used redemption for the first 3 days, then switched to lubriderm once peeling started. I was completely peeled and heeled by the start of day 9. I have found the key to any of the aftercare products is to make sure there is no excess on your skin. Once applied, I lightly dab any access ointment or plasma oozing off with a cotton cloth.

I already posted mine but here it is one more time if anyone is interested. Mostly my attempts at doing spitshaded art. https://instagram.com/flash_paints/

That is absolutely beautiful.

She has the sweetest face.

Next time for sure!

I hit up Mighty Quinn's barbecue this weekend right near KA (and Adorned, Invisible, etc). The sides were kinda hit or miss, but damned if all of the smoked meats we had weren't awesome. And, on top of it, the people were some of the most friendly I've encountered working in Manhattan. Haha. Highly recommended. Mighty Quinn's Barbeque

A lot of people have good stuff coming up. Can't say I'm jealous of @bongsau though! I'm excited to have another appointment with Grez coming up this weekend. Really glad to be making some serious progress on a lot of the black shading/grey clouds, so it's starting to come to life a bit.

Mind = blown No words to describe the power in this tattoo. Really iconic american traditional symbolism.

So awesome @beez

Beez ... can you make it slither by clenching?

Butt snakes unite! @beez

i flew out to london over the weekend and got this from lee knight:

I'm getting the underside of my ass cheeks tattooed tomorrow. So yeah that should be interesting, like not in an erotic "shades of grey" interesting way (note, there will be many shades of grey) ibut more of a WTF this is dumb is this really necessary? Uh, onward with the bodysuit quest! Also, I'm at 197.5 hrs according to my tattoo spreadsheet...which means hitting the ass crack as I bust the 200hr milestone tomorrow hurrah! feeling pretty excited though, really, truly. Can't wait to burn my shirt in a firepit this summer. Cause I won't be needing that shit anymore! :cool:

The butt. I hateee getting my ass and the little area between ass and thigh tattooed. That can all just go to hell.

I have a 2 year old high energy german shepherd and while I'm no dog trainer (not even close), I've been teaching her some fun things to keep life interesting in -25 weather. Also to help relieve my guilt over long work weeks, ha. We hike daily in the middle of nowhere. All my previous dogs have been rottweilers, so all new fun over here. We've been working on scent detection, hiding something the day before and retrieving it the next day on our hike, tracking followed by sit-stay, and random fun. All our hikes are mostly off leash, so obviously before we ventured to the harder stuff we had her basic off leash commands down (come, sit, heel, watch, stay, leave it, etc). Totally neat to see her react to scent and tracking in various temperatures and weather conditions. It's all I mostly post on IG, so apologies to anyone who started following me expecting tattoo related stuff. My lunatic.

Well reporting back that this is an awesome lotion. Hands down the best I used so far.

Yeah! It was so great being tattooed by Chad! I had a lot of fun! Looking forward to the next session!

Oooh, very cool! We share some tastes in fiction, then! Campbell's is an interesting voice. It's not as bleak or subtle as Ligotti, and it isn't as poetic as Barron. Calling him a contemporary horror author feels like stretching things to me...he's been writing for over fifty years. I'm having trouble remembering where I started with him, but I do know that I started with his short fiction, which I remember preferring to his longer works. It might have been Dark Companions, or possibly Alone With the Horrors: The Great Short Fiction of Ramsey Campbell. I suspect it was probably the latter, but I dunno. I'll have to go back through and read some to refresh my memory. His prose is solid, but what impressed me most about him, when I was blitzing through his stuff, is that he's able to capture the unreliable reality of a descent into madness and paranoia better than anyone else I have ever read. I suppose The Face That Must Die is probably the standout example, though it is a novel. Campbell's mother was schizophrenic and suffered from paranoid delusions. The intimacy with which he depicts characters who slowly lose touch with reality is really something; it lures you along with them gradually enough that you follow the leaps of strange logic that the character makes, and all of it makes total sense...only it's a false kind of sense. Still, it makes the lapse of sanity seem understandable. You get how they got there. I prefer Barron and Ligotti and Ballingrud for the most part because I love lyrical writing, but Campbell is an old master for sure. I had to laugh, because 'funny dead English people' is probably actually a huge genre of its own. Not a narrow field, haha. Er, something modern and in that general direction...Jonathan Strange & Mister Norrell, maybe? As for my jerb, well...I'm writing a book. Trying. I call it a profession because I'm doing it every day to the exclusion of all else, but it feels a bit cart-before-the-horse until somebody buys the thing from me. Still, though! A good reason to wallow in genre fiction. edit: I almost forgot to ask -- what about you? I think I might lose my mind if I had a mandatory reading list that I didn't create myself.

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.

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

If you're lying on your side and being blasted, it's amazing how just placing a pillow between your thighs can help. Total comfort is necessary for long & painful sittings.

@TrixieFaux absolutely love your arms...so beautiful...fits perfectly with you :) - - - Updated - - - oh...and my arm so far...

When I first started getting tattooed somebody suggested that it was odd that someone so skinny should get tattooed (I'm 5'10" and 140lb soaking wet). Go figure... I say your body size and shape shouldn't matter whatsoever in your decision as to whether or not to adorn your body with art. At the end of the day there are fat trashy people with trashy tattoos, just as there are skinny trashy people with trashy tattoos. The subject matter, artist, choice of placement and how you present yourself are ultimately what matter, not how much you weigh.

You will look no more "ridiculous" with tattoos than anyone else! Get tattooed, get what you want, fuck the world. I don't tattoo so I can't answer your questions about working with skin and placement but I can't imagine it's that much of an obstacle. @Shawn Porter posted a video a while back on his OV blog, an awesome awesome Dave Lum video, where his shop helper -- a woman -- was talking about how she hated her legs and her butt. How she was self conscious and never thought she'd get tattooed there, but once she did get some coverage on those areas, she loved them. Maybe the only big folks you're seeing with a significant amount of work have some not-so-great tattoos.. or maybe you're just freaking out cause you've only got one so far. But if you've got the itch, you've gotta scratch it, and everyone else can go to hell. Truly. Apologies if this was too strongly worded.. I had the night off, some beers were consumed. The only people I don't like with a lot of tattoos are dickheads regardless of their tattoos.

Great time getting tattooed by Valerie yesterday. It really comes through how much she and Stewart care about what they're doing. Weird moment recognising the guy from Stewart's blog with the Saga/Reinke sleeves - those are some awesome looking tattoos (sorry if I'm being weird again and you're reading this, ha!).