Leaderboard

Eddy Deutsche cover/blastover from a couple of weeks ago in Oslo (Marius Meyer studio). It was such a fun day, so cool! Also met the legend Carson Vester. He told us some crazy stories! Who said he had lost it? New: Old:

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

Today I found out I am having a boy and I want to get a tattoo to celebrate the moment. I was thinking of a traditional elephant and baby elephant? Something classic and simple.

Marius Meyer backpiece bonanza. Me and @Kai Eirik Espedal

@beez's ongoing Diamond Club collaboration is one of the coolest tattoos I've seen on here. I would love to hear about how it has evolved since it began, if you feel like posting about that sometime.

In Qld, Australia now, it's common to be refused from venues for having hand, neck and face tattoos. Especially on the Gold Coast. The way I see it is that these venues are mainstream. Fuck mainstream. Never wanted to mix with them fuckers anyway. Give me a dingy blues club any day of the week.

this is a great quote: "I have two cats. I'm the furthest thing from a gang member."

@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!

HAHAHAHA. I just had flash backs to some of my butt sessions. I don't know what it was but I swear sometimes a spot would get hit and I'd almost wet myself because of the weird nerve stuff going on while also trying to stay loose. Enjoy the rest and have fun on your trip.

We ended up going with red for the cord winding through my bats after all--a dark Brick red and one called Red Velvet. Got the last peony colored and about half the cord done, so I think just one more session to finish it all up, which I think will make eight en toto. I'll post a pic as soon as the bruising around the red ink doesn't look so dire. :D

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...

Dang @Mark Bee filling all the spaces! You must be running out of space.

Here are a couple of pics from yesterday's session with Tim Pausinger at The Pearl.

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.

Hello. I want take a part in covention in my country. I was in tattoo convention in small our town early but will go to the big convention in that year (I used to go there with my husband and I went as guests, not as participants last 4 year). And according to this interested in the quality of my work - whether they are suitable for recruitment experience at conventions or have to wait a couple of years with the participation? examples: - - - Updated - - - sorry for big many photos i don't know as i can resize it there(

"Ras Colouring Book" is the best thing I've read on LST in a while, @bongsau.

@CShaw I saw it on IG. The red looks really sharp.

@Wilhell that fucking slays man, i have a serious man crush on your choice in tattoos

Congrats! You could also do birds, or lions, or any animal! I think a tiger with a tiger cub could be sick! Elephants would be awesome though

I once got kicked out of a peeler bar in Calgary in 2007 because my arm tattoos were showing. That was pretty funny.

I think I remember @El Dolmago discussing how she snuck some tattoo history into one of her lectures? Tattooed people giving a little bit of history in context is kinda cool IMHO! Margot Mifflin, who wrote "Bodies of Subversion" and "The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman" is an academic who has written some interesting and informed material about tattoo and the history of tattoo, and I believe she travels around giving lectures about tattoo history. - - - Updated - - - @Vaas there's an antique bookstore near me that has some older books on Maori tattooing and the like - I don't know where you live, but try a library and check out 'tattoo' in the anthropology sections, you might have some luck! - - - Updated - - - Sorry, can't seem to stop with this. I've enjoyed many posts from this site: http://tattoohistorian.com/ I agree with @Graeme and @bongsau that fundamentally the best way to learn about tattoos is to get tattooed and talk with tattooed people - and that it's important that that is how the history/culture etc is passed on, but I also think there are a number of things academics can contribute to the history of tattoo! Learning, researching, compiling, educating. We have some tattooed academics here on the board who are ensconced in the culture, and who have learned it (are still and always learning) the "right" way - I would love to take classes from them, if they were to offer some sort of tattoo curriculum. But "tattoo 101" or other pop/made for the masses courses - yeah, that kinda sours my stomach. The source DOES matter.

I forgot last night but remembered this morning while getting ready for work. @finegentleman @Shaggy sorry it took me so long

Wow that's pretty amazing. Heavy man

Who is this "shige"?

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 . . .

lol this is sarcasm right ?

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

Amazing.

Holy shit. This is too notch. Well done, man.

Epic!!

Brill [emoji106]

That is awesome @MoistTowelette

Added onto my arm yesterday with Clare Hampshire. Could not get a decent photo at home, so pic is from her IG.

This will only make this girl's birthmark (and by association, her physical appearance) the focus of her life. By getting their daughter's 'horrible disfigurement' tattooed on them it simply highlights that her body is her most important aspect. If they really wanted to give her a better outlook on life, they should not treat the birthmark as if it has any signifigance at all, which it shouldn't. Everyone is different, and she shouldn't be made to feel that that is a bad thing, even though it is apparent that her parents (especially the mother, who cried when her baby ended up with some skin discolouration even though she was otherwise in perfect health) do. They could have a couple of grand in a College fund by now with what they would have spent on those tattoos.

I had the seventh session on my back yesterday and we finally started in on the colour and crushed the tiger. There's still a bit of shading to do in the water, and we're still figuring out what to do with the snake with regard to scales or patterns, colours, etc., as well as what colours to do the maples, but I am super stoked on the progress we're making.

By Jasmin Austin down in Perth, Australia.

I got tattooed by Frank Carter again a few days ago. We tattooed some dice on my arm as well to fill some space which led to us rolling dice to decide the price. I lost...

Mario Desa was kind enough to tattoo me at the Richmond Tattoo Convention. I started my clean arm!

Fuck pain. I don't need to be reminded that I'm being punctured-I've got probably over 30 hours of tattooing on me, I've been shot 3 times, stabbed, cut, beat, stomped, whomped, eye took out, and just generally abused. I can tell you about pain. And I can tell you that if you feel you need pain to make your tattoo a "real" experience, god bless you, you've probably never had any real-live pain, and I hope you never do.

Here's my back piece being done by Matt Arriola from Liberty Tattoo in Seattle WA. Hope you like it.

Here is my Year of the Dragon tattoo! by Scott Rusnak, Lucky Strike Tattoo (Edmonton, AB) 2012

here's some pix of my sleeve from Marcus Kuhn...