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All right. For those who've seen it all ready, for those who've been waiting, for those who don't know what the fuck I talking about, for those who don't care: here is my back now. Finished this Saturday at the annual Scottish tattoo convention in Edinburgh. Iain Mullen and Rudy Fritsch converged for the first time since we did the lines in June, to do some two machine shading on the lower part and add some extra detail. One more touch up session with Iain in Stockholm and then this experience is over. It's been a great ride on so many levels and if I were to explain how happy I am about the result I would have to invent some new words. Both Iain and Rudy rules and everybody who has the chance to get the chance should really consider getting something from them. I will post a longer write up on this thread full-back-piece-experience-thread.html shortly, perhaps tomorrow. Right now I have a bad fever to pull through. One good thing about getting tattooed is that, if you do it right, it teaches you how tough you really are. Peace!

got this guy from Lee Knight yesterday, was meant to just be a consultation but he had space that afternoon and was blown away by what he was sketching up on the spot so went straight for it. Sits between the last two i posted the other day, on my shin

Picked up this Thin Lizzy "Cowboy Song" themed a couple of week ago from Ethan Franklin at James River Tattoo.

I'd like to add Andrea Giulimondi to the list. He works at The Family business in London. I love this girl in particular!

I sent an email, so we shall see! Now, I wait.

Here's my Derek noble thigh in progress. It goes all the way around. Poor Derek has to work around my fat ass and sweaty crotch. Stellar dude. Go see him!

My son is nearly 12, my daughter nearly 10. My daughter likes looking at my tattoos but says it won't be for her. She's funny though, she sees other people with tattoos and frequently and quietly comments, "dad, you have way more tattoos than him" My son is always planning his suit which comprises of dragons, snakes, ships and skulls. They can never understand why people have to stare so intently when we're out when I'm rocking singlet and shorts. It's nice to know they're developing a non judgmental attitude towards people who "appear" different.

I have a 22-year-old and 14-year-old twins. They never paid a bit of attention to my tattoos until recently when I had coverup work done, changing things in a noticeable way. My 22-year-old has done stick-and-pokes on herself, but very, very tiny ones, so far only on her big toe and ankle. I got her to do one on me, a bee on my knee, because I'm a medical person and I wanted to be sure she was using proper technique, especially if she decides to do them on others. I gave her disinfecting wipes, gloves, and drapes and stuff, and she did a great job on me, with good India ink. I'd rather have a machine than a stick-and-poke, though. I can zen out with the buzzing but the poking is really irritating and hard to get into a rhythm with, since it is slow. One of the twins came to me with a design on her hand written with Sharpie, and she told me that she was figuring out what kind of tattoo she wants. I told her she wasn't getting anything until 18, and even then to consider things very, very carefully, especially placement as it relates to her job plans. She's thinking about law enforcement and a hand tattoo is not going to fly! I don't object to the idea of 18-year-olds getting tattoos that they may someday regret, because tattoos are a reflection of your life's journey, to me, and they may require revamping or covering up at some point, but that doesn't have to be a big deal. As long as they're in a spot that can be hidden, when necessary, then there's no real issue. I didn't start getting tattooed until I was in my early 30s, but even when you're more mature you can make dumb tattoo decisions. I don't have any regrets about my own, but I have a friend in her 50s who got a completely awful one that she wishes she hadn't.

Hi everyone. Just signed up and excited to find this community. I've been collecting for 15 years and have recently started an old school apprenticeship. Hoping to be able to get critiques on my work and discuss healing methods unique to collectors (like why is my new armpit tattoo a nightmare to heal). Cheers!

Make sure you go to someone who specializes in palms. Brody Polinsky, Hooper, etc. Those guys know the secret...deep as fuck, and plunged (i.e. stippled). I say plunged because its more like drilling for oil than stippling. And if you want your fingers done too then you'll have the pleasure of knowing that your tendons are tattooed as well. Just don't do it. Its not worth it. But yeah, do it.

Hi all, I figure I'd plug this here. I've been helping my pal Dave Regan put together a reference book for the last, hell, almost a year. It's 300 plus pages of all sorts of different elements: Traditional, Big Cats, Japanese, Lettering, Floral, Etc. They are $80 and come delivered on a USB stick. You can learn more on his instagram account @dutchraven or email him at [email protected]. Word!

This afternoon I go in to have my last tattoo worked on. I have been unhappy with it, both design and execution - some my fault for not stopping him at the stencil review, (but I thought he would correct flaws in it as he worked) and some his execution. If he is willing to make two corrections, it should be good enough that I can live with it. It is on my forearm, and I've worn long sleeves (well, it has been weather for it) ever since. I sure hope he will fix it. Besides the cost of laser, I'm too damn old to wait for it to be blasted off and replaced.

Any creative career can benefit from a sabbatical. I have had the good fortune to take three over a 25 year design career and it really made a big difference. You need time to learn about yourself and restore your spirit.

Holly shit balls batman! So Sorry this is happening to you bro. Take care and see a doctor. Good luck and you can post a pic if you upload your image to a image hosting company such as photobucket.com.

it certainly looks like a (not that funny) april fool's...

I met Dave briefly at the summit show, he came by towards the end of my session with Tim, seems like a really good dude. I'm sure this book is awesome and I think I'll get one from him next time I'm in Denver.

So good. I spent whole minutes looking at how it all flows together. If I saw that thing in the wild I'm pretty sure I'd break the 'don't stare like a creeper at the tattoos of strangers' rule.

Got the invite to go meet Shad at Steve's studio when he's here to visit my city end-April. Hopeful that I can align a small piece from Shad and then get back to my back w/ Steve, colour and details in May. Going to get OllieXXX to touchup and fill in some cracks on my leg tattoos too. Going to try and get out to the Kootenay's this summer to chill on my inlaws farm and hookup some additional work from Shawn O'Connor. But first things first, go burn all this tattoo-nonsense off in the Jamaica sun...Ras Colouring Book ribbit lawdamercy

Don't think I've seen this one mentioned: support_good_tattooing is wasting huge amounts of my time the past few days.

I also have the same obsession with hand tattoos. Here are mine !

Because people bring attention to them?

The obvious elbow tattoo. Scott (Skotydont) Fox, Columbus.

image url upload[/img] Lonny did this in 3 sessions. Aces High Tattoo Shop | West Palm Beach and Jupiter Award Winning Tattoos

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...

@Dan, That is so awesome! A+ :D

My oldest is six and she doesn't even see mine or my wife's tattoos. It's like they aren't even there. My two year old, on the other hand, is checking out what I have for tattoos whenever he has the chance. I wouldn't be surprised if my daughter never got a tattoo, and my son came home with a hand poked anarchy symbol at 13. Haha.

Good discussion. My six year old likes to go to our tattoo shop. They let her feed the fish and give her press ons. It's fun all around. She's pretty young so she will say she wants to wait until she is 30 to get a real tattoo. I guess we will see. My wife and I will talk to her more about this as she gets older and our plan is to start saving money for her (if she is interested in tattoos) and let that money grow. The longer she waits the better tattoo she will get. It will probably backfire though when she waits until she is 20 and gets a full back infinity sign. So it goes.

I took my son to one of the better shops in town, and paid for his first tattoo. I made him wait until he turned 18, even though we can do it earlier in our state. We've talked about keeping tattoos in areas he can cover until he knows for sure what he will be doing for a living. I got my first tattoo at the same time, so we did the whole experience together.

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!

Right on! I got this fun little Geisha that he had pre drawn from some old Hardy flash. I was even representing LST whilst getting it, haha!

Here's my lady done by Shawn VanOven

Turns out about an inch away from your testicles is fairly brutal.. yowch.

Ha!! That's makin' me think that there's no f*ckin' way I'm getting my feet done! :)

That's why I'm glad I only got two.

I think that just blanket judging owl tattoos as 'hipster' or trendy is giving way too much power to the sort of people who get stupid or ironic tattoos. Owls are a pretty timeless subject for a tattoo in my opinion, and transcend the comings and goings of fashion, unlike a ham sandwich, or an ape in a tuxedo riding a penny farthing.

That's a shame because there are a lot of women doing a lot of good things in tattooing over the age of 30. Really when you think about it, a lot of people are just hitting their stride. I don't have much use for most tattoo magazines and their perception of beauty. If most can't even tell the difference between a good and bad tattoo, I don't consider them a credible authority on judging attractiveness in general.

I'm not insecure. I'm an asshole. Huge difference. :D

wow, thats their whole arm...and forever they'll know they paid $49.50 for crappy seats to see greenday. i'll always remember that i saw them in 93 in atlanta at a tiny punk club, for free.

I've got plastic frame glasses too, I wear them because I need to see on a daily basis. I chose plastic frames because they looked good, last longer, cost way less. I go into rage mode when I see assholes wearing glasses with no lenses. Fucking RETARDS.

I hate myself every day, just for a little bit. That said... I don't think he was saying Joy Division (whom I love) is hipstery, just that people only pretend to like them because you're s'posed to. Or maybe I misunderstood, too. I was too busy listening to Joy Division to read into it much. Though one of my fiance's super politically correct friends won't listen to Joy Division because of where the name of the band comes from. Though she listens to Blondie. Go figure.

Hey I love Joy Division and I was around when they first hit the scene (that doesn't qualify for being a hipster but it probobly qualifies for a hip replacement in a few years).

From handbag to douchebag

Love away. I find them annoying. It's what people in my age group do; hate people younger than us and thinking their trends are stupid. And sure- I had said before that at some point people in this thread would get butthurt because something would hit too close to home. I ride a track bike. I LOVE my track bike. It's really light, was cheap and gets me where I'm going. I wear the same outfit literally every day. (black logo-less tshirt, jeans, new balance sneakers; when I dress in the morning I don't have to think about it; I just grab a clean shirt and pair of jeans and cut out the entire decision making process.) I have a beard. Some, if not most, of my tattoos make no sense. So sure, someone could call me a hipster. that's fine. As long as I'm washing my hair every day and not dressing like a total ironic douche, I don't mind. I still hate hipsters.

im lucky, we don't have any hipsters around here. but we do have an excessive amount of douchebags, plaid shorts, white rimmed sun glasses, backwards fitted baseball cap for some team they dont even like but it matches their shorts and shirt, pencil thin beard, their car has 22 inch rims on it....they listen to nothing but rap and for some reason spout all sorts of racial slurs and not in a "im trying to be cool and fit in" way either. also just for the record, i'm not a hipster but i've been wearing vans since i started skating in the 80's and i've been dishing out irony for just as long. so goddamn these hipsters for cramping my style.

Yeah, it's all ridiculous. I got called a hipster for the first time yesterday. I was wearing Levi's 501s, a white t-shirt, and boots, so I just kind of laughed. I bet that term will die off soon enough, since apparently it means wildly different things.

ugh at the same place i worked where we made the fucking hipster bag, there were a couple fixed gear dicks who didn't shower. One in particular would stand in front of the industrial size fan (keep in mind it's 100+ degrees outside so lots of sweat) and flap his shirt around to cool off. All he really did was waft his sweaty ball stench around the whole work room. I don't understand how being so called anti establishment means not taking care of your own body. WTF.

He's all "well shit, I know I left my cock somewhere ... "

OMG and LOL. What's going on with his face? What's he thinking? "What the hell is going on? What the fuck happened to me?"

This counts as a thigh piece, I hope! Working on the other side (actually finishing it next week ...), although it's a smaller homeward bound trad piece.