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https://instagram.com/p/3P_YuSTBGZ/ All done. :o We stuck with flowers for fillers in the end, even though we did talk about a frog. He took some shots from other angles, but didn't put them up. Maybe he will later. I'm a little sad about it being finished, so I can't imagine how you backpiece people felt when it was over! ...but I might get to find out, because we may have chatted about it a bit today. We'll seeeeeeeeee. :cool: I get a day to bang around Powell's Books tomorrow and cap off the night with Mad Max, and then I get to be tattooed by @cltattooing the day after that! Definitely a great mini-vacation.

Here's what Freddy did to me. I love the way he framed the XXV with flames.

Something a tattooer told me that I wish I'd known from the start: get the big pieces first.

Started on my ribs yesterday. Got the lining in. Possibly the most painful thing I've experienced, however i'm very happy with the result :) Bring on the shading and colour :mad: By Scott Owen, Seven Swords, Cheltenham, UK.

By Nikki Balls. Done at the Pearl Harbor Gift Shop, Toronto, Ontario. Apologies for the crappy pic.

In my happy place, about to finish this arm(!!!!). Sorry in advance if this is huge, I have no idea how tapatalk deals with images from phone cam.

Placement is, in my opinion, the hardest thing about tattoos to understand, and it is also often the factor that distinguishes good tattoos from great tattoos. This probably isn't the most satisfying answer, but I think to really understand placement you need to look at real tattoos on people because pictures, especially the tightly cropped Instagram photos that make up most of what we look at these days, really give no sense of placement. Half the time you can't even tell what body part they're on.

By Tim Pausinger, Pearl Harbor Giftshop, Toronto. I don't have experience with the most painful spots (ribs, back, butt). This was not as brutal as I expected but certain spots closer to the armpit felt like hot pokers up and out through my shoulder haha !

Heading to Oakland, California to see Freddy Corbin at Temple tattoo to get inked for our 25th wedding anniversary. Appointment is noon, Tuesday. Daniel Higgs did the original wedding tattoos at Realistic Studio in San Francisco and Freddy was in the shop watching and making comments while he was doing us. Daniel doesn't do tattoos any more. So our first choice is Freddy to keep spiritual continuity. The wife and me are getting a "25-XXV added somewhere . I am also getting a "Dragon" mixed into it... I'll keep you up to date. :cool:

Love this story, and those tattoos are so great - can't get over how good that dragon is! Thanks for sharing with us.

@PopsBdog I fucking love yours :) very pretty x

Josh Arment | The Aloha Monkey Tattoo & Piercing That'd be my choice

I love Chicago, but if you wanna go a bit further Ann Arbor is one of my favorite cities in the greater Midwest region. Tons of great food, cool stuff to see, and of course a bunch of great tattoo shops. Right in AA you've got Name Brand and Leo Zululeta's Spiral Tattoo, just down the road in Ypsilanti is Depot Town, and a bunch of the depot town guys just opened a shop in Hamtrack whose name escapes me right now.

And a bonus Seth in the background. Looks great, I am stoked it worked out so well for both of you.

Oh really? Ha, shows what I know about geography. Well, maybe it's a better option than I thought then. I can't copy/paste for whatever reason right now, but we the website for the shop we go to is bigbrainomaha.com There's a Spaghetti Works around the corner from the shop...maybe not a big deal to city folk but to us country meeces that have 4 places to choose from to eat in town, we feel like we're living high on the hog!

- - - Updated - - - Here's the XXV added to Sylvia - - - Updated - - - And here is what else she had Freddy put on her right ear for our anniversary

I just read the book again a few months ago. We have been grokking for 25 years, established 1990 "Thou Art God"

I posted that one in the hand tattoos thread a while back, and it still blows my mind every time I see it. Edit: I realized I said this a few posts above. I'm an idiot. But it still rules.

@iowagirl, the guy himself described it as traditional with folk art and sometimes psychedelic influences, so basically what Shaun said.

I'm glad you like it man! Thanks.

The situations when being around kids are the hardest. I was almost always shunned by other parents in every situation involving my kids and social interaction. It always took a while for other parents to get to know me before they stopped rushing in to rescue their kids from the "weird tattooed guy". Although I had tattoos for 10-12 years before my kids were born, it still took me some time to adjust to strong/negative reactions I got from other parents. The strangest thing anyone has ever said to me regarding tattoos was "you must be so sad every day that you ruined your life with all those tattoos"....... my reply was a surly, "yes, I asked our lord and savior to forgive me everyday, please pray for my soul" as she was clearly a religious kook... Even though I'm not from a small town, it was still rough in the late 80's, early 90's having a lot of tattoos. Rough as far as stares/comments and general disdain for "my kind".. I was a delivery driver for a beverage company for many years and my company thought it was a great idea to send the 6'3" long haired tattoo guy to all the worst, inner city stops they had. Their reasoning was "he won't upset the upscale store owners and who will mess with him in the bad areas?" It suited my personality, so it didn't take long to adapt. I think the people in the inner city areas were baffled by my tattoos but pretty quick to accept me as they knew what it was like to be outcast too... At one point, I got so sick of answering the same 3-4 questions I got asked 1000x a day, I had business cards made to give to people instead of having the same exhausting discussion over and over. They said: TATTOOS....YOU BET!!! a: Yes, they're real !!! a:Yes, they're permanent !!! a:Yes, it hurt !!! a: No, I don't regret a single one !!! The back of the card had a rant about "if the card didn't answer all your questions, see a reputable tattoo shop near you" and the quote "the only difference between tattooed people and non- tattooed people is tattooed people don't care if YOU have tattoos or not" Anyway, I don't get as much attention now-a-days now that plenty of younger people have hands/feet/necks/faces tattooed and every pop star and NBA player is fully tattooed!

after almost 7 years of getting tattooed i just finally got my FIRST eagle the other day... thanks to tony sellers while he was guest spotting @ tattoo marks for the week.

I got this done by Jonas Nyberg at the Helsinki ink convention at the end of march and finally got my gf to get a decent photo of it so here it is!

By Mike Moses: Not on me I might add; just snagged from his Instagram because I thought it was cool.

more work done tonight. next appt is the end of June. The frog is getting redone in this go 'round-he's kinda old (15 years or so I think) so he would look out of place I thought.

Tattoo by Eckel - - - Updated - - - Tattoo by Chris ODonnell

I don't think I posted the lithograph I bought from Trevor/Ed at last year's London convention. But here it is - Nurse Mercy.

Anyone who follows me on Instagram has seen this, but here's a little teaser shot of my arm from Grez. I said from the beginning that I wasn't going to post progress shots much because I love that feeling of just seeing the whole completed piece, and I'm amazed I mostly stuck to that. Haha. Now that next month is likely the last sitting, I can see end in sight and can't wait to share it.

Ok, I'll type up a quick little recap with some pictures of the weekend. I'll be honest: I didn't really take a ton of photos. There were some people there taking pictures of absolutely everything. I felt weird doing that, so I tried to just get a few that were representative of what was there. I'm sure more will surface, but this is everything I took. Also, I didn't go to the lectures, but when I got there on Saturday for my 12:30 appointment, the lecture had just ended. The place was absolutely mobbed when I went up, and Ed was signing books and posters for a long line of people. He ended up leaving fairly soon after that was done, but Trevor stayed there and showed art and chatted with anyone who had questions or wanted to buy stuff. By all accounts, the lectures were incredible. Rubendall said that they'd be up online in the near future, and obviously @Iwar posted that teaser above. First and foremost, I'll start with some of the art. Ed had a few different collections of things. These first ones were my favorite. They were all paintings, with an etching or rubbing over the top, in a way that almost reminded me of some of the Devita stuff they've had there before, but with Ed-styled paintings underneath. Very cool. In that same collection were two incredible tiger paintings. I would've killed to buy these, but they were sold already and I'm poor as fuck. Haha. He also had a lot of crazy morphs. Below are two of them, and the panther/snake morph on silver had about six others that were similar. Grez actually bought the one posted below. There was also this collection with the "pig thing" and a bunch of drippy/bendy/wild panthers. My buddy was about to buy this one, but his wife was NOT having it. I think the real highlight was going through a ton of original stencils and drawings that Trevor had in a binder. He didn't have them out for the longest time, then when I saw him take them out, I bolted over. I only took one pic, but there was some amazing stuff in here. I just pored through a ton of it with a few people and each thing was more amazing than the last. Here's the flash they were tattoing from as well as the Hardy gorilla my buddy got from Grez (bloody eyes and all). Grez was beyond excited to do it, as he'd never done that tattoo in all of his years. He told us stories about getting tattooed by Ed, as well as one about Ed freehanding on Brian Bruno towards the end of his career. Next time I get tattooed by him I'm making him take his pants off to show me. He said he would. I think that's it for now. I'm sure more will come to me, but I wanted to share a bit of what I saw.

From Mike Rubendall's youtube page: This video journal was the introduction from Day 1 of the Ed Hardy Lectures, "Pictures of the Gone World" at Kings Avenue Tattoo. It features Ed Hardy's works throughout his career, some of which have never been made available to the public. It also features never before seen clips of Ed's personal journey.

just extended my half sleeve with a snake from Johan Svahn i attached some pics skull by rg dragon by danh vu

LM Knight's the fricken man. Would love to get tattooed by that guy. - - - Updated - - - Posted this one in another thread, but here's mine by Jay Watkins: [/img] And some other's he's done: https://instagram.com/p/z4CDJrDIIF/?taken-by=jay_blkmgc https://instagram.com/p/zi_V1njINt/?taken-by=jay_blkmgc https://instagram.com/p/zTYmptjILw/?taken-by=jay_blkmgc

More badassery for you. Starting to see the finish line on this one. By Dave C., PSC Tattoo.

Just got this beauty from Josh Peters at High Tides in Saint John, New Brunswick. So stoked! Im a little paranoid about the healing atm, like I am with every tattoo I get, but We'll see when its healed haha

@TrixieFaux Awesome! Zzzzzzt. ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzZZZZzzzzzt.

It's always weird cause everytime you get tattooed it feels different so it's hard to say what hurts less. I really don't have a clue. Coil does sound more aggressive for sure. In regards to the getting through the pain.I have much respect for people who sit through long tattoo sittings, I wouldn't say I have a high threshold for pain, but I guess if I want to get a tattoo I have to find a way to get through it. The best advice I have ever been given is to sit there and take it. You can take pain killers, rub cream on there, or whatever ritual you have, but the only answer is to accept the pain and try to relax, at times it sure sucks, but to me that's part of the accomplishment.