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Got this finished this up a couple of weeks ago, is by @willem666 from one of his paintings. (Skin is somewhat fucked from my pregnancies)

Got this on Tuesday, and I love it! On the upper shoulder/collarbone area. I'll post a better picture once it has healed.

Latest and last session on my sock. Better pics later. I also got another tattoo I collected this week end... Will post when I get better pics of it.

Good for you for working it all out. To be quite honest, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, it looks like you're just starting to figure out some of the basics of drawing for tattoos. I'd spend some time tracing stuff. Seriously. That SJ rose you see on the wall. Trace it 100 times. That way you know it by heart. Repeat. On whatever subject matter you like. Nothing too big. Just things to get your understanding down. I would hesitate to do any of those as tattoos just yet. That whole crawl before you can walk thing. I started in the same place, and not too long ago at that. While I have a fine art background, learning to draw a panther, or oni, or rose, or swallow, or dragon, or whatever...it takes a lot of practice to do so correctly. I'm still figuring it all out...much like the rest of us.

Better! If you do some searching, there are allot of really solid traditional images of strongmen and weightlifters, most taking reference from old sideshow strongmen flyers. Really cool stuff.

Some early morning work. Drilling up by the ribs was super fun. Another small section done.

@misterJ saw it on Instagram, looks great!

I was thinking straight across the chest. That way when you squat, shirtless, in front of a mirror, you know you'll always be in the right position.

HAHA! yes indeed!! just the diagram the text was in the photo but all I want is the second diagram. Rip would be proud! - - - Updated - - - That's bad...? - - - Updated - - - I do, but I'm afraid it would look like a sticker instead of a cool tattoo.

Desert rose on my U2 arm. William Kasper @ Iron Tiger Tattoo

Mike keeps posting cool stuff from the Hardy event. I wonder if there's any LSTers in this video.

@clttattooing congratulations on starting your back piece! I would also like to see the progress if possible. My instagram is @robieva A few here know that I had my fifth session with Chad Koeplinger on my back last Saturday at Congress St tattoo in NH. This past session he shaded and colored all of my lower back. Whew! I am glad to get that part over with! There are blood drips in the tattoo, and one of them is mighty close to my butt crack. That spot felt like FIRE. I can't IMAGINE the horror of getting the full butt tattooed. I salute ALL of you with your full back tattoos!!!! @BrianH I read your comment about your tattoo being finished faster and cheaper if you were shorter. I am so happy I am short for this endeavor!!! I've never particularly been bummed about being short or anything, but in this case, it's a super advantage. I am super pumped with what Chad has given me and he thinks one more session, maybe 2 small ones. Total time so far, tallying up these sessions is about 10 hrs and that is rounding UP. It's probably closer to 8.5-9 hrs, but i'll call it an even 10. IN the end it will probably total 12 hrs. It has been an absolutely awesome journey. I love Chad like a brother and cherish the time spent with him. I am sad to think we are winding down, so I will probably have him tattoo something else on me soon enough (not my ribs. I told him never my ribs). Also the time spent hanging out with Jason Scott and Jebb Riley during these sessions have been awesome. I feel very at home at Jason's amazing shop. He employs only the best people. They are all great tattooers, but even more, amazing and awesome people. He's clearly got a good "douchbag radar" and hires accordingly. Next session is in August, and will possibly be my last, but I am certainly not putting pressure on it to be so.

Hehe surreal smoking skull:cool:

A well written, well thought out and professional response from none other than Tim Hendricks: In Response… « Tim Hendricks I can't help but think that the author of the original piece would be the exact type of person to attempt to crucify the guys at NYA had they tattooed the neck of her (hypothetical) un-tattooed 18 year old daughter... However it has everyone talking about it, so I guess she has achieved her goal :(

@Pugilist Thanks Anna!! @suburbanxcore incoming!

I like that a hannya on there is described as a "purple monster man".

Chippin' away at the ol' front. https://instagram.com/p/3pzXp1MVGD/

The winner of Tattoo of the month May 2015 is @Scott R with this bad ass Tony Hundahl tattoo. Congrats!! Since @Scott R has won Tattoo of the Month once before, the LST shirt will be awarded @cltattooing who came in second. Congrats!! Please PM @steve1461686340 with your shirt info (size and male or female) along with your address.

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.

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.

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.

part 2 of of my Marvel Avengers themed tattoos by Clint Cummings. Still a bit swollen, but decent quality pic

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

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.

Thanks man! When this is all said and done and nicely healed I'm going to try to get some good pictures of it because these iPhone photos don't quite cut it. I love the rocks and waterfall too, though you don't get much of them on a front on (back on?) picture like this. They add a sort of prettiness to the toughness of two fierce animals battling to the death. My favourite tattoos are the ones that are simultaneously tough and beautiful and I think this tattoo achieves that. There are really a lot of super cool things about the tattoo, like how the water ties together with the water on my arm (again not visible when I'm covering my junk in the shop) and how the waves carry over from one leg to the other. I am stoked that this is on me because otherwise I'd have to be jealous of the person with this tattoo.

Hard to get a good picture of the elbow. Done by Chad Koeplinger last night!

Edited post. New tattoo done today, Samurai by H R Giger. This is also The Hermit in the Giger tarot. Back of lower right leg, that's the lower right leg complete. 4&1/2 hrs and, yes I did sleep through most of it. Done by Tommygunn, Belfast City Skinworks, Belfast. Reference pic... Fresh tattoo pic and, you can see how he merged it with the other tattoos...

The backpiece is done (for now at least) and i couldn't be more happy with it. Unfortunately i managed to pick up a chest infection which put a bit of a dampener on my trip to Oslo but there's no taking the smile off my face right now. Pretty much all the colour is fresh as well as a couple of the darker parts of the skull so it'll look a lot different once everything has settled down i'm sure. I don't mind admitting i barely made it through this session, definitely the hardest one i've had (certainly not helped by illness) but i'm so fucking glad we got to the end. By the legendary Marius Meyer. Now we await the healing process.... Also that left arm is looking pretty damn bare isn't it... fuck.

4th session. 9hrs.

Don't post very often, but with @Graeme showing progress on his badass backpiece and the overload of cool stuff here to look at the past week, thought I's show what I've been up to the past year or so. Progress on the front side of me. Working on finishing it out and tying it all together with the back. It will be a shirt soon! October 2012 - April 2015 (chest/stomach). Got Angus Young put on me by Mr. Bob Tyrrell at the Full Moon Convention in Nashville on May 8th. I'm still blown away that this is on me. It's also the easiest tattoo to heal I've ever had. P.S. It is really hard to get a good pic of this one.

Sneaked this cheeky filler in today with Nicholas from Blue Arms, Oslo. Nice little warm up for the back piece session tomorrow!

Finally got around to watching this. Fantastic! Other's sentiment is spot on, reminded me of a Tattoo Age documentary. Thank You.

Session number two with Kore Flatmo yesterday. Here is the progress so far. - - - Updated - - - The progress on my wife's tattoo from Brenda Flatmo.

I like on the Skull and Sword site how Henry Lewis is listed as Horimackerel.

Changing my name to Professor Sailor Tatts ASAP

Yeah, he learned tebori from Horiyoshi III, but he was already a very well established tattooer by that time. He used to go by Washo and (I think) learned from Sabado, so as you can imagine, his style was very, very different from what it is today. I've always thought that it was cool that even after 10 years or so under his belt, he still humbled himself to become a student and start over in many ways. He's an enormous talent, and I consider myself ridiculously lucky to have work from him.

Shit's fucking retarded. There are infinitely more resources available to learn electric tattooing than tebori. Like the initial post stated, only guys who should consider fucking with tebori are those who've mastered electric Japanese tattooing. I'd think you might need someone legitimate to TEACH you, as well. Anyone know who taught Horitomo? Was it Horiyoshi III? Shit's impressive. I liked Stewart's description of pathetic wanna-be Polynesian tattooers. How stupid can you be? Apparently, a lot dumber than me. And I'm a shithead. 99.9% of everything tattoo-related is rank idiocy. I can't take it. And I'm not even a tattooer, for Christ's sake. People need to stop being full of shit.

You hit the nail on the head bigjoe. I call gimmick. I know some people who offer Japanese style tebori and one of them is Japanese and the other learned in Japan from a master. Outside of that structure it doesn't seem to make much sense aside from the points mentioned by David. Basically fake authenticity in place of talent, practice and hard work. Real authenticity is hard to find but many tattoo clients look in the wrong places. I've seen too many white dudes with botched Japanese style work done 'with bamboo' in Thailand. I guess they think if it's done by any guy from Asia it's authentic, right? I'm not sure how popular it is in the US or Canada but at conventions in Europe and the UK there used to be a few (mostly white) guys with facial tattoos working by hand, trying tattoo styles from the islands in the south seas. Even going so far as to sit cross-legged and stretch the skin with their bare feet. Often they were working within spitting distance of a great tattooer who knew more about their field of 'expertise' but he wasn't wearing a sarong and was tattooing snakes, eagles and skulls all weekend, listening to Motorhead.