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This is what I did yesterday with Jereme Galloway at Time and Tide in Bloomington, IN.

Since we're sharing progress, here's what we did on mine last week. We have to put the greys in some of the water and then do the details in the faces and the tiger's paws and things like that but we're getting super close to wrapping this up.

Thanks, @Cork, @Iwar, and @RoryQ. Freddy said he decided to go all black (as opposed to black and gray) to make it stronger next to the tiger. Great decision. By the way, I was getting tattooed by Freddy years ago and mentioned to him that I wanted to get a tiger and a baku or maybe a tiger and rooster from Lehi. Freddy said, "Just get two tigers. Two tigers would be bad ass." He was right (of course). It's only fitting that he wedged my son's name above one of those tigers.

Got this from Greg Christian at Tattoo Faction about a month ago and these from Tomas Garcia at Old Soul last weekend. all stolen from their IGs @Gregchristian4130 and @tomas_garcia I used to complain about not being in a great tattoo city like NYC, but being a 2 hour drive from cleveland and pittsburgh isn't really too bad.

You guys are amazing so I thought I better give you all an update on how I'm feeling about the tattoo and in general! The past month has been a bit up and down for me personally so Sick is totally right, I have a few things to start to sort out. And some lessons to learn. I agree with Hands On as well that I wish the fox didn't warp around as much, but you are all right to say that I need to learn a lesson from the whole experience and just learn to love it. Which I wouldn't say I'm at "love" yet but I'm starting to feel really cool and have had some good and bad reactions to the tattoo and am starting to take both in stride. And the main thing from the fox is that I want to get more tattoos! So it's not diminished my passion for ink. To address some of your questions. I went in with a totally different design and the artist suggested origami and I suggested a fox. Foxes have meaning for me and my best friend lives in Japan so origami does too. The fox is in that place on my arm because I have a scar represented a bad time in my life and I wanted it covered for about 2 years but never could decide on exactly what to get. I do like to trust the artists because I don't see myself as a creative person, but this is difficult because I am not a heavily inked person so by no means an expert. That's why I'm glad to have found you guys. Anyway, that was a bit rambling. But thank you all for your honesty and for your help and advice. I will take it to heart, and it means a lot to me when people tell it like it is. So thank you again. Xx Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Freddy Corbin put my son's name on me last night. Simple, tasteful, and just right. I'm so happy with it.

An actual tattoo will look different than sharpie on top of the skin, or tracing paper. After a while the tattoo will appear to be part of the skin. Even new, big tattoos have the appearance of being "ontop" on the skin when they are fresh. They will settle with time. https://instagram.com/livedintattoos/ Flip through this instagram profile of old, healed tattoos. Plenty of them are quite small, but you'd never look at them and think "That's a cool sticker".

Me and my girlfriend got tattooed yesterday by Marcus Kuhn while he's guesting in Paris at Laura Satana's shop!

The excellent US to Canadian dollar exchange rate should make it an easy decision for everyone in the US to make this trip.

I live about 4 hours away and am trying to arrange something for me and my friend to go up

Just booked an appointment with Daryl Hart (https://instagram.com/dhart_fbc/) in August to get a panther of no man's land on my shoulder. Stoked!

As a very close friend once told me "wise people appreciate feedback". Tattooing teaches you about growth, whichever side of the needle you are on. Sounds like your little fox is already quite a teacher.

Got some work in Saturday, but life has been crazy. Wanted to post this up. Detailed in the hair, and sank some color into the top oni. The pic makes him look very bright but the colors have cooled off nicely and now have a deep tone to them. We spoke about detailing him up more next session with either a patterned robe or doing more in the body. Either way I'm on board. EDIT: just to put it in perspective, the horns are colored white that's how red I got I always love the way the tray looks at the end when all the colors are laid out and all is said and done. I thought this concept would make a really neat print. If there is some rule about not showing these details let me know and I will remove it, but I thought it would be a fun share. Hope you guys like it, and I have 2 sessions coming up so maybe we can close in on this project.

Healed photo of my back that was finished last year in September, and a fresh one to the left. Both by Marius Meyer

Just emailed back and forth with Scott Sylvia and nailed down a time for a big ass snake on my leg at Pagoda City.

Get small tattoos in small areas of the body so they don't look like they're drowning in a sea of flesh. Or put them between big tattoos.

Plus the being able to legally drink at the age of eighteen there haha. I still have a year to go in the states

Oh there are no weak lines or weak anything else on that tattoo, it's just that sometimes some relining is called for. I had some bits of my arm relined during the final session even though there was nothing wrong with it. I don't claim to understand the reasons why, but I trust my tattooer here. I totally recommend getting something huge from Dave. You've been tattooed by him, you know that he's a great tattooer and possibly an even better guy, and the experience has been so great that it's going to be really bittersweet when my back is done.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ all of those are GREAT....I've been thinking about getting a bleeding ear ever since my wife told me "if I come see your band, my ears will bleed" ha ha ha

Basically this. At 20, I would definitely have hesitated, and probably stayed above the elbow. I'm turning 34 this year, I'm financially secure and settled into a profession that allows me to work at home, I live in an area of the country that's pretty liberal, and I've been waiting for over 15 years to get tattooed -- I really didn't think twice, to be honest. It was still nice to have a tattooer ask me if tattooing down to my wrists was okay, though. It felt nice to know it mattered to him. It was also kind of nice to know he was okay with tattooing them, because I felt like I had maybe officially crossed the line between being a plainskin noob and being A Tattooed Person. (It was Gilsdorf, if anybody's curious.) Here's a funny tidbit, though: During that appointment we were talking about the experience of getting tattooed generally, and I was laughing about how, even though I'm not very tattooed, I still find myself wringing my hands about running out of space. And Dan goes, 'I don't think you're 'not very tattooed' anymore, by civilian standards,' and I had to tell him that I think my perspective is now permanently warped by all the time I spend lurking around here, hahaha. Compared to LST's crew, I've barely even gotten started.

I asked myself if I wanted sleeves badly enough that I was willing to wear long sleeve shirts during the hottest days of summer. (I was / am, so that was fine.) I don't have to depend on anyone else "accepting" anything as long as I'm willing to do that. Now, neck and hands, that would be rolling the dice.

I was nervous when I started below t-shirt line. Being a professional, I wasn't sure how it would go over. I wore long sleeves while at work for about a month. I finally realized I just didn't care. If I'm good enough at what I do or the service I provide, it shouldn't matter. So I stopped. I've come to find, even when meeting with millionaire developers or "old money" powerful people, the majority are mainly curious. In fact, even at big meetings, it seems lately that the first 5 or 10 minutes is questions about my tattoos. Of course the first one is always, "did it hurt?". The only time I wear long sleeves now is for protection from the sun, if I'm going to be working in the field all day.

I wear a lot more long sleeve shirts now. Just to work though!

@CultExciter @ApprenticeLife @beez thanks all for the kind words. much appreciated! here's one more from a set im currently doing

So this got started today. Kelly Edwards. Three words for getting all that line work in one sitting: Fuck. That. Shit. Worth every second of pain though!

some good points made on this thread already. i agree that you definitely should not cover it up or get it removed. love it and use it as a sign post for all the future growth and learning. it's a cute fox, but there are lessons to be learned. your tattooer, as an artist with a client relatively new to tattooing, should have provided more direction and suggestion. however, as an evolving client, you get to learn from this one. in the future, i would: - turn the fox around, so it's facing forward with your body - shrink it about 15-20% so it doesn't wrap around as much. some (lazy) artists might not care enough to go thru the extra work, but the artist and client would both be happier in the end. there may be artists out there who think of it as a business and just want to get you in and out of the door as quickly as possible so they can work on other things or the next client or the next drawing that they're really into. perhaps they don't take as much time as they should with each client. once they stencil is placed on, they just hope you're happy with it so they can get the ink in and get paid. it's up to the client to say... "nah. let's move it" or "can we make it smaller?" sometimes this can be a pain in the ass to the artist if you do it too much*. but in the end, you have to be happy with the outcome and stencil placement is about the last time you can make those decisions. *in this case, your artist would have had to wipe the stencil, shrink the image, confirm the size, make a new stencil facing the other way, and re-place the stencil. that isn't a big deal at all. but at each of these steps, the artist should be asking if it's all good and you, as the client, have an opportunity to speak up. if you want to read up on some things LSTers have learned on their journeys, check out this tread: http://www.lastsparrowtattoo.com/forum/general-tattoo-discussion/6025-cool-stuff-youve-learned-gotten-into-etc-thanks-getting-tattooed.html even after all this advice that you asked for, you might still want to get it covered. consider that it might be a bit difficult to cover and the tattooer will have to go much bigger to do so. if they don't do a solid job of covering it, you might still see bits of this cute little fox reminding you of all these lessons anyways. surround it with great tattoos and use these lessons to empower yourself.