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Had some work done Friday 07-17 :cool: Getting there !!

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

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.

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

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

give er a tear out

Just a warning - you may think that you won't get more and bigger tattoos in the future. Yeah, remember that.

I thought "looks like a sticker" was a compliment? Example "that tattoo is so clean, crisp, and bold it looks like a sticker"

Kenickie from Grease...badass.

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.

For this reason, whenever a friend or stranger ask me about advice surrounding their idea for a first tattoo, I tell them not to get it on their forearm. I think that for many people it's really good to kind of ease into the experience of being a tattooed person and being able choose when to show it. I was quite hesitant to get my forearms done. I was studying journalism and had the idea that in that field of work it was important to be able to give of a good impression, and visible tattoos might offend people and prevent me from doing a good job. What made me change my mind was two things a) I had a half sleeve and I realized that even if I wore a t-shirt that tattoo was peeking out quite a bit. So I would have to wear like a long sleeve shirt anyway, at best I could roll it up to the elbows. b) I really love to look of tattoos on the forearms. So I went for it. That was three years ago and I still have quite a lot of space left on my arms, besides getting three more tattoos there. Just recently I had a similar chain of thoughts that made me decide to tattoo the top of my shoulders and a bit on the base of the neck. Without really planning it, my backpiece had extended enough to peek out above the rim of my t-shirt, so as long as I am not wearing a button up shirt strangers on the metro will know I am tattooed, even when I can't see them. So I might as well go for it. I guess I will start wearing button up shirts a lot more, which is fine too. I'm 28 and an adult.

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.

Page 400 giving me that old familiar wallet itching feeling

If you get it as a tattoo it will look like a tattoo and not a sticker.

If you have the image already, it is really your journey to figure out where you want the tattoo. Good advice has already been given. If you aren't inspired to put it on a particular body part, it might be best to wait until it's a more decisive decision.

Soooo what about the longer, more detailed first part of that great advice then?

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.

It's a system to measure the extent of burns on the human body, but it can easily be adapted to figure out what percentage of tattoo coverage you have. I learned of it through taking first aid courses.

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.

yeah man, definately! when i dropped below t-shirt line, I remember saying to my tattooer how i was ready to "jump in to the big stuff". he laughed at me because I already had a big piece on my ribs and a leg sleeved in. but having the forearms tattooed definately changed my perception of myself as a tattooed individual. i felt different and echo the excitement. i wore long sleeves for 2 years in the workplace before i hit the lower arms, as a test run to see if i could handle it. no problemo! and still to this day i fairly exclusively wear long sleeves to work and out-n-about if it's hot and sunny.

Started mine yesterday evening with Kelly Edwards. It was amazing... and much more painful than I anticipated, and he tattooed for something like 5 hours with only a short break. I was actually genuinely surprised at how hard it was. Took my breath away more than once. He tattoos fast and hard, and I am humbled and proud to even be wearing this line work, sat like a rock. Next appointment will be in August for scales on the rattlesnake and starting to shade. - - - Updated - - - Oh yeah, and did the left side, or one preferential side, hurt a LOT more than the other?

some from the past month or so, mainly hardy worship if by any chance any of you are in london uk and would like a free apprentice tattoo then hit me up. i have no tattooed friends in london other than my mentors etc. and its making things slow insta @slugggg. thanks for looking

Huh. I have bigger boobs, and if I dare analyze them in the mirror, I suspect the left one is a tad bigger. This will not stop me from the under bust tattoo, even considering future sagging. I'm kind of surprised about the concern over drooping, the natural condition of the human body being asymmetrical and the inevitability of aging. I wonder if guys think about their chest pieces and maybe one day getting man boobs that could warp it out (my guess is unlikely). I do think proportion is important, because my girls are bigger, so I'm not going to get a dainty little piece tucked under there. Regarding chest pieces, I've given that one a lot of thought, because I don't want a tiny little "v" there. I also want it connected to my underboob piece. I really like the chest pieces Guy Le Tattooer does on women - they are large and bold (I included an example of his). I like how some of the tattoo goes on to the boob. I've also seen women who have two large flowers, which I think looks beautiful (the example I included is by Thomas Cardiff).

Sorry about this. Didn't he realize after the first one, no, the second one, third one, fourth one, that they just weren't going to get any better?

The Horitoshi documentary is fantastic. I got it a few years ago on DVD. You can get it here: LA VOIE DE L'ENCRE Lardux Boutique In terms of which Traditional Japanese artists I like the most it's kind of like trying to pick your favorite sweet in a candy store. Obviously Horiyoshi III is very high but I feel that kind of goes without saying. Beyond him I love the work of Horiyasu. The black that he gets is so dark and smooth and the colors are incredibly vibrant to go with it. Horitoshi is obviously very good as well. I would also mention Horimasa from Isesaki. He did a phoenix on my lower right leg a couple of years ago at the Brighton Tattoo Convention. He worked incredibly quickly and produced an amazing piece. I am thinking about getting something else big from him in the future but that depends on time and money. This is the phoenix I got though.

HAHA, you'd have to pay me to do the whole thing, but the discussion around 16:00 about successors is pretty interesting. He says that until three years ago, he had a successor (Horitoshi II) lined up, but that the successor did not abide the rules of the family and was expelled. Then, he had a Horitoshi III lined up, but that this potential successor had no intention of leading the family. So, he has decided that they will elect a Horitoshi III democratically between him and his three oldest "sons." The ideal successor, he says, has to be good at tattooing, but also a man of character. He has to be mild-mannered because he (Horitoshi I/the family) has various domestic and international relations to maintain, and dedicated to the family. In another really interesting bit of the interview, at around 24:00, he says his "family" differs from other families in that his relationship with his "family" members is really one between father and son rather than master and apprentice. The apprentices start as such, but after spending some time apprenticing and being deemed worthy based on character, they become his sons. That is why they call him "Oyaji" (Pops) rather than "sensei." Despite this, in the most unfortunate case, he says, an apprentice/son left the family after six years. Finally, towards the end, Horitoshi expresses his devotion to the preservation of tebori as a Japanese tradition. He says that ultimately, he is teaching his apprentices to maintain tradition. The Horitoshi Family, in Japan, he says, is the family most dedicated to tattooing as a Japanese tradition. Machines could be used for lining, but shading has to be done by hand to preserve tattooing as a Japanese art. He doesn't think tattooing will be accepted in Japan anytime soon, but maybe in fifty years, Japanese people will have a more "casual" attitude toward it.

A couple that come to mind are the dude in The Hangover 2 and Edward Norton in American History X. There's a few tattoo scenes in American Me. I think the dude at 1:25 is a little heavy handed...