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Finally got to visit State of Grace and get my Molly Monmon Cat from Horitomo! He did an amazing job. Just spectacular. I sent several pictures of her and some descriptions of her favorite things, her personality and her character. She *loved* shrimp sushi and got an entire order for her 16th birthday, right before we lost her to cancer. Horitomo created a picture of her in heaven with a halo and surrounded by her favorite things - including that she is surrounded by catnip! The face is perfect. I gave him a decent size square footage and told him he could expand beyond the cat and add other elements. Her face is perfect. When he showed me the sketch, my eyes just teared up. It was neat to be tattooed on the platform in the shop. It is a little sanctuary with neat drawings, books and items on shelves. He is a quiet gentle soul. I tried tebori for the whites and I probably would not do it again. For many areas, I didn't even feel the first 4-5 pokes. It just felt like a shoving pressure but there was *no* pain. Then the last several shoves were painful. But around my hip was bad all around. I'm glad I did it, though. Crashing out now holed up in the hotel with mom. <3 <3 <3

Steve byrne Rock of Ages austin tx

Maggie's body is covered in tattoos, and her parents have no idea. So we made a video for Maggie to show her parents the tattoos she's been hiding. Made by Bianca Giaever and This American Life.

My parents didn't talk to me for 3 years because I moved in with my fiancee. So you'll understand if I don't give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to tattoos.

Got this wicked draw-on zen spider from Jonny Murdoch from Government Street Tattoo (Victoria) who is in Edmonton for the week. Also this smug lil bumble bee too: the idea of which came to me in a dream 3 nights in a row...then i googled "angry bumble bee" and bam! clipart reference on the first hit. These toonie sized tatts are so much fun. Hooray for "recreational tattooing" lol. Jonny's hanging at Champion Tattoo, Shawn Hedley's new shop in town. Super dope shop, nice hospitality, guess they got a bunch of ringers guest spotting in the future...better leave some space ;) Great tattoo talk yesterday and I got to see a backpiece Filip Leu and Kurt Wiscombe tag teamed up close. Amazzzzzzzing

Hello fellow tattoo enthusiasts! My name is Jamie, but I've been going by Bluewind online for years. My handle was inspired by the painting Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh which is one of my favorite paintings. I'm 30 years old and live in the southern US. I'm considered weird by most people here in my small town, but I know that it's just a synonym for unique. I'm trying to get my first tattoo. Before anyone brings up the fact that an un inked individual is joining a tattoo forum, there's a reason I still don't have my piece. I've wanted the same tattoo since I was 13 years old, but every time I save up the money to get it, life happens. I'm legally disabled, so I get sick a lot. I admire anyone with good ink and enjoy a good collection. I know the tattoo tv shows are all BS, but I use to watch them when I had cable because I enjoy watching the process and envy people with nice results. I wanted to talk to other people who can appreciate good ink and the craft and I thought I could get a lot of good advice to keep me from making rookie mistakes. The piece I will be getting is a wrap around lower leg piece. It's so important to me because she will be a symbol of surviving abuse. I would describe it, but I don't want anyone to think I'm fishing for free art. I put a deposit down on a sketch, but the guy said since it would take me 6 months to save for the tattoo, he was gonna wait to make the sketch. I trusted him, but unfortunately he left town without giving me a sketch and kept my $50 deposit and butterfly biology book, so I'm currently looking for another artist who will be more trustworthy. My best friend will be working on a rough sketch to take with me to the next artist so I'll be able to get an estimate on it. When she gets it done (she said it might take a month for free time to draw it out), I'll gladly share it with everyone. Anyway that's me. Happily waiting on your questions and advice. ^_^ Bluewind

well, got some bug tattoos and made the paper: photo by Shaughn Butts, Edmonton Journal

I liked episode 13 because it showed some of the challenges in tattooing dark skin. It was still kind of disappointing because in just over 40 minutes, there wasn't a lot of discussion as to what should be done differently before a design, size, color and placement is chosen because the skin is dark as opposed to the choices that would be made with lighter skin. As a person with dark skin that likes tattoos, it is hard to find information on design choices that would work better for dark skin. There is one blog that I have found that is dedicated to getting information out about what to look for. However, the blog's advice tends to be "find an artist that is used to tattooing dark skin". That doesn't go far enough. I live in an area that has a high concentration of black people. For the most part, any tattoo shop that is in the city or inner suburbs has a high number of customers that have dark skin. However, practice doesn't always make perfect. Just because a shop has tattooed customers with dark skin for 10 years doesn't mean that they are "good" at it. The nature of the art of tattooing has a lot of secrecy in it. I can respect that, but it can reduce the amount of information that is available to the client to make an informed decision. We have to trust the artists that we do find that have experience with tattooing darker skin. That smaller number of artists limits our choices in the first place; we, as customers, don't know if the information and suggestions that we are receiving are good or not. The other facet of the tattoo industry that hinders us is that portfolio pictures are usually taken as soon as the tattoo is done. This really doesn't help dark-skinned clients in the search for a good tattoo artist for two reasons. One is that even with artists that have a high number of dark-skinned clients, the portfolio pictures tend to skew more toward the clients with lighter skin tones. The second is that tattoos look different once they are healed. This difference is even more pronounced on clients with dark skin. I meet many dark-skinned people with tattoos and get a chance to ask questions. However, it leaves me with more questions than I started with! I see designs that I wouldn't have been interested in in the first place. There are other factors that I find that would be different between what I would choose and what the person that I talk to chose. If I went by what I saw in the general public, I probably would have never gotten a tattoo. I would like to see more discussion on tattooing dark skin in the industry in general. It seems like people are scared to talk about it because they may be perceived as being racist. However, the difference is real and should be discussed. - - - Updated - - - To bring my long-winded discussion back around to this episode of Ink Master, I thought that Kruseman was unfairly criticized for keeping it simple with his tattoo. It is often recommended to keep tattoos simple on dark skin and I thought that Kruseman's tattoo showed up the best now and probably will in the future. I get that people don't think that guys want rose tattoos, but that is a myth that is proven wrong on a daily basis. Chris' portrait tattoo also looked like it would hold up pretty well. While I agreed with the judges that the mouth was different from the photo and that the hands weren't great, I thought that those were minor details that didn't affect the overall tattoo and how it shows up now and will show up in the future. Matt's tattoo was one that I thought that should not have been done on a client with dark skin. The eagle was too dark, detailed and cramped in the body in order to be able to discern what you are looking at if you see this tattoo from a distance. This showed the challenge that even if the tattoo is large, it still doesn't need to be as detailed as it would be on a client with lighter skin because the contrast isn't great enough for the eye to see that detail from a distance. Craig's tattoo actually didn't seem as bad as what the judges made it out to be. The scribbles did distract me, but I thought that the use of gray to get a 3-D effect came out better than I thought that it would. I've seen designs like that that were done with all black that end up looking more like scars or cover-ups rather than tattoos. Visually, I think that Craig's may hold up better over time and if not, was one of the easier designs to touch-up in the future. I don't know what to say about Duffy's tattoo. I couldn't tell what that was from a distance and would probably struggle if I were up close to it. This tattoo shows why I think the overall concept of a tattoo competition show is a bad idea because there needed to be more consultation with the client. The client initially wanted 5-6 different things. Duffy did talk him down to three things. However, the area where that tattoo was placed still doesn't allow for all of that to fit and show up well. Even just the Detroit skyline would have been difficult to show and contrast in such a relatively small space. I think that Duffy's tattoo would have been better with less black and more gray, but that's just my guess. She had a hard client to work with that just needed more time than what the show allows for. Tyler's tattoo went the other direction, with too much gray and not enough black. There was too much detail for it to show up well on the client's skin, as well. The white ink probably won't be visible in less than two months, so the accents that we saw today will be gone soon. While I understood the judges' criticism of being unable to discern whether that was a bear or a canine, I could still tell that it was an animal of some sort. This gave his a leg up over Duffy's because I couldn't tell what her design was at all if I hadn't seen the consultation that led up to it. Overall, I liked the episode because it forced the artists to deal with the challenge of tattooing dark skin. I have seen episodes of this show and other shows that show one or two clients with dark skin that all of the artists try to avoid. This brought the challenge to the forefront as these artists could not avoid dark skin at all.

@Boiled Dove = you'll have some good tattooists to choose from there :)

I just accepted a new job. I will be moving to Dallas in mid October, family will be staying in Indiana for a while. It is going to be a huge change but it something that has needed to happen for a while. '

Slightly surreal. Sitting at London convention, watching lots of people/tattoos walk by and listening to French chansons with Alix singing along while tattooing me...quite entertaining actually.

@SeeSea - What a great monmon cat!!! Congratulations!

How many of you folks that think the parents would be so rough on their children have children of your own? They may still dislike tattoos, may be upset, disappointed, etc., but they aren't going to stop loving them. Your perspective changes a lot when they are your kids.

alright...should i take off from work early this afternoon and try and sneak in another bug tatt or two? there are some cool dudes from Gov Street Victoria tattooing at the Edmonton Comic Con this evening. Gotta get home by 7pm so I'm not late taking my wife out for dinner...hmmm...choices...lol

Fresh one...

@Graeme = now there's a baby picture the young fella won't be too embarrassed to show to some young girl a couple of decades from now . . .

My lady and I just got a pet bird, he's a fancy green cheeked conure and he's just about 12 weeks old. Since we're both tattoo nerds and because puns are irresistible, his name is Oliver Peck. Haha. Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

@hogg That sounds okay, but I think I have you beat because I made this guy:

great! ha ha been through much the same, covering up around my parents for close to a decade before the technicolour cat came jumping out of the bag ;)

Guess we're crazy.

Most artists are confident in there work and thrive on and get inspired by seeing others work. It's almost a friendly rivalry like "oh they did that awesome piece, watch what I can do". I found in my personal experience, It inspires most artists to step up their game. The only time you would be disloyal to an artist is if you commit to have them design/draw an entire sleeve, start the work, then go to someone else to finish or change or add to it. That wouldn't be an issue if you were getting several pieces to make up a sleeve, as the thread is speaking about.

I know this is an older thread but I wanted to comment as this has happened to me severely on several occasions. It has happened on my arm band, which is predominantly blue, with greens and yellows and blacks. Mostly the blues and black raised up and was itchy for weeks. It was HORRIBLE. I tried cortisone, and Benadryl cream and oral, and also calamine lotion. It eventually went away. It has also happened on the big demon on my leg, parts of it raise up and get itchy, can last a few days. My pirate ship has also had this. The worst was my anchor on my foot, which is one of my newer ones. It itched SOOO bad and had red splotches all over, full on allergic reaction. It was awful. The main colours were blues that were raised and itchy, but it happened in the other colours too. Finally loads of calamine lotion slathered all over it for days on end helped. It also lasted weeks. And it was already fully healed so it wasn't infection or anything like that. Makes me nervous for when I get my underwater sleeve tattoo, that I may be in for an itchy time with that too. :(