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Finished up this thigh piece about 2months ago. Healed shot lifted from Tim Lehi's Instagram. If you go back in the thread you can see the beginnings/line work. That leg is really coming together...only problem is now I've got this pesky knee-gap.

My collection by Jon West:

Dan Higgs black heart done by Josh Brown (Josh changed the color scheme some). Forgive the wonky photos; I realized this wasn't the easiest spot to photograph.

reactivating this thread with my Thomas Hooper piece:

Finally got some half-way decent healed photos of my Hooper musician leg. On the other hand, trying to paste together such a single photo is near impossible, at least for an old geezer like me. I'll reactivate the squidpants thread by putting this there, too . . .

My right leg is starting to look like something, with two semi-big tattoos by Rudy Fritsch and Iain Mullen. Now let's pray to the internet gods I will manage to post the two pictures I want this time... edit: the juzu around my ankle by Bunshin Horimatsu too! #tebori

Not to interrupt your "keeping it real" moment, but you are missing the principle reason, admitted or not, that most 'artists' sign up for this contest. It is not because they have hopes of winning it; win, lose or get laughed off, I bet you their business goes through the roof (at least in the short term) because every chump with no clue wants a sweet-tatty from "that guy from the TV". They can now forever scrawl those magic words "as seen on season xxxx of...." which all the rubes will eat up from now until forever. That's the real shame of these shit-shows, IMO.

I'm at my machine shop job this evening and a part time programmer stops in to check on a job we're running. He's seen me in a sleeveless shirt before but stops and says, "geeezzzz.. you have a lot of tattoos".. no kidding. I wonder what's up.. and out it comes. He has 2 daughters, age 16 and close to 18 and they're both dying for their first tattoo. Of course he and his wife say to wait until the girls are 18.. but his wife now wants to get one. So he's in a bit of a bind. He's no fan of the art form. He asks me if I have any regrets, I say no. I have no problem, but the rest of the world might. I just told him not to make that big of a deal out of it... teen girls... can be quite rebellious. And once they don't need permission, they're gonna do what they're gonna do. I advised him to talk to them about going to a reputable shop when the time comes and avoid "artists" who work out of the kitchen while the parents are at work.

FaceTime'd with the granddaughters and watched them blow out birthday candles from 250 miles away. How awesome is technology?

Here's mine from Friday at the London convention, done by Tony Hundahl. So unbelievably happy with this one! Nicked the picture from Tony's instagram as my camera is broken

i`ll tell ya, after a decade worth of different pieces all over my body, getting a couple small bangers on the rib cage and love handle was a friggin sunny-beach-vacation. oh yeah...don`t tattoo the front or back of your knee. it is as painful and dumb an idea as it sounds!

Was lucky enough to get tattoos from Ichibay and Jeremy Swed. What a great weekend in London! Nice to meet you, @ItsNewport! You´re tattoo from Tony Hundahl is awesome. And your backpiece too!

With plenty of thought, I'm looking to add to my left leg a few space and aeronautic themed tattoos. I enjoyed my past work in NASA from '85 to '98 and have loved this EVA image. I found a really good portraits artist that could pull this off in B&G on my outer calf. I think it would look best without the Earth and just some black shading around it to set off the white suit. Maybe remove some of the unneeded straps across the stomach area. A Flying Tigers AVG tiger across and above the knee: And on the inner calf, a classic WWII nose art pinup. She'll have to be a brunette like my wife to keep me out of the dog house. Something original but a little like this:

5 weeks - good enough for chlorine, but not healed enough to provide the same protection against sun. Comparing 4 and 8 weeks with sun and chlorine variables is probably not possible to state a difference, although 4 weeks is likely fine for chlorine if it healed ok - I would still make sure to wash with soap, probably antibacterial, afterwards. For some reason I recall 3 weeks being a good number to shoot for. Use of sunscreen regularly is a newer phenomenon with the growing knowledge of skin cancer and the sense that the sun is stronger since we were kids, so yeah, those with newer tattoos might be taking better care of them as a result of that as well. Aftercare - everyone is probably different. I suspect the folks on this board are more likely to protect their investments.

I hate to be That Guy, but it seems to be the role I am destined to play in life. It's Season 6 of Ink Master, not season 1. There is NO REASON for any artist to enter that House and say "Gee I don't do (insert name of style here)" because they should know by now what is expected of them. Even if you have never seen a single episode of the show, you have Internet access and you can go to the Wikipedia page and learn. You can't do portraits? Don't sign up. You can't do Black and Gray? Don't sign up. You can't do American Traditional? Don't fucking sign up. It's a competition not your home studio. If you can't handle the pressure, pack your shit and go home. Or better still, DON'T FUCKING SIGN UP. (I'm looking right at YOU, Mystical Mike, you fucking prat.) Shane O'Neill, Scott Marshall, Steve Teft, Joey Hamilton...these guys didn't crack under the pressure. They consistently turned in solid, good tattoos under the exact same constraints as everyone else. And Scott Marshall then defeated 3 other Ink Masters in a Contest of Champions, so you can call him arrogant, but unless you can out-tattoo him, then you have no choice but to suck it up and drive on. To quote Sean Connery "Losers whine about their best. Winners go home and fuck the Prom Queen."

My wife called me a serial killer wanna be more than once. Must be the shaved head and goatee that goes well with the tattoos.

I have a consult coming up with Sam Warren at Dreams Collide in Lancaster, PA...everyone at that shop is pretty fantastic in my opinion, but I think Sam is the best choice for what I want. I told him a skeleton riding a decaying zombie horse and both of them in medieval armor. So it might turn out cool. :p https://instagram.com/sam_mso/

If you're happy with working in digital and traditional art mediums, good for you buddy. If people like your stuff, then that's great - but there will always be room for improvement with every piece of art you do, and while tattooing is no different, it is a completely different ball-game. I suggest that you do your research on the industry, travel around to different studios and get tattooed by highly reputable artists (yeah, you will have to travel, but this is small price to pay for a beautiful piece of art that will be on your skin forever). Collect a few tattoos and talk to artists about your own artwork, ask for their criticism or advice - if they like your personality and work, they MIGHT just give you a shot...just be prepared to work for it (and I mean SERIOUSLY work for it). Be yourself, be humble and remain open-minded and ready to learn. BECOME AND REMAIN TEACHABLE. Tattooing is serious business - either go for it 100%, or leave it to the professionals. Just my two cents...

Seriously, you found getting a tattoo too expensive and therefore bought a tattoo machine instead??? This will probably the nicest reply you'll get on this forum: Good Luck!

Awesome weekend at the London Convention. There were some awesome tattoos walking around and being created, not least on some LSTers. Congratulations to everyone that got some work. Everything I have seen so far looks great. I didn't get anything big or dramatic this weekend. Just this little guy by Len Leye at Clan of Tusk in Belgium. Really nice guy and fun time getting tattooed. It you don't know his work then check out his instagram.

Thanks dude! It's definitely up there as one of my favourite pieces, might even be in the number 1 spot. Tony is a beast and i'm really happy i got something from him, was awesome fun spending a few hours in the booth with him and Thomas Hooper, they're both really nice guys and kept me laughing all day. Also thanks to @Wilhell for stopping by to say hi! Sorry i couldn't talk longer but it was great to meet you.

Based on the response in the "Who Are You?" thread, I decided to start a thread about books you're currently reading or wanting to read or have influenced you or make good paper weights/bludgeons. I hope I don't sound like an intellectual snob, but one of the first things I look for when I'm invited into someone's house is a bookshelf. I don't judge anyone on their reading choices; instead, I see a bookshelf as window into a person's interests and passions, whether it's Plato, Patricia Cornwell, or Clymer's repair manuals. On my shelf I have Wolfe, Kesey, Thompson, the Bhagavad Gita, Chicano literature, true crime paper backs, travel books, and art/reference books. Currently, I'm reading "The Hero with a 1000 Faces" by Joseph Campbell. I started my Joseph Campbell journey via a conversation with AP Shrewsbury while I was getting tattooed (very interesting and nice guy BTW) about symbolism and myth. I went through "The Power of Myth" pretty quickly; it's written in an interview format between Bill Moyers and Campbell. "The Hero..." on the other hand, is dense and very academic. I was kind of turned off in the intro, but then it started to get interesting with Campbell's mythological anecdotes connecting cultural ideas about spirituality and purpose. Next up is Jodorowsky's "The Way of the Tarot", which I'm reading as a companion to the Telos Tarot I got through Shrewsbury. I'll give a run down when I finally get through "The Hero...":rolleyes:

I haven't really been an active poster lately, but I just wanted to check in and say hello and hope all is well. I've been super busy since my mentor and I decided to start up our own shop in downtown Roanoke, Virginia. I'm currently working 12-16 hour days balancing a job and tattooing. I've been able to tattoo super consistently since we opened up though and I've seen some improvements (albeit nowhere near anything I'd hope to be) in my technical ability. My pal Cody works with us as well, and yeah, it's been good. I'll try to check in more regularly, but I still peruse the board. Miss y'all.

I don't know a single person who actually enjoys the bickering and contrived set-ups. Not on this show or any other reality show. I think this is just what TV producers thinks people like, or what they hope they can make people like if they shove it down their throats enough. I'm just saying I would like the show a lot better if those things were different, I don't really expect them to change anything because that would require effort on everyone's part.

There is no question about who Hooper is and his level of talent, But why you have to diminish a positive comment tors my tattoo?

Let the humans think it all hurt as bad.

You and SStu... Damn, you two inspire me (and my legs)!

I guess I deleted the original pic from my IG, so here is the mighty kung fu mantis again by Bryan J Turnbull (from my LST gallery). I just got him touched up last week, so he's lookin crisp and crunchy like a bug should. This pic is is pre-touchup at the 2 year mark. ...and a couple new ones to buzz some life back into this thread: "BUZZ OFF" by Jonny Murdoch "ZEN SPIDER" by Jonny Murdoch - - - Updated - - - And I wanted to give this special lil guy his own write-up: I call this one "TESSERACT ANT" It is tattoo #36 and now is the smallest tattoo on my body (about the size of a quarter)...so small in fact that it isn't readable until you get close enough and squint ...this is a concept tattoo I've been planning on getting for some 'time'... You may recognize the black n grey tattoo on the peripheral as the Escher dragon on my ribs, which happened to be the first "big" tattoo I got in 2005. The Escher Dragon is a 2-dimensional piece of art that tricks the eye into seeing 3-dimensions by manipulating depth and perception. Now, did you ever read the book 'Wrinkle in Time' by Madelaine L'Engle when you were a kid? So...herein lies the concept...I got this time-travellin' ant tattoo, in 2015...that has found it's way INSIDE the Escher Dragon that was made 10 years ago. So now, I've gone and made this a 4-dimensional tattoo...by adding "time" as a new variable... I know some of you are thinking...geez Bongsau, trippy, that's some interstellar shit maan...maybe wanna lay of the shrooms... It was made by Bryan Turnbull at the Edmonton Expo (comic con). Edmonton Journal newspaper showed up and took our picture for the paper: The photo is actually pretty funny...it probably looks like I'm getting work on an epic backpiece to the uninformed public, but in reality it was the big man Bryan putting on my smallest tattoo LOL "Only in our imagination do we live in more than two dimensions, and with its help we attempt to enliven the flatness of our image with depth. All of a sudden it may dawn on us how foolish we are, we faddists of the two-dimensional picture with our constant urge to achieve unobtainable depth." -M.C. Escher, 1947[1]: - - - Updated - - - ...now to take this concept one step further...the ant is so small it may eventually fade and blow out...in which case in 10~20 years I will probably black it over, erasing the ant from the future and leaving it as a wrinke in time from the past...far out maan..

@The Tig = you could always just tell her it's an ode to Southern Star Bombshell Blonde . . .

Inexplicably one of my favorite flash designs, and this is a real nice version of it.

please impregnate me with your babies. one of the best collections in the planet.

Saved the erf! My power bill is sky high due to electrified hobbies like aquaria and orchids. This should make a dent.

Last Sparrow Tattoo - Forum Rules

Yes you can and should tattoo yourself directly after tattooing pig skin. Don't worry about cleaning the needles. Little known fun fact, pig skin is one of the best anti-microbials around!

file:///.file/id=6571367.9108508 file:///.file/id=6571367.9108467 This is the best I can do right now, both upper arms by Horimatsu from Osaka, done at Stockholm Classic Tattoo (except for the lines on the left arm, they were done at Tatuata in Helsinki). The left arm is not finished. I actually tried to post two different photos but I'm too stupid to manage that task...

I'd put away the tattoo machine for now and not touch it until you are safely under the direct supervision of a professional and very experienced mentor. I believe the word for the day is "Apprenticeship".

As usual, I really liked Kruseman's (fangirl, I guess). He did exactly what he should have and his was the only really readable design and would age the nicest. I was pretty bummed that the jury criticized it for being "just a rose," I'd much rather have a nice clean rose than 50 different components crammed into one muddy tattoo. People have no respect for the classics. Tyler's was shockingly bad, like scratcher level bad. And I'm so sick of his "I don't normally tattoo this subject, this skin, etc" shit...what DO you do? Things I would love to see the show do away with: the jury, and the entire existing format pretty much. The jury adds nothing to the show and it's always pretty shocking to see them vote someone the worst of the day when the judges thought they were one of the best. Just goes to show how little the average person knows about tattoos, I guess. I really feel like it contributes nothing and is pretty mean spirited. I would hate to have my brand new tattoo dissected by a bunch of people on TV and I always feel bad whenever someone is brought to tears during it. There's just no need to make someone feel so bad about something that wasn't even their fault...most of the time they didn't pick the artist and didn't impose the time limits. As for the format...I've always hated the skull pick thing. This isn't how tattooing is done, unless you're a world famous artist who has the luxury of declining inquiring people, you pretty much have to try to do whatever comes in the door or send it to someone else in the shop at least. I would like the show a lot better if people chose their artist. It's always kind of mind boggling when the show actually does that (like the last episode with the football players) and all the artists act like it's the worst thing ever...uh, isn't this how your shop is run back home? And if they actually got a decent amount of time to consult with them, if they broke the sittings up over more days, etc...anything to make sure the tattoos were the best they could be. Someone who isn't on the level of the other artists is still going to suck, whether they have 1 hour or 30 hours to do a tattoo. At least then it would give people more of a chance to get decent tattoos and do the craft more justice. And of course, they could get rid of as much drama as possible and I wouldn't bat an eye.

@ItsNewport I saw that getting drawn on you. It's turned out very nicely indeed. I spent most of Friday Avo getting my stomach/ribs shaded by Henning J. Which hurt. A lot.

stoked for all you guys and gals! I only see wihell on the IG could some of you post your user so I can follow? I am @panthersandeagles

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

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

This is what I was able to sit for today with Dave Cummings at PSC tattoo. About 3 hours, and not nearly as intense as my 1 1/2 with Chad on my other side, thank goodness! We stopped there because the next step was colour for the tiger, and I didn't have it in me. Next session next week, healing permitting. So stoked on this!

Had this done today, red raw, should look great healed once the different tones can be seen Tha finishes that leg off now apart from the foot :)

My step son's first tattoo is in large, flowing letters across his chest, "Only God can judge me", so maybe he has the right idea? LOL He's been in a little misdemeanor trouble lately, so I told him to button up his shirt when in front of the judge, just to play it smart.

I say bring on the stares,I like the attention,I like when people look at my tattoos,I get stares,and like Colored guy said,I get a lot of people turning their heads,as if I am a serial axe murderer and I will get 'em if they look ! LOL

My new pieces by Victor over last 2 days, he is bored shitless with faces, eyes etc so we tried some dotwrok and a little towards bio. He made the girl/demon face light to try and contrast Robert Hernandez's far too dark skull. He worked super fast, first day 5 hours, today 6 hours. :) We also had a funny convo about my back piece. He said when I had the Jesus done he had no clue I wanted my whole back done, nor did I. He said he would have done things a lot differntly had he known that, so we have now booked 2 more sessions as he wants to go rght over my back and change as much stuff as is possible to flow better and improve it, to me its fine lol Pics taken on my phone with my arse red raw lol Anyhow sorry for the arse shot again and I also covered the hanging penis nudity part :P

how about hell under the city with satan's head as a center piece on forearm or cross section of the earth below the city!