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BUMP. Re-reading this thread and then reading several recent threads made me realize that the level of discourse has fallen around here. I didn't start this site, but I've been here since the beginning, and everything that @SacramentoDan said in this thread's first post is what I loved/still love about it. If you wanna find strangers being rude to each other on the Internet, go to literally any other forum. LST is different, and as a moderator, I'll ask that you respect and help to maintain that difference. I've met several of you in real life and have really enjoyed getting to know you a little better. Some of you are now real world friends (imagine that). If one of us had made a shitty comment to the other online, we'd both be less inclined to want to meet in the first place. If there's a poster you don't like, put them on ignore. Have a snide comment typed out that is guaranteed to lower the level of discourse/add nothing? Feel free to delete it. If someone's really out of line, trust that the other mods and I will gladly swing the banhammer. Thanks.

So I went for my appointment with Tomas Tomas today. Trying some different styles :) Had me toes done lol, wasnt a lot we could do really with just toes but I think once it settles down and its the same colour as the snake, should fit in great. He showed me a vid and said this pattern is from some tribe from the Amazon. Now all I need is some animal skin leather pants ;p Hes a fucking awesome crack :)

I'm a fantastic poster and I have contributed a lot to this forum. I get that tattoos mean different things to different people, but to me, part of the forum's motto of GET GOOD TATTOOS has to do with resisting the tendency to turn tattooing into another cheap and disposable consumer subculture, and somebody coming here saying that they are primarily interested in using this forum for research into an aftercare product that absolutely nobody needs is part of that. If somebody comes here wanting to learn and talk about tattoos, whether they are thinking about their first, or are well on their way to a full suit, and is interested in the community here, they are absolutely welcome here. If they're just here because they have a product to sell they can move along.

good times at smith st. yesterday with steve boltz - loved the shop and had a great time - steve is a good convo and eli was there as well and also seemed very nice as well - would love to see those guys do a LST interview - no pics yet - i take crappy ones and steve doesnt post often so i'll wait until it heals and see if i snag a decent one i got a funky fish on the inside bicep - not too painful a spot imo - plus steve was pretty quick

Howdy folks - so we don't want to allow self-serving surveys like this for reasons mentioned above. Also, however, we do want to keep the tone of our interactions positive around here for the benefit of all. Kudos @tattooscience for getting a great tattoo.

Maybe not yet. But then why are you here to "gather valuable information"? Surely it's just so you can better heal your own tattoos or make recommendations for your friends and family, right? That's why you took the time to read and comment on the numerous after-care threads already here, right? If being skeptical of some random user's veiled probes into a subculture is "bullying" then I'm glad this forum has some big ol meanies.

Best part of being on LST, and one of the best parts of being a human actually, has been meeting some of you in real life. I adore everyone of you I communicate with (past and present). Believe it it or not, we talk about LST in our conversations via text, via Facebook, and in person. I know I have not been active in a while (life son!) but I intend to try harder. Thank you LST for being there in so many major moments I've experienced.

yeeesh...I will remember the scent of this thread, smells like some bullshit

If you really wanted to sound like a douche you could have said "I bet you still remember the scent of a first pussy you ate". Ick. What a creep.

No, because it is at least once a week that I see a request like this on one of the forums that I visit, always from someone newly joined, to fill out some survey. Usually it is from a lazy college student that is supposed to be doing research. Sometimes it is from a commercial venture. I give you the same response. Please - do your own work and don't ask forum users to do it for you! Now, this may sound as I'm being a douche, but as I said - it happens weekly (I'm on too many forums, I'm sure).

Yeah, I'm with Graeme on this method...keep it clean and let your body do its thang. Keep it simple. All these fancy tattoo aftercare products...lol...the best results I've received is when my tattooer slapped a depends diaper over the fresh tattoo, leave the bandage on for a few hours or overnight, and told me leave it alone. Maybe use a pea-drop of lubriderm after a few days of letting it air dry which worked great for a few years and then it started giving more burning/itchiness, likely from the lanolin, so I switched to other generic brands with least amount of ingredients. I've come to understand from my experiences that tattoo healing results are a function of how the tattoo was put into the skin, not what you put on the tattoo afterwards. Aftercare products are irritants in my opinion. I started doing your survey but further down into the questions really alienated me as someone who has "more than 5 tattoos"...not really any 'none of the above' choices. Do people really think this far into their tattoo aftercare? Hmm I wish this tattoo-goop had a nicer flowery scent! Have we all turned into a bunch of wimps? Promoting dry healing doesn't really do much for the aftercare product industry ;) Welcome anyway @tattooscience hope you find what you're looking for but moreso find some stuff you're not actively looking for. That is the great thing about this forum.

Do you do lampshades?

I'm taking mine with me :D

@ChuckJ Thank you for being forthright about answering our questions. I think the "least morbid as possible" approach is what doesn't sit right with me about this. On the one hand I completely understand why if somebody wanted to preserve their tattoos to give to their children, spouse, or whoever, that hanging what is obviously a piece of preserved human skin on the wall wouldn't be to every taste and disposition, but when it comes down to it, that's still what it is. The attempt to take the morbidity out of something that is intrinsically morbid just seems kind of weird, even if the reasons why you would want to do that are apparent. A corollary to that is that a tattoo isn't the same thing as a painted canvas in that it only has meaning as a tattoo once it's in the skin and is subject to the bodily processes of aging and decay, and to take the tattoo out of that context makes it not a tattoo. I prefer those wet Japanese bodysuits, or the preserved skin that still looks like skin with pores and nipples and all that in the Wellcome Collection. Those exist for very different reasons though, and again, nobody is putting those on a wall. Anyway, thanks again for answering our questions and welcome.

@SeeSea - I almost fell asleep getting tattooed by Horizakura a couple years ago. I liked the sound of it, and the quietness. It's made me rethink how I want to continue getting tattooed: more tebori!!!

I found that using Saniderm on my healing leg helped a lot with the blood-rush feeling. Obviously, take your artist's aftercare advice, though. (The downside is that a lot of liquid collects under the Saniderm, so if you do get the OK to use it, you might have to change it a couple times to avoid leaking). Putting a bag of frozen peas on there helps, too. I basically tried to remember RICE (rest, ice, compression, elevation). I just rock the leg hair over a healing tattoo for about a month.

I don't know if my input is as helpful as you're looking for, but I have my head tattooed and I shave regularly. By regularly I mean every two or three days. I shaved the day I got tattooed just to speed up the process so my artist didn't have to spend time doing it. After that I waited three weeks just to make sure the tattoo was fully healed before shaving again. As for itching I just dealt with it. It was only bad the first four or five days but the itch goes away. And don't worry about the hair growing through the tattoo, that's just normal. Just let your body heal before shaving again. Any tattoo I have that required more than one session needed to be fully healed before moving onto the next session. Shaving or waxing can really affect your new tattoo in a negative way since it's still a fresh, open wound. And I think that might be a reason you suffer so much pain. 11 hours in one sitting is a lot of trauma to the skin. The longest I went on my lower leg(below the knee) was 3 hours and I had similar effects when I stood up or walked around. So I can only imagine how bad it was with a such a large tattoo. I hope everyone's input was helpful! And good luck on your next leg tattoo!!

At last, a picture with color. The lines are healed and the color is fresh. After it's all healed I'd like to take a photo in better light. This was done by the amazing Gilda Acosta at Fatty's Tattoos in Washington DC, working from photographs of the actual flowers. They are botanically correct! Thinking of adding a bird to the other shoulder blade next. Or continuing the flowers across my arm. Or both...

Very interesting concept. Part of me loves the idea, while the other part of me rejects the notion based on the fact that tattoos are the only possession that you can litterally take with you to the grave. Silly thought perhaps. Still, an amazing concept as I could see an entire museum filled with tattoos from deceased collectors. Morbid, I guess, but still pretty cool concept. Nice work!

Welcome, but if you want to "gather valuable information" I hope you're going to post pictures of your tattoos first. Nobody likes an interloper.

- - - Updated - - - All the Marlboro men had upside down tattoos.

I got a horror short story published in a collection by female horror writers. Not been around much, as have been concentrating a lot on my writing.

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!

interesting, but bizarre discussion. sounds a bit like signing up for life insurance...

Welcome and thank you @ChuckJ , interesting. Yknow I've thought about preserving my skin in the future, but didn't know there were new ventures that actually did this. I'm not sure how I feel though about having my tattoos on a wall and framed. Tattoos cease to become 3D living art when you take them off the body in my opinion. And I guess that's what I like about tattoos, they move, they are alive, they are part of you. "Lived In" art. Maybe one day I'll be able to compile all the stencils, photos, stories and anecdotes about my tattoos in a book for the purpose of passing on to my future generations. I'm still planning on living to 101 years old, so I have lots of time to figure it out.

Seems a little creepy to me. I think I'd rather have an artist's rendition of the tattoos as opposed to the actual skin.

@Graeme, I can certainly understand your opinion. This is definitely a controversial subject. I agree with a lot of what you said. To clarify further on "the least morbid approach" I am focusing on tattooing as more of an art form than ever. I believe its changing so drastically and people are doing such amazing things with it. Things that we thought were impossible in the 90's even. Therefore when I say least morbid I want people to focus on their tattoos as art and I believe if we just had that piece of "wet skin look" people would tend to forget about the art and focus on the skin. When they are on you while living people look at the art not the skin. I want to keep it the same way. People focusing on the art and the meaning etc. Cheers and thanks for the great conversation!

I'm about half way through Midnight Tides, the fifth book of Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series which I started reading because of recommendations on this thread. I am in awe at the scope and audacity of this project, and that he actually seems to be pulling off what he set out to achieve: if anything ever deserved the adjective "epic", it's this, and the depth and complexity of the world he created is, as far as I know, unparalleled in fantasy and he's done it (so far) without really any of the expository world building that tends to weigh down the genre. That makes it a challenging, sometimes frustrating read--like in the first chapter of the first book where he's describing a sorcerous battle and is getting into things that he doesn't explain and only gradually reveals over the following thousands of pages--but I think the effort is ultimately worth it.

That was a really fun read. There are a few technical holes for the techies, but otherwise a really enjoyable book. So far the movie reviews are mostly positive.

Nice roses. Who is the artist? I would suggest a snake because it would fill the spaces nicely, flow great on your arm, give a nice contrast to the roses with scales and/and patterns, and snakes and roses go fantastic together.

Heres a link: http://imgur.com/a/HjUIb sorry for the bad quality lol

Session 6 done, just the shark mouth, some more detail in the shark itself and dropping lower down my ass to go...hopefully be wrapped up in one more session. Photos not as flash this time sorry folks...

I also have not been here much recently, but decided to cruise on by and say hiiiii guys! I'm super busy and kicking ass at my new gig and stoked to be doing something I enjoy that fits my lifestyle so well. Stoked to be getting tattooed by Shad in two weeks and then who knows what else is going to get done in October! I'll be back in SF for Halloween and Convention fun. :))) Miss you, LST, and think of you often. (I'm on my work computer all the time now and *alarmingly* focused, so I never think to make it over here because who wants to be on another computer AFTER work? but truly.)

Been ages since I posted on this forum, don't really know why since I have been lurking every now and then. Guess i've been more into real life outside world thingies and started university again. Anyway a friend of mine put this on my leg. Just to get some panties in a twist: this was not done in a shop, but in a bedroom. edit: It's about 2 months healed

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

Welcome Chuck. I gotta say that looking at some of the supposed examples of preserved skin on the savemyink.com website that they don't look like any tattoos I've ever seen but they do look an awful lot like coloured pencil on paper. I'm thinking especially of that "new school" flower. What do you say to a skeptic?

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".

If someone is interested in some powerful bold irezumi, lines made with machine and all shading with tebori, I can warmly recommend Horimatsu (@bunshin_horimatsu on instagram). He travels a lot, especially in Europe. My first experience of getting tebori done was a juzu bead around my ankle, by said Horimatsu, and it pretty much felt the same as a machine tattoo feels. Then a few months after that he visited Stockholm again and did a half sleeve on me, with some cover ups in it, in five consecutive days . He did all lines and also background (because of the cover up situation...) with machine. That took three days. Then he shaded all colour in two 3-4 hour sessions. The arm felt pretty bad after three days. I think the tattooer stretches the skin with more pressure when doing tebori tattoos, so the last two days were kinda rough. I think what I'm trying to say is it doesn't hurt more than machine tattooing, unless you have huge areas of freshly made tattoos around the areas being worked on with tebori tools. The healing was a bit different on the tebori bits, it kind of flaked off faster than the areas made with machine. Also, maybe ot, I know it may sound stupid for someone to get tattooed five days in a row, but I really wanted the arm finished. And it was a pretty cool experience:)

Day three.Healing nicely.Just Aquaphor.

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

One more session on this Martin Hildebrandt tribute, by Rich Hardy. Damn did that lower torso session suck.

I finally got around to taking a pic of ol' Tigger. Not exactly my best photo work. When I walk or ride, the muscle movement makes him give a little pelvic thrust!

I would say that technique aside I'd be really bummed if any of those were on me, but the truth is if you showed me your drawings I'd refuse to be tattooed by you so it's a moot point. @CultExciter offered you excellent advice above. Those people would be a lot better off with some simple Sailor Jerry flash because at least it would be drawn correctly. Trace classic flash. Take up drawing from life to understand how things work and go together. Always use reference. Traditional style should be about taking objects and distilling them down to their essence: look at Scott Sylvia's roses. They're simple but they fully capture the elegance and beauty of a rose. Work hard to draw like that.

Adam hays did this on me.

I have a reaper on my calf. This past summer a little dude saw it, looked up at me in awe, and went "Woah." It totally blew his little mind. That was the best.

I figure since I'm a Star Wars nerd and recently got a Star Wars Tattoo, I'll post it here. It's from a Derek Ward Flash Set and done by Todd Lamere at Body Art Tattoo. This is only 5 days into healing so I'm sure it will look a bit different.

Not a dragon but this shows what is possible - Tim Lehi Blackheart Tattoo S.F.