Leaderboard

Most of the outlining done today. Next appt is Christmas Eve, so will outline the underarm and then do all the shading. I don't think there will be time for color so that will be later. There is a mum at the bottom that curves around to the front of my arm, to tie in w/the mum on the opposite side. Then wind/water meet and swirl in the middle. Sadly, I am not bad assed enough to handle this becoming a full back piece. That very bottom bit of wind/water he added today was the clincher. Yikes.

started today...finish next month... can't go wrong w/snake and rose right? didn't have either...ScottSylvia's the best :)

I thought a lot about if or how to respond to this comment. At first I drafted a nasty, sarcastic response, but I thought better of it and decided to be more charitable. I can say with absolute certainty that I did not make the wrong decision to get tattooed. I got tattooed because I wanted to, for my own reasons. I happen to absolutely love my tattoos. The only regret that I have is that I’m not totally covered. When I first got tattooed, I had no idea what was ahead. I was going to get one tattoo, hidden, even when wearing a bathing suit, and that would be the end. It was to be a private thing. That was the way I wanted it, and I was happy with that. I never imagined that I would get more than one tattoo, much less several. And even as I got more tattoos, I intended to keep them private. The were to be for me and my husband. Even when I completed my half-sleeves, they were calculated to be coverable. But I never imagined how much I would like being a tattooed person, I never anticipated how much I would come to love the way I looked with my tattoos. I never imagined how happy they would make me. And I never thought that I would love my tattoos so much that I would sometimes like to share them with the world. This whole discussion would never have happened if I had decided to keep them private, so to suggest that I made the wrong decision simply because of my concern about what people would think is rather unfair and uninformed. I’m not a person that is saying “Hey, I’m thinking about getting my first tattoo. I will cover my whole forearm and back of my hand. But I’m worried about the reaction of others.” in that case it might be appropriate to ask if the person if they are sure that they are making the right decision. But I am a person already happily tattooed and am now simply trying to become comfortable with letting them show in public. I like LST because most people here are understanding and helpful. They are (usually) not judgmental of the tattoo decisions that others make. If a woman posts that she is getting a backpiece and want to wears something that will not be too revealing while the work is being done, you get dozens of helpful suggestions from women who have already dealt with the issue. No one says “If you are afraid of showing you body in the tattoo studio, then perhaps you shouldn’t get a tattoo.” Quite honestly, the comment is exactly the kind that I might expect to hear from a rude person who is a tattoo hater.

The color 'settles in,' to borrow Synesthesia's phrase, because your immune system continues to ferry ink particles into your lymph system slowly, and because you grow new layers of epidermis, so the bits of ink wind up kinda swallowed up by more cells, and, yeah. You can't prevent that. Unless you stop making new cells. In which case you would be dead, so don't do that.

For me when i was first getting into this industry it was Dave Fox who always made me drool, everything he did just had this perfect layer of TOUGH over it, with just the right amount of exagerration

piss poor excuse for a picture of the actual tattoo, I'll get you guys a better one when it's healed and not completely crusty. Freddy Corbin, Temple Tattoo Oakland

Hello Everyone, My Name is Marc Taylor, I am the owner/operator of Gold Mine Tattoo in historic Jamestown Ca. looking forward to all the good to come put of this board

I do, too. It's a nicely executed black and gray rose--one of the most iconic tattoos around. And I think that your complexion is perfect for it.

I think its beautiful.

That's on Travis who used to work at KA, and at Ed Hardy weekend, him, Chuck, Frankie, and one guy who is a regular client/friend there took a pic with their backs from O'Donnell, Boltz, Roper, and Rubendall, respectively. The pic is floating around out on the internet, and it's insane. Found it: https://instagram.com/p/2xAecHsNc9/?taken-by=chuckdtattoos

I'm a sucker for a well-executed munewari, and no one does them better than Horitoshi: And my jaw hits the floor pretty much every time Brian Kaneko posts anything. Example: Same goes for Drew Flores. The head he's working on is also a nice reminder that tattoos can still be shocking:

meh ok here is a pic :) from the amazing Steve Boltz totally good time talking mostly golf turns out Steve is an avid golfer and pretty good I'm neither but I love stogies and beer with friends and lets face it - thats more important than a decent backswing ;) anyway - funky fish on my bicep...

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 always loved this piece by Jeff Gogue.

I love his work but I unfortunately haven't seen many large scale pieces by him. A bunch of paintings, couple sleeves and lots of one off but nothing like that back piece, holy hell. I'm so bummed he left Philly and went to CA I want another tattoo by him.

Jeez from the intro I was expecting something terrible. I like it a lot. It will lighten up and settle in naturally over time. What you need to do is get more good tattoos! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I felt like this has to be posted somewhere on this board, since I can't be the only one who nerds out over stuff like this: BBC One - Life Story, Courtship, Pufferfish 'crop circles' Pufferfish mandala. Animals are amazing.

Luckily this has only happened to me on a relatively small tattoo. There is actually an action shot of it posted here already. I had little choice but to grit my teeth and bear it. I took any short pause in tattooing to move my arm a bit and relieve the pressure. In the end though, the pain/discomfort in my elbow really did mask a lot of the pain in what is a pretty sensitive area to get tattooed (inner arm). And it makes for a good story to go with an excellent tattoo.

I had no idea that these were Masonic symbols and my father was a Mason his entire adult life. When I think Masons, I think of the builder's square and compass thingy that forms a diamond shape and has a "G" in the middle. I learned something new today, Thanks.

No collection is complete without at least one, IMO. Next week I am having a barred owl in flight just below this piece and my left sleeve will be almost complete!:cool:

Speaking of Gordon Combs...

I can't explain why this one had such an impact, but it really struck me. By Troy Trujillo

@sophistre Thanks lady! I didn't think I was going to either and I definitely don't want to do the rest of my chest, but it felt right so I went for it. I do want to do my stomach though and feel like having untattooed boobs would look weird but I can't think of a single thing that would look good on boobs that's not flowers. #tattooproblems

The best tattoos are the ones that are tough and pretty. You got one of the best ones.

recently found this local artist in my area, his name is Andre i dont know his last name but i will definitely be getting a tattoo off him after seeing these legs he did, Fucking mind blown!! also i believe they are based off a Rob Roskopp pro deck designed by Jim Phillips.

Everyone already knows this but Marius Meyer seems to melt brains on the daily ( well, mine at least… ):

My guess would be Carl Gustafsson who went by Kalle the tattooist (1888-1975) who started tattooing at age 13, which could add up. He was from Gothenburg, sweden. If you own the book Nordic tattooing by jon nordstrom you can find more info and pictures of high flash and preserved line drawings. The lay out of designs seems to be consistend with what you posted edit: didnt read that you allready figured it out, ill have a look at that name! Thanks for the piece of history!

From what I have read in the last couple of pages of this thread, the Malazan stuff sounds like the Simarillion had a baby with Gene Wolfe's Shadow of the Torturer stuff. With maybe some Viriconium sprinkled on top. I'm curious! I can add it to the pile of 'gigantic fantasy epics that take years to chew through' with the Gormenghast books, which I still have not finished. I have been reading a LOT, because I'm too tired at night right now to do anything else. I just finished With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa, by Eugene Sledge. I picked it up because it was frequently quoted in Ken Burns' WWII documentary 'The War,' which I just finished watching. (It's amazing, but it's Ken Burns, so yeah.) Also been reading a lot of short stories and horror, as usual. Stephen Graham Jones' After the People Lights Have Gone Off; Fungi, which is a collection of fungus-themed weird tales by a bunch of big names (Vandermeer, Mamatas, Barron, Tanzer)' A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay, which is kind of an exorcism novel and kind of more than that; Last Days by Adam Nevill, a paranormal occulty investigation-documentary type book that actually gave me the creeps to read at night, which is no mean feat, because very little in fiction actually makes me uneasy anymore. I'm still analyzing it to figure out what made it work so well. The New Black: A Neo-Noir Anthology is probably really self-explanatory. Nightmare Carnival, edited by Dennis Danvers, with a bunch of carnival-focused short weird fic. Ominous Realities: The Anthology of Dark Speculative Horrors. Non-fiction, I just recently finished The Man Who Wasn't There: Investigations into the Strange New Science of the Self, by Anil Ananthaswamy. It's a layperson's neuroscience book about the brain-body connection and its significant role in forming what we think of as the Self, and it somewhat contests the (now fairly popular) hypothesis that the Self has no static parts at all, and doesn't actually really exist. Good stuff. And right now, I'm almost halfway through The Quiet Room: A Journey out of the Torment of Madness, by Lori Schiller and Amanda Bennett. It's about Schiller's descent into schizophrenia, her experiences with it, and her recovery process. There are irritating parts of it (Schiller and her family are extremely wealthy/successful and have some pretty glaring biases against 'lesser' types of people, bleh) but it's still really fascinating. - - - Updated - - - Oh, and I just learned that China Mieville has a new collection of stories out as of this summer, and nobody told me, even though he might be my favorite. So, yeah. Good readin' summer. :)

In business and in life.

I have been crazy-busy and absent, but you guys have been getting some killer tattoos! That tiger on the ribs, SeeSea's monmon cat, and omeletta's lion all made me super-jealous!

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

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...

Got this Shishi Lion from Alix Ge at the London convention yesterday (pic nicked from her instagram): When I arrived, Alix was still drawing. She told me we couldn't put the tattoo on the side of my thigh like I had asked for because for that I would have to lie down and she only had a chair. Well, alright then. When I came back from a short tour around the convention she had obviously done another drawing which was much bigger than the first. She thought the animal had to be rather large to be nice, good with me. But she didn't think we could fit peonies as well, would I be happy with cherry blossoms instead...? Bummer...what? Noooo...! Oh well, so we agreed to put on the lion stencil and see then. Stencil went on, peonies were added freehand. No problem, all fitted on there nicely....but...that was gonna be a looong session. If I was a strong woman, she asked. Ermmmmm, well, I bl**dy hoped so...what else could I say? She looked at me particularly sceptical after she found out it was only my second tattoo.... Obviously, we made it, yippie!!! Six hours on a folding chair with two breaks. Even though I got some odd looks and remarks for running around with a pillow under my arm, I was well glad I had brought it because it made the chair way more comfortable! Apart from that, getting tattooed at the convention was actually surprisingly good as there was so much to watch and get distracted by. I could openly stare at all the tattoos walking by and quite a few people gave me encouraging smiles and words. That was really cool. Alix is super lovely and I kinda felt a little bad for her having to sit on her small suitcase for hours. Towards the end she told me that she wouldn't be able to do what I did and that she'd never get a tattoo that takes more than one hour herself. I doubt that's actually true, but it was a sweet thing to say anyway. Suffice to say I'm super chuffed but also glad it's over! And this morning my 3 1/2 year old greeted me excitedly with "Mummy, I have a tattoo, too!". Turns out the entire family has tattoos now, some of them of the temporary type, some rather not ;-)

it gets interesting when you go forearm which i did this summer onto both forearms - i wear short sleeves at work (school counselor at a primary school) and as i predicted the kids love them and the adults have a multitude of comments and questions which have mostly died down its funny as my overall coverage increases i get more comments and let me tell you it is quite a revealing experience in terms of the social skills defecits that many adults around me have i myself feel that i have quite good tact when speaking with others - understanding what topics or commentary are in good form or poor taste, etc - but those around me - wow "how much did that cost, how can you afford that?" "why would you do that to yourself?" "what do you think you'll look like when you're 80?" and of course "what does it mean, it must mean something?" but i have no regrets going below the elbow and i intend to add more :) its funny though - i'm telling my wife how so many times in conversations that peoples eyes dart around to my tattooed areas and how that feels weird - she said - "now you know what it's like to have cleavage"

I and my husband have a one cat :) big fluffy cat which name is Belfegor (abbreviated - Belfik). Animal was take from street and brought to home where we fed and treated cat. And if Belfik like that: Now like this:

Henrik Grysjberg out of France, while guesting at Off the Map Nw. Such a great dude. http://www.henrik-tattoo.com/

Yeah that Bloodwork book of back pieces this time should be something else . I think the Tattoo Time series is the cornerstone of my collection ,these probably get the most use of my stuff and won't cripple you financially .Don't let their age fool u either these babies are still better than most today . Other books i like about a number of artists are :We are Tattoo -put out by the Tattoo Burst magazine (Japan). Underway is the only way -by SOG Nihon Dentou vol 1,2,and 3 -again by Tattoo Burst highlighting Japanese artists this time with amazing photography . Tattooing the Invisible Man -works of D.E Hardy Theres so many more but these are my best ones that don't do your bank in