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Had this bad boy added to my sleeve Thursday last week. So happy!

First session Wednesday with Tim Lehi at Temple in Oakland. He lined the main image and some background. Pumped to get started, pumped for the long road ahead, pumped to finally be able to contribute to this thread after ogling it for years...

The fact the majority of people now think of the swastika as primarily a racist and Nazi symbol speaks volume to the impact cultural appropriation can have.

Frankly, @Thenegativeone, it's really naive to think that cultural destruction is only ever "entirely perpetrated by the state". Cultural appropriation happens any time you disassociate the images and symbols of a culture from their original meaning and start valuing them purely aesthetically or stereotypically. So the filmmaker @Graeme mentioned is not being childish. Her people, their language and their practices had been systematically brought to the brink of extinction. And now she and others are working to revive those traditions and reinvigorate those cultural practices. Can you imagine if blonde college girls started getting twee "native tattoos" based on those designs that you've fought so hard to bring back to your community? Wouldn't you be pissed? We should listen to people when they say they have a problem with these things. (This also happens often in a myriad of ways that are not tattoo related.) It's ok to appreciate things from afar. Be interested and active in learning about different tattoo practices and their cultural meanings, be supportive of it, but don't just blindly co-opt things because it looks cool. The Vikings thing is interesting. To me it's not culturally appropriative in the sense I described above, and I think a big part of that is that there was never really an attempt to wipe out Viking history/culture (not in the way that happened to Native Americans). With that said, I wouldn't go about getting runes or tattoos found in old mummies, for example.

Ta Moko designs are based around genealogy, social rank and status, accomplishments, and so on, so I could see a hypothetical situation where you got a Maori tattoo because "they have the most badass warrior culture on earth" and ended up getting a tattoo that describes somebody else's life and family. Would Maoris be offended by this? I don't know, but they'd probably think you're a dumbass for getting a tattoo of something that you're engaging with so superficially. I do think the same goes for Viking stuff. If you're going to get magical staves tattooed on you, it's probably best to understand what you're getting and what it means. The trend a few years ago of people getting Masonic imagery is another example of this: you might think it looks cool and mysterious and occult, but people who know how to read the imagery know you have gibberish on you and you come across as a moron as a result. I don't see how getting a tattoo just because it looks cool and having no understanding beyond that is any different than somebody getting kanji while not understanding the language.

Kevin Leblanc. He's been killing it for a long time and his name only pops up here and there. I don't believe he gets the credit he deserves.

hey! i painted that! it is a waters repaint. you can get a good book from blueletter books that has that design in it. @Jackrabbitt666 - - - Updated - - - also, how did you find that? i posted it once on instagram like a year+ ago. @hogg

I should really know better to engage with this topic on here, but here it goes, in the spirit of fostering an intelligent discussion about tattoos: There's a Canadian Inuit filmmaker who made a documentary a couple of years ago about trying to learn about the virtually forgotten tradition of Inuit tattooing before she got tattooed herself using the traditional skin sewing methods. Why were the traditions forgotten? Because there was a concerted effort on behalf of the church and the state to eradicate indigenous culture, that was deemed to be "cultural genocide" by a recently-concluded Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Families were torn apart, countless lives were destroyed, languages were all but lost, cultural practices vanished. The legacy of this endures. There are people who are trying to revive the languages and traditional practices like tattooing. I mentioned the filmmaker in particular above because she has deliberately limited the distribution of her documentary precisely because of fears of cultural appropriation. Her reasoning is that the revival of traditional Inuit tattooing is so fragile that if this style of tattooing is appropriated it might discourage the people who are rediscovering their own traditions. I can see why this woman might think it offensive that a non-Inuit person would get an Inuit tattoo just because they like the style, and I don't think she'd be wrong. It's certainly not "childish".

Love all the pieces here!! Finished this up back in 2012 while I was living in Beijing... Done by Tang Ping (ziyou tattoos). The top right part is a cover-up. He also did a monkey king on my front but i guess that belongs on a front piece thread :D. www.instagram.com/ziyoutattoo He also did this tibetan skull (it won 1st at the london tat convention in 2010)... which was the piece that sold me on getting mine from him.

3.5 more hours of progress last week. total is about 51 hours so far and i'm guessing we have 20-25 more hours until we are finished. Legs and ass are 99% complete. Waiting until it is finished before sharing anymore full back pictures but here is a close up on my ass/leg/lower back area: - - - Updated - - - Also I just realized that over the past 12 months I've been tattooed a total of 63 hours (51 on my back and 12 on my front). plus ~100 hours of driving back and forth from Boston to Long Island x10, Boston to Manhattan x1, Boston to Montreal x1, and Boston to Reading PA x1.

I don't get offended by people who get viking imagery or symbols, I think it's cool that people think my country's history is cool enough to permanently have under their skin. Just don't be a pussy with a viking tattoo. Or doesn't that count because vikings were white? Anyway, I won't get your culture tattooed on me unless I think it's fascinating and cool. Yes, I think your culture has cool elements to it. Be it warrior spirit, honor code or fascinating lore with sick creatures. If I want a warrior that represent the Maori culture (as an example), that would be because I think they have the most badass warrior culture on earth. It's a complement to every single Maori that has ever lived, and not an attempt at stealing, degrading or destroying their culture.

A guy I worked with had a saying that I'll just leave here. "Ya'll take this stuff way too seriously."

It's been a while. Went back to Mexico for a visit. Done by Juan Arreguin "El Super" at Superfly in Leon Guanajuato Mexico.

Just got my first proper custom tattoo finished, my first one with colour too.

Latest tattoos from Guen Douglas done at Magnum Opus in Brighton. Really pleased with them but damn the heal is so tough. Usually heal very quickly with minimum issues. First time using vasocaine so don't know if this is affecting the heal? Anyway can't wait for them to be settled in. Got an appointment with Sneaky Mitch on Wednesday, way to soon but you just don't say no, not even when you've been waiting as long as I have to be tattooed by him!

Currently healing both hands, which go up onto my wrists and down onto my knuckles. I'm about a week in, they're so sore, very crusty, I can't really move my hands properly. Going back to work on Tuesday so worried about gloves coming on and off. Whaaaaaaa this is the PERFECT thread for me. What's weird is the usual wash/cream thing that usually makes my tattoos feel better actually making these ones sting! Was so bad the other night after washing and applying aloe Vera they felt like they were on fire! I started crying to which my usually lovely boyfriend rolled over and said 'will you be crying for long? I've got to get up in the morning.' Haha cheers love. Anyway glad to have somewhere I can whine to people who understand! - - - Updated - - - This gives me hope, mine are crust city. It's so sore! I hate healing

A bit amusing...I'm reading my lengthy post above from 18 months ago...now I've got tattoos creeping the cuff and onto the hands. Things change, tattooing is fluid! here's my newish dragon fist: and here's a an artsy selfie of my dragon fist - dragon fly and dragon eyes ! for your viewing pleasure see guys! i got lots of space left...maybe squinch in some tudor roses on the hands in the future

Just wanted to bump this back to the top because Brian David Macneil is impressing me right now and I don't remember seeing his name on here. There are so many lower-profile good tattooers in New England.

Damn, nobody is disappointing! Got this little one from Andy Perez at the new shop Allied in Bushwick when I was back a couple months ago visiting. Bad cell phone picture, but you get the idea. First one above the collar, d'oh!

I got this from Tony Nilsson at Blue Arms Tattoo in Oslo today. It's based off an old Percy Waters drawing that Tony had wanted to do for a while, and I had no specific requests so we just went for it. I'll admit that I did cheat a bit, after the outline we did use a numbing spray or something like that, which basically made me not feel a thing until we started doing the colors. Happy we did, since then we got to finish it so I don't have to wait until the next time I'm home.

I'm bothered by it sometimes. We all have our own boundaries. An Indian Headdress, for example, is a tattoo I would not wear. I have no intention of calling out someone who would as I don't know their relationship with that imagery. I really like Ganesha as a tattoo image but will probably not have it done because I don't know enough about the meaning. I might get Isis someday as she has mostly fallen off as a current god. Perhaps she will come back someday. My daughter could use a god created in her image to look up to. Like many people I struggle with consistency. The only caution I would have for all of us, myself included, is to not give tattoos a free pass on some of these kinds of issues just because we like tattoos. It's an easy trap to fall into.