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Spur of the moment trip happening to Portland next week to see Tim Lehi for sesssion #4 of the back-piece. PUMPED.

@Boiled Dove its an interesting thing - the perception aspects somedays i see myself as heavily tattooed as well somedays i just see the empty spaces :)

Maybe go for a leg tattoo (calf or thigh) if you're considering sleeves in the future. Easily concealed and will leave prime real estate open on arms and back. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It's an electric snake. One of the things that I love about Dave's tattoos is that when he does Japanese there's always this influence of skate graphics there. The blue in the snake is intense too.

My right bicep is healing nicely. We'll have a few places to touch up, but I'm ready to do the next part! June 30 seems too far away.

You can but then you might get arrested for organ harvesting or something. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Best unintentional thread hijack in quite a while. Keep up the good work fellas :)

I've been called many things that are worse than 'tattoo collector' over the years; often deservedly so I will admit. I think I just crossed over this line recently myself. I now have 7 tattoos by 5 different artists. Really, in my mind, I'm just now to the point of qualifying as a tattooed person yet someone at work referred to me as having a lot of tattoos the other day. I wanted to say something like 'I know heavily tattooed people and I am not heavily tattooed' but I just let it go.

Welcome Kitti! My advice to the above question is to get high quality tattoos from good artists. Thomas Hooper did one of my arms and my back is Japanese and I think it looks great together. I don't have many good pictures of how they work together, though parts of my back were designed to tie together with my arm--there's a continuity between the water on my arm and the water on my back, for instance--but this gives you an idea:

New LST looking to make new friends and keep up with some of the best. Also acquired a machine that feels great looks even better and is enscribed with #28/L that is all. If anyone has any info or questions please reply.

I have a lot on my lower legs and never had swelling at all,but recently I had the top of my right hand done and it was a low pain level for me but it puffed up pretty good. BTW,I have both ankles done and man I could not stop my leg twitching,it was bad ! my knees,elbows and neck were not too bad either, my inner thigh pretty much sucked, IMO it's really different for all of us and of course it also depends on the artist.

So I finally had my calf tattoo done yesterday (pic in the latest tattoo lowdown thread). I'm wondering about the swelling which I still don't have at 32 hrs post tattoo - does it usually take some time to show up or have I dodged the bullet? That would be great because we decided to go with my uninjured leg in the end (for aestethic reasons) and since I still have some occasional residual swelling in that ankle, I'd rather not have two massive cankles lol. My skin seemed much less irritated than with my other tattoos, with barely any redness, for some weird reason. Have to say it was my least painful tattoo yet (the others are on both inner forearms, nape of my neck and a small piece each on upper arm & chest), to the point that I could have slept, but did my best to stay awake since I sometimes experience some fun leg twitching while asleep... I guess it could have been due to the artist's light hand and/or the kind of tattoo machine used (my first tat with a rotary). Also, it seems to be weeping a ton less than my forearm tattoos did, even though they are a bit smaller - so much so that I applied the tegaderm at just 3 hrs from the tattoo and I can still see the tattoo under it very clearly which is very different from the huge black bubble I got with the only other tattoo I 'dermed.

@Rob I main difference - cant throw your tatts up on craigslist if you get bored with them :)

My grandfather entered the military right around the end of the conflict with Korea. He never seen any action there or anything like that but heard he could have gone to officers school. I think he was in the army. He was stationed in Germany during the Korean conflict and I guess for a while after. He met my grandmother while he was stationed there. The M1 Garand was his favorite gun along with his muzzleloaders. I know he owned a few but I forget what calibers he had. But that's why I chose that weapon.

Once you've found an artist you are comfortable with, he/she will help you solidify your ideas. I think that finding the right artist is critical if you think you want your first to ultimately be part of a sleeve. Starting with something that will thematically fit into a larger piece - or not, if you opt not to go further - seems smart. Even the memorial could be part of a larger piece - something along the lines of a WWII tribute, etc. You will find lots of discussion material about pain and pain management techniques here and around the internet. There are certainly parts of the body that are generally more sensitive than others...but everyone senses pain differently. I will let those with much more experience guide you here but in my case my first is a fairly large piece on my upper arm/shoulder - which is noted as one of the least painful areas. For me, I felt nothing I would call pain - more like scratching and irritation. But again, we all have different pain tolerance levels. I loved your reference to M1 Garands. My dad was a Marine who enlisted at the end of WWI and later served in Korea. I have a great picture of him at Parris Island holding his Garand. I collect and shoot military surplus weapons - have a small collection - and have two Garands. Here's a picture of me shooting on my range. You can see the last shell casing ejecting to the upper front and the 8 round en bloc ejecting to the rear just in front of my head. The infamous M1 Garand "ping!" Good luck in your quest!!

Thank you for a listing of artists in the area. I'm thinking about maybe going small for my first tattoo because it don't know about the pain or anything like that. I have a couple of other tattoos in mind...but I'm not sure if they would make great first tattoo material. Like someday I'd like to get sleeves. But I'm undecided if I want something with a Japanese Flair to it since I love Japanese culture or if I want koi in a pond. My other idea is a piece to memorialize my grandfather. I want it to say something like In Memory of... his name then below his birthday and the day he died. In the middle have 2 M-1 Garands crossed and firing. I'm almost thinking for my first, I'd like to get something like a demon animeish samurai with red eyes carrying a katana at the ready with blood dripping from the end.

Hey, I'm from York, about an hour and a half from you. I don't know what kind of styles you like, but here's a few good local artists to get you started: Rob Diamond in Harrisburg - https://www.instagram.com/_diamondtattoos_/?hl=en Paul Acker in Philly - https://www.instagram.com/paulackertattoo/?hl=en Bryan Merck also in Philly and at the same shop as Paul Acker - https://www.instagram.com/bmerck_ink/?hl=en Pat Haney, again in Philly - https://www.instagram.com/easy_tiger/?hl=en Michael Kelly in Lancaster - https://www.instagram.com/michaeljtattoos/ Once you figure out what styles you're most into, we could probably give you some more specific recommendations, but those guys are just the first few off the top of my head that do really nice work.

Thanks for the responses everyone! I think I'll do as suggested and just try and go with solid work and deal with each tattoo border as it evolves. I have far too many artists i'd like work from to go for a full back piece as beautiful as I think they are :)

hey welcome aboard Ron @blueblur1997 at some point in their lives, everyone here didn't have any tattoos and got their first. best of luck with yours! cheers

@oboogie here you go :). Done today by Mr_rom3o

Here are the end results of my trip to Denver. My wife got some balloons and I got a praying mantis. Both by Destroy Troy at Til Death. Great shop and fun artist. Also, The Cure was fantastic, the beer was cold and I used Saniderm for the first time.

Here's my lighthouse. I got it done by King Len in 2012 (photo from when it was fresh). It was my first spontaneous tattoo - popped into the shop to say hi, Len was guest tattoo-ing, flipped through his flash book, hum'd and haw'd for 5 minutes and said hey you got time? ok let's do it! Come to think of it all my Len tattoos are like that ! Asked him to put an eyeball at the top and he obliged, but he wasn't going to use any extra colours other than the basics, that was non-negotiable. Kinda of a dumb spot to put a one-shot small tattoo (on the thigh) because it really cockblocked the space for a full size thigh tattoo, but meh no ragrets and I like that it symbolizes the no-plan spontaneous aspect to tattooing that I had overlooked for many years. https://www.instagram.com/kinglentattoos/ Len actually has made a lot of really nice traditional lighthouse tatts if you scroll through his 'gram.

3 weeks till my appointment, my first time having something more complicated drawn up for me, so excited and a bit apprehensive to see the design :) Should cover most of my lower back, more geometric blackwork and Studio Ghibli movie references.

Let's not take the "don't talk about money" rule too far. Perfectly fine to ask an artist what his/her rate is and how many hours it will take and do the math. Bring extra in case it goes over an hour or two and always tip your artist. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I love Freddie! Now I really can't wait to see it!

Freddie Mercury. I'm dying to see the initial sketch, my artist has been incredibly nice so far so I'd be even more bummed if I didn't like it.

I'm getting in 2 week a piece by Dane Soos at Inkamatic, Trieste. I posted about elsewhere but basically it's an old schol woman inside a sipder-web and a spider hanging from the web and a couple of flowers to balance the composition.

The best tattoo you can get is two animals fighting. Unless you get three animals fighting.

Halfway there by Chris Stuart in Charlotte. Great tattooer, great shop, great experience [emoji2] Sent from my D5803 using Tapatalk

Got my 1st leg piece (and largest so far) at the time I thought wow this is much less painful than I assumed. I am totally in love with it although it's not everyone's cup of tea. I didn't stop oozing for 2 days and now that I have totally destroyed my sheets I'm getting that terrible whooshing my leg feels like it's going to fall off pain every time I stand up, soon as its elevated again it's fine. Until I found this forum I was freaked out, now slightly less so but glad I didn't go for both. Is it as bad for thigh? Sorry if I ask anything silly I only have a few tattoos at the moment so a bit of a noob XD pics are leg at top and arms at the bottom, but I've already planned the next 7 lol

I love the fact that EVERY ONE of my tattoos have imperfections...I'd choose character over a body full of perfect "stickers" any day but that's just me...... :)

The term is a little snobby for me, but all of us have this as a major hobby... and no one wants to be shitty at their hobby.