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Another month, another contest :) RULES: The tattoo photos posted in this thread will be submitted for polling of Last Sparrow's Best SKULL tattoo. This is all in good spirit and fun of course. The submission process opens on the 1st of the month and ends on the 20th of the month. After that there will be an open poll for one week, which will close on the 27th, and the tattoo with the most votes wins. Your tattoo picture must be posted in this thread (both tattooers and tattoo customers can win) in order to qualify. Include tattoo artist name & tattoo shop with your photo/post. You MUST be the one who has the tattoo or did the tattoo. It MUST be a finished tattoo It MUST fit the theme of the contest The theme of December is: SKULLS(Does NOT include reapers)

Finished this just in time! Chad Koeplinger and Jondix.

Take a marker and draw a circle most anywhere on your body, there will be movements that distort it. The record looks fine. I have some old vinyl that was stored improperly, and I WISH it was as round as your tattoo! Sent from my Le Pan TC802A using Tapatalk

The winner of Tattoo of the month November is @havetsherre with this insanely awesome panther tattoo by Steve Byrne. Congrats!! The next contest will be announced on the 1st of December! (also, the polling will be much easier, I promise) Big thanks to everyone who contributed this month!!

Awesome! And I dig the new format. Mostly I'm commenting to bump this up because I had missed it. Congrats to @havetsherre

The koi and dragon is a great image. There is a Chinese legend of The Dragon Gate, where the koi that ascends the waterfall and reaches the peak is transformed into a dragon. In Japan, the koi repressents hard work, dedication, and confidence. The koi s a symbol used on Boys Day, in hopes that your sons would be like the koi. The koi swimming the waterfall and being transformed into a powerful beast repressents over coming obstacles in ones life and attaining greatness and success through hard work and dedication. The dragon ascending into the heavens repressents success in life. I think you should have the koi on your forarm and dragon on you upper arm. Its a beautiful image, and great story. The hannya repressents anger, jealousy and sarrow, and can be used as a symbol of change, (usually paired with maple leaves for this reason) a repressentation of the full swing of human emotion, (sarrow and mourning to bitter hatred and jealousy) or the dark side to something that was once beautiful. As far as motifs go it doesnt really fit. Id leave it out of your sleeve and get a seperate one-point style hannya elsewhere on your body. But this is just my western impression of the info I have. I encourage you to do your own research. I can see the tattoo now, with the koi on the forarm paired with rocks, water and sea grass, transitioning to the dragon on your upper arm paired with clouds and whirlwind. Really beautiful.

Not entirely true. From my understanding, dragons are neutral, but the majority of the time tend to be good omen. There are many instances in which dragon fight humans. Tamatori the pearl diver running from Ryujin is a good example of a ryu/human conflict. Or Susanoo who slayed the dragon Orochi to save Kushinadahime. Or the dragon that was eating children that the goddess Benzaiten soothed with her beauty, and latter (in some stories) married the dragon. There are other instances in which a witch transforms herself into a dragon as well, and stories of multi-headed evil dragon. Although rare, there are certain instances in which ryu fight swordsman. But as for your tattoo, less is more. If I were you Id just go with a dragon skeeve with nothing else, but thats just me.

Hey --- great topic! So I am exactly in your boat. Getting a Japanese dragon sleeve done here in Austin, Texas. Like you, I estimated this to be about 15 hours/3 sessions. But I am in that far now and we probably have 5-8 more to go. You can read a more detailed update on how it's going here: So, my sleeve is a 7/10th length, almost full. The first session was the linework. I don't know how your artist works, but mine the design was drawn freehand (after a lot of consultation, obviously). This took a few hours of mostly standing up. It was fascinating. He would draw it and be nearly done, then look at it and say -- no, the head needs to be an inch to the right - then wipe it off and start again. He would do multiple layers in multiple colors getting more detailed with each layer, and he erased amazing stuff many times because he wanted it to flow with my body correctly, and had to re-draw it. I think this is really important with your piece, especially with multiple elements. I was planning on tattooing to the wrist, but since I wear a watch, the 7/10ths made more sense. And putting the dragon head on my collarbone just never looked right, despite that being one of the more traditional locations. So as he is drawing it on you - think about how the pieces fit onto your body... and also.... think about what parts you want to look at all the time. If am not at the computer working, I am golfing, so what was on my top/inner forearms was important because that's the area I'll be looking at most. I had fewer flowers put there so I wasn't distracted by the pink that will go in there later. Here are a few pics I didn't put into the other thread: First layer. This was erased. and Re-done. Then the linework. Ouch. We did this in about 3ish hours: A month later we did all the shading in one 5.5 hour session: The healing of the shading was just awful. The Y of my arm got immediately dry and cracked making moving my arm very painful for 4-5 days and mildly painful for another 4-5. Applying Aquaphor those first 3-4 days just inflamed the whole arm it and - just - ouch. I had to really baby it, and luckily I work from home and can work shirtless for a few days and wash/re-ointment frequently. If I had to put on a dress shirt (or any shirt) and go to work and move around I would have been really sorry. If you do this much coverage, wash it a lot, because I had a few areas flare up looking like they were going to get infected, but luckily just got really heavily scabbed. So my artist went to Europe for 10 weeks, and I had to wait all summer for coloring! But like you, I was thinking 15 hours/three sessions. And I felt like one more 5.5 hours session like the shading would be enough to finish up almost entirely. Nope! Last Wednesday we did 5.5 hours (all I could take) and only got in green and red: Takes awhile to get some of that color in, I guess. This part on the shoulder hurt/bled a lot: The ditch was bad. Real bad. Healing the color has been about 60% as bad as the shading. I probably could have shirted up and worked a job with movement had I needed to... but it would have still been really uncomfortable. Healing the ditch is no joke. Those scales are all scabbed now, and I rarely scab on my tattoos. Ouch. So now I'm hoping one more 5 hour run will do it, but I doubt it. Just the flowers - by the numbers, could take a few hours themselves (there are more on the back of the arm). So I'm guessing it will be 5 hrs next month, then another 2-3 after that (fingers crossed). Take lots of pics, especially during if you can. I always wish I had snapped more after. Here is a video of the shading. You can compare that spot to the above pics to see how dark we got it eventually. Takes awhile to lay down those greyish areas on the windbars/clouds: https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-znxv7VN/0/1280/i-znxv7VN-1280.mp4

@66pens87, it's hard to say how long a sleeve would take to complete. There are many factors. How fast is the artist? How well do you sit? How well do you heal? How many breaks do you and your artist take during sessions? How large are you? The larger the arm, the longer it will take as there's more coverage to fill. A lot of artist don't like quoting time because of all the varying factors. As long as you show up for your appointments, you should be good. After your first session or two, you'll probably get a gauge on some of the above and you'll probably be able to figure a ball park time. Have fun starting a new tattoo!

I was just reading this thread and realized that I don't think I've ever put a picture of my little snake on here. It is very different from the rest of what's on this thread, but I love how it sits on my arm. Ron Wells did it a year ago. Both tattoos I have from him feature a lot of solid black and are sort of stealth tribal. Sorry about the bathroom photo.