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I think you are over-generalizing the perceptions of people in academia. I am a college president - got my first two tattoos within this past year. I have a great number of staff and faculty who sport tattoos, some visible and some covered. I've not seen any negative reaction to either males of females who have tattoos around my college. Granted, there can be an elitist snobbery at work in some institutions, especially among older members of the community who were raised when tattoos were not as prevalent or accepted, but that seems to be dwindling rapidly as the more junior members of the faculty, staff and administration are promoted into the ranks. For me, I use my decision to get tattooed as a way to encourage acceptance and tolerance of diversity in all forms. Surprising that the more liberal community that demands inclusiveness tends to be at the heart of discrimination and intolerance of people with ink, no?

That Thomas Hooper skull is MEGA... @SStu You've got my vote! Two entries from me: 1) 7 headed cobra and skull by Uncle Allan, about 2 years healed in this pic. 2) Tiger and wind-skull by Tim Lehi, healed a few months in this photo.

Another addition to my tattoo leg quilt ...

This was done last night at Studio 69 Tattoo in Ronkonkoma NY by Gina... on my foot. 2 hours and it really didn't hurt.

I live in the Netherlands too! I was in the US just a month ago after not going for a couple of years and I was absolutely shocked at the number of people with tattoos compared to a few years ago. It's becoming so commonplace in all sorts of people from all walks of life. Way more Americans seem to have tattoos than Dutch despite how liberal the country is. Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

I agree, I would not expect any negative attitude towards tattoos in academia, that's why I didn't even think about that before getting one. After that, I started thinking about all possible negative consequences of that (literally ALL, you cannot even imagine what crazy thoughts were in my head). And on one website I read somebody saying that it is a very bad idea to get a big visible tattoo if you are a university teacher. And some woman working in academia wrote in her blog that if somebody is not going to hire her because of her tattoos, then maybe it is not a place for her anyway. So, I thought, there might be this problem! Being in a very fragile state of mind, I over-generalized it of course. That is what I often tend to do: focus on some negative possibilities that are only in my head and worrying worrying worrying about them. So yes, I have some anxiety issues in general. The transition to being a tattooed person for some reasons for me was much harder than I could expect it to be, and it magnified all my worries. I've also had some kind of a personality crisis recently, it doesn't help either. But I am so much better now already, especially during the day time. Mornings and evenings seem to be difficult times in this respect for me. I am starting to accept my new look and I like it very much. Thank you for your support a lot, people! I hope that soon I'll stop whining here for good.

Show me a picture of what you are talking about getting - I'd love to understand better. One of my favorite (and first) tattoos was done by a man who specializes in sacred geometry. He gave me a rose. LOL.

Love your tattoo! Check out the threads threads over in the Tattoo After Care section. Great info and lots of folks to share the healing process with as you move through the heal. It looks great!

I like your tattoo and I hear in your words that you do too! I also hear words like 'panic attack', 'feel very silly' and 'am unstable'. Maybe you need to be kind to yourself in the bigger life picture? Your tattoo is cool - relax about it. If terms like panic attacks are literal, I can say that I have been there and have overcome them, in time. Sometimes our angst can be focused on something that actually isn't the issue - that has been my experience.

@SStu Here are a few examples of his work, let me know what you guys think!! Thanks!!

Hey, another bump! Can't believe I hadn't seen this thread earlier, but it made for a great read on a winter evening. I actually had the same experience as @polliwog while visiting the Portland Art Museum last month. I went for the Warhol exhibit (which was phenomenal, btw), but while everyone else was waiting in line for the restroom I headed to the ancient Chinese sculpture exhibit. It was right by the main entrance, but in a way that made it incredibly easy to walk past. Ancient artifacts and images I only recognize from following tattoo history! What a cool experience. I'm still not sure how best to answer the OP, but I'm glad that tattoos have shown me more than just pictures on skin.

Hello everyone! I've lurked here a bit & decided to sign up & post a quick hello. I've gotten a few tattoos recently after not getting any for a few years, and I've definitely caught the bug big time. My most recent piece is this Kappa head by Zach Black @ Riverwest Tattoo. I'm really happy with it & thinking about seeing if he can expand on it & turn it into a half sleeve.

Feathers McGraw, baby! I LOVE Wallace and Gromit. I hadn't thought about them in years!! @oboogie Where did that idea come from?!?

By Franz Stefanik, of Okey Doke Tattoos in Toronto, ON.

Logan Morrison put tattoo #43 (Exhibit A) on me and tattoo #1 (Exhibit B) on my brother at Tattoo Union Vancouver, BC this weekend. Very cool shop. Exhibit A Exhibit B Giddy Up

Here is a composite of the four. The heart is a bloom Dreamed I saw a desert rose dress torn in ribbons and in bows Iris Like a fish needs a - well unicycle ? U2 borrowed the quote, but it's a super tattoo.

I had wanted chest tattoos for a long time, which got me into the gym again. Can't slap a tattoo on a weak chest can we? I had to wait a while but it was worth it. My chest tattoos were done in 2010. In 2004 I was at the point where I had 5 tattoos that were old and I would hide them from others. Then I learned that old work could be freshened up and new work could be added around it... or covered up! So I'm sort of reborn in a colorful way. I'm also reconnected to the art itself. I have a new appreciation for oriental art as well as other styles of tattooing. And I've met some great artists along the way.

hell ! if you're going to do both anyway,and the artist has the time,just do them both at the same visit,may as well ! see how it feels and go from there ? it's going to hurt the same now or later.

Yay! I knew you'd know. We were watching an Aardman Animation documentary the other night, and it just occurred to me it would be hilarious. I called my artist, and he was also familiar with W+G, too, and he thought it was funny. He didn't charge me much at all and said, "Happy birthday!" (It was my birthday last weekend.)

I'm not itchy yet and the peel is done. It's like waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Thanks, @Makar! I do like my tattoo. It makes me very happy when I am not panicking =). Then I just remember why I did it and it al makes sense. It is just so very new for me. It's been only a week! It is also itchy now so I am constantly paying attention to it. I think it will also be better when it heals completely.

Maths makes me feel ill...however, nature connection is certainly for me. Plenty nature based Fibonacci stuff out there to inspire. Bottom line IMHO is, if that's what you want then that's what you should get - the tattoo is yours. Good luck with the journey! You lost me at Platonic solids BTW ;-)

Welcome to LST, hope you find it useful and engaging and you stick around. May we see a photo of your new tattoo? As others have already posted, this feeling is not uncommon - you've had 24 years of looking (more or less) the same, and now there's a picture on you! You'll get over it, and heck you may even end up with a lot more.

I had this very strongly with my 2nd tattoo. The nights were the worst where I'd hollow in deep regret. Then I got used to it and I kept getting more. I found out that the problem for me was that I went from feeling like a spectator of the tattoo world to feeling like a member. It felt like an identity shift which was causing all the internal conflict. Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

dont worry about it the panther just scratched deeper on that part. also it might have just been a tiny ingrown hair

Hi there - welcome! I hope that today is a less anxious day for you. Deep breaths. :) This forum has amazing, very successful and professional people who are tattooed. Remember, it's your body and you can choose to decorate it anyway that you please. If someone is going to judge you for having a tattoo, that tells you more about *them* than you. Some will understand, some won't...and that's OKAY. Not everyone knows that I'm tattooed which is MY choice. It's super interesting to watch people react...I know exactly who they are, how they operate and how to deal with them after they know/see my work. It's a fantastic 'tell'. Most of the time they don't know that I watch them react, then adapt to their reactions. :)

Stupid story / missed connection - and I would up with this horseshoe. So unplanned. Healing two at once now. ? John Schaberg @ Tower Classic Tattoo

Tigress, Phase I completed by Chris O'Donnell. We're going to add more soon...

Andy Northup @ All Star Tattoo

I have lyrics from Hot Water Music, Jawbreaker, and Minor Threat on me. The HWM ("Live your heart and never follow") and Jawbreaker ("Yell it out before it kills you") are a little longer than I would go now. I got them when I was pretty young, and they're a little cluttered. I still love them, but I wish I'd approached them a little differently. The Minor Threat one is just "Out of Step" in a banner around a dagger/rose. I'm pretty sure it's in my gallery.

Finished this just in time! Chad Koeplinger and Jondix.

Great thread! My first tattoo was a Chicago Bears logo on my butt, in 2007. At the time I wasn't into the Bears or tattoo's, but I was watching the game with some friends and for no good reason exclaimed "if they win at this point, I'll get their logo tattooed on me". My friend made me shake on it. Sure enough, some last minute miracles happened and they won. The first shop denied me. I didn't get another tattoo for another 6 years. Horitomo is in the process of covering the tattoo.

Finally finished my Chad/Jondix collabo back piece yesterday, after nearly three years! Session 1: 10/25/13 at the Bay Area Convention, SFO Hyatt - tag team Session 2: 11/20/13 at Garage Ink, Napa, CA 11/20/13 - Chad Session 3: 7/10/16 at Yoni Zilber's private studio, Atlantic Highlands, NJ - Jondix Session 4: 10/19/16 at State of Grace, SJ, CA - Chad

Finished!!!! If anyone ever asks you for tattoo advice: "get enough sleep" needs to be at the top of the list. I've barely slept but a couple hours each of the last three nights.... and I could barely make it through the final 4 hours of tattooing needed to complete my sleeve. After about an hour, everything just hurt bad, and I had very little tolerance for pain this time around. Here's a pic of the final sleeve. Some of the oranges are really yellow but inflamed... and there is actually no red in the swirling spiral on the back of the arm -- just red from the work. Going back in a month for some touch-up work (not a lot of green held in the dragon's head first time around) and I will post healed photos in a few weeks.

Update: Aug 31. Scott Ellis is finally back in the US, so we put in five more hours dropping color into the dragon. I am so relieved to have the ditch of my arm done! That was probably the worst part.

Update May 20.... Today was Session #2 with Scott Ellis at Triple Crown Tattoo. 5.25 hours in the chair with only a few short breaks. Some of these sections are pretty swollen, and I have one area behind my arm that is super red and angry... but other than that, it looks great. Gonna be a long weekend of feeling sunburnt and frequent washing, and hopefully it will heal as quickly as the line-work. Tomorrow I'm going to the movies, so no need to move it all day. Before: After:

UPDATE: Well, today was the day! What a long, but great day! It began a little before 11:00am. I was the first one in the shop with Scott (most of the day, there were 10-15 people there, and at one point six artists were tattooing simultaneously). He had been working on a few designs based on the sleeve length I wanted. Over the week between today and our consultation, I had decided to ask him to put the dragon's head somewhere on my arm instead of with the head in the more traditional chest area. I was a little worried to be asking for this, as Scott has a relatively new sleeve with the head in the center, and the last thing I wanted was for him to think I was trying to copy his own tattoo. Luckily, when I got there, he informed me that the last several dragons he had done had the head on the chest, and he was dying to do something new. Perfect! His sketches had just what I wanted. It was a really good sign. However, getting it right took some time. Using thin paint brushes, he created the design over four separate layers. The dragon's head had to be moved several times, and the unique swirl of the dragon we decided on what difficult to get right without looking like the head was plopped onto the center of the body... but Scott is a perfectionist, and after a lot of erasing and revising, and then relining, and revising, etc... we were finally done with a design ready to be inked at 2:40. With only a few short breaks, it took a lot longer than I expected. But the result is something that works specifically with my body as opposed to just slapping a template onto my arm. I love it. Here is a quick snap of Scott somewhere between layer 2 and 3 of sketching on me: I haven't had a tattoo in nearly 20 years, so I had no idea what to expect from the pain, especially over so many areas. Tattooing in the ditch was no treat, but not as bad as I had come to expect from reading. The outside of the elbow lived up to expectations. But the worst was around my collarbone, where any wincing or tightening of my face would risk pulling the skin under his needle. And there was one spot on my chest where I could clearly feel the vibration on my pec, but the pain was in my neck. I could have sworn at the time he was tattooing my upper-middle neck. Long story short (yeah, right), we finished up the linework a little after 5:00pm. I am absolutely thrilled with the result... and was getting tons of compliments on it by the many artists and clients in the shop throughout the day. Here is a front shot: It is a little difficult to see from this angle and with only linework, but the dragon's body actually goes out the back of the head and swirls up and around the shoulders through the clouds and comes out belly showing under his head before turning again towards the end of the sleeve. It makes a little more sense visually if you can see the back. I also have the dragon clutching a pearl with his talons on the back on the sleeve and will actually be filling the pearl with a significant flower logo in the next session. Overall, a fantastic day. I couldn't be happier that Scott got all the elements I wanted into the design, was able to keep it very traditional, but also with a great deal of uniqueness built just for me. If any readers are in Austin, Triple Crown Tattoo on Chicon Street (right around the corner from Franklin's BBQ!) is a must-visit.

@TrixieFaux I teach middle school special education. and if anyone cares, its been two weeks and now I have no remorse at all about it. It already feels great and can only be better when its healed.

And customers often make the assumption that the person booked out the furthest is the best! I used to work in a shop with 6 other tattooists. We were booked according to seniority at the shop. So, inevitably some were booked out further than others. A customer would come in only to be told that Joe is booked out for 6 months and Jim for 3 months and 2 months out for Jay and John but You can get in with Deb TOMORROW! Customers assumed then that if you weren't booked you weren't worth waiting for, usually not taking in to account that Jay only booked 1 appt a day or Jim only worked every other week. People are weird, they like the hard to get, the over priced .