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The Edmonton tattoo convention was this weekend. Popped in on Sunday afternoon and won the "neo traditional" contest for my OllieXXX tiger head LOL #maketattoofunagain

I guess this theme will have more success! Here's my hannya by Alix Gé

Scored a walkin and got my knees framed by Jay Watkins at Spider Murphy's. Stole the photo from his Instagram

Done last week by Gina at Studio 69 Tattoo on Long Island, NY. On my right shoulder.

Time for another contest. RULES: The tattoo photos posted in this thread will be submitted for polling of Last Sparrow's Best JAPANESE MASK (Hannya, Tengu, Kappa, Noh etc) 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. Each member may submit up to 3 tattoos for each contest. This month's theme is: JAPANESE MASKS

I love this!

Welcome to the form!! Awesome rib piece!! I look forward to seeing your cover up - it sounds like a great way to cover something you're not totally happy with.

I like getting tattooed in the late afternoon/early evening so I can head straight to the bar after... Kidding aside (although I'm quite serious about that), covering your fresh tattoo should be just fine. Maybe try to get tattooed on Friday so you have the weekend to start healing/lotion-ing/following your artist's healing instructions. Keep it clean, keep it lightly moisturized, and maybe look into Tegaderm to really protect it.

I tell everyone, when in doubt, get a dragon, bigger the better. Panthers are always in as well. Panther and a snake is another one.

Is this yours?

Husband went back to get more work done Wednesday. His artist is now transitioning to doing mainly nipple tattoos in a medical center for breast cancer survivors. He will not be in the shop full time now, it will be more a part time (sounded *very* part time) side job, so my husband was frantic, wondering how he'd get his leg finished and what he would do for continued work in other areas and the artist was like Nah, now I just get to pick and choose what I want to do-and I want to do this, so you'll never have a problem getting in to see me! The dragon will go on the calf and he's going to run it over the front of his leg, like his knee and bottom of his thigh there...I burst out laughing when he came home and told me that.

No. Don't start that here, please. Use a sharpie and move on.

By Luis Campos

Continuing to slowly cover my legs. Here is my latest... Pharaohe's Horses meets Veganism. By Joel Soos, Sanctum Tattoo, Stockholm.

Figure I'd hop in this thread at some point! A sweet goblin by Kirk Shandro outta Easy Tiger in Edmonton AB. We were originally set to do a Dietzel masquerade girl but decided against it due to the weird wrap on the placement--half in ditch, half around the top of the elbow kinda deal. From an Oliver Bach repaint in the shop, but neither of us could figure out the original flash or artist it came from. I've seen Koeplinger and Bert Krak do ones as well.

Howdy. First post here! Just got a blackwork floral shoulder cap yesterday that I'm thrilled with (my third tattoo). It's flowers from my wedding bouquet (dahlia, roses, calla lilies, succulent, ginkgo leaves, and more), done with dotwork and whip shading (which I'm obsessed with rn). Done by Jacob Kearney at Metamorph Tattoo in Chicago, in about four hours. He was a total pro and I'm in love with this piece!

All finished now ^_^

Fifth (final) session on my back, the long story. Photo Link to my other post in this thread. And here's picture from and what I wrote after the lining session ------ Last session - booked for Sunday, March 29:th, at the Scottish Convention On the friday I was supposed to take the night bus from London to Edinburgh where Iain Mullen and Rudy Fritsch were working the Scottish Convention and ready to finish my back on the Sunday. To make a long story short, I ended up not going on the bus due to having booked the wrong month (Second time this happens to me, damn you Victoria Coach Station!) and instead I found myself after a sleepless night (spent in a night open café in Soho) on the first train to Edinburgh in the morning. Finally I can sleep I thought. Wrong. Turns out scottish people likes to talk a lot and there is no silent compartment. After a few hours of trying, I get perhaps 20 minutes of sleep. When I wake up I have a text from Iain saying "Let's do the session today instead!" (Other clients could only get tattooed tomorrow) This makes sleeping again very difficult due to being severely excited and also scared/psychologically unprepared of a brutal session that I thought I'd get tomorrow. Stupid as I am, I convince myself that it's going to be all right. I sleep maybe 20 more minutes before I arrive to Edinburgh, where the wind is blowing so hard people almost fall of the streets. I've all ready been practically awake for more than 24 hours. By text, me and Iain try to arrange someplace where I can at least get some sleeping hours before the session. His hotel room turns out not to be a good idea. But there is a emergency room at the venue where I could get some peace and quiet. Great. I make my way over to the convention, after having bought pre- and post-tattoo food stuff. Choosing carefully to get a lot of nutrition and powerful stuff that will fend of the tattoo sickness I can all ready feel breathing down my neck. I've now been on a trip for 6 days, from Barcelona to Toulouse (where I got my lower belly/pubic area tattooed by Guy Le Tatooer, another wonderful horrible experience), a 32 hour bus ride from Toulouse to London, one much needed night in a proper bed, staying awake the night before in the café and now I am here. Last destination of the tattoo pilgrimage. Iain tells me to go to the big stage and look for a guy in a short mohawk named Tom/Tim and say "I'm the guy who's been travelling". This code phrase opens up the gate to my quiet sanctuary. Actually, it turns out to be a very small, cold, brightly lit, room where a big scottish man (emergency crew) is hanging out waiting for the emergencies to happen. There is neither a shower, as I had thought, or a proper bed. There is just sort of a portable emergency bed, barely wide enough for one person. I explain who I am and he lets me lie on the bed. I am too tired to fall asleep. This whole situation seems absurd. I pull my jacket and a hoodie from my backpack over my body and turn my face towards the wall. I try to relax, to breath calmly and slow down everything. The anticipation of the last session, and the pain that goes along, is very distracting. Over the com-radio there are sparse messages, barely intelligible in scottish. After a while two giggling girls come in. One of them has fainted ("This happened last year too!") and they are giving a routine check up and some good advice to eat and drink water. Meanwhile I'm this strange traveling, greasy haired, bum sleeping under jackets in the emergency room. After two hours or so I give up on trying to sleep and decide to go out, eat something and have a look around. Everything is like in a haze. I can not be bothered with all these people. I do not want to see the burlesque dancers doing whatever it is that they're doing. I sit outside and eat the big, ready chopped, stir fry with kale and edamame beans that I bought from the store. I eat some nuts, I drink some superberry juice. Must not get sick. I hang out in the both with Iain and Rudy. Rudy is tattooing both of Joe Ellis' feet in some strange tribal architectural freehand style and we talk about him doing something similar on my left elbow since Iain did the right one. After a while I go to the handicap bathroom to have what few people would have called a shower. After cleaning myself up with the water from the sink and slipping into clean clothes I feel a bit more civilized again. It is time for finishing the back piece. I would have much rather liked if the circumstances would have been different but after being awake for now nearly 34 hours I am lying face down at the Scottish convention, with my half covered ass pointing towards the small crowd that is starting to form, and one tattoo machine being tuned on either side of me. Memory of a lifetime moment, right there. Considering probably being in the worst shape ever before getting tattooed, it was not as bad as I had braced myself for. It was certainly bad. Somewhere between terrible and outright nasty, if I had to specify. In the start they added on some liner details that I was not expecting. Then they added some very thick dots that felt like evil torture to my ribs. Then they went on with the shading and I could settle in to the groove of it somewhat. Knowing how bad the first two machine session was, when we did the lines in June, this was almost bearable. It never got worse than the lining session. When it's your back being worked on and two machines are moving from spot to spot, you have no way of anticipating where the pain is going to be and for how long. You just have to take it, so I did. About 30 minutes before we were done I had to go to the bathroom. I was totally in my zone, something like what I imagine marathon runners go into to keep pushing, and was not ready to face a bunch of people watching me. Somebody said "hero" as I passed. I felt weird. The whole non-privacy of the event was strange. Both mind and body was in turmoil. As with the pain I can be amazed by states like this, the things you can experience when pushing hard. How it makes your head feel from the inside. I returned, back on the table, and we did the last bit. When I sat up in the end to have some more straight lines just below my neck I was trembling from exhaustion and emotionally shaken. It had been a profound journey. /// After the tattoo I hung around while the guys packed their stuff, we went with some other people by taxi to a pub but realized they had just stopped serving food at ten in the evening. We split up and I went with Iain and Rudy to have fish and chips at some hole in the wall. Veggie burger in dry bun for me. Finally the couchsurfer I was supposed to stay with showed up and we walked back to his apartment. We had a really good conversation on the way there. I chucked half of the burger in a trash bin. The apartment he shared with three other people felt very much like Trainspotting, except no visible drug related objects scattered around. I feel asleep in a windowless room and had no dreams, just blacked out for 12 hours. Two days later I flew home to Stockholm, had take away-dinner with my girlfriend and took the night train towards the very north end of Sweden. I felt it really bad all ready and for the coming four days I was bedridden with a massive fever and accompanying headaches and cold. At least I could watch the whole second season of The Wire from start to finish. /// I had planned to start my backpiece when I had turned 30. Now I am 28 and it's all ready finished. It's been a fantastic experience and left very warm memories. I am so happy that I asked them both to collaborate, that it worked out, and that I trusted them completely with the design. Since we started in June my personal life, a big portion of the things that happened, have been so good, enriching and developing that that whole time in my life feels very beautiful. Turns out that the biggest part of my body carries a piece of which I didn't even see the design until the hour when we started, yet now it holds so much significance and meaning. I really like the thought of tattoos like amulets imbued with qualities and forces. I'll always have power on my back. That's how I see it.

@polliwog, if you're still a couple years out from starting, and you begin saving now, I think you'll have a good start financially. Discipline is key though. Skip a night out here or there, grand vacation ideas may become pleasant staycations, make food instead of eating out. All that junk. It's doable. Difficult at times, really difficult even, but doable. I had to change my mindset and ask myself what I really wanted. For years I wanted a tattoo but always lamented not having funds for anything. one day I realized I was actually wasting a lot of money on things that while entertaining or seemingly needed were non-essential. Also start mulling over a design now. You may find the perfect design tomorrow, or you may find yourself going through a few ideas. You may even think you found a great one, then change your mind a month or 2 later. Over time one will stick but you've plenty of time. Also some artists have long wait lists so depending on who you want to do it, you may actually have to wait a while anyway. Might as well get in with who you want rather than settle for second choices. Good luck! Back pieces are AWESOME!!!

i remember the feeling i had on my first session of my back when the machine started up and then cut into me for the first couple of lines. i thought, this is completely retarded. i'm never even going to see this thing..

My back is in progress and last session I realized that getting one's back tattooed is like getting your ribs done all over again. I foolishly thought going into it... "At least my ribs are done. Nothing could hurt that bad." If I'd given it an ounce more thought and considered the anatomy involved I might have realized that ribs wrap from front to back... fucking duh! I told Scott we will be finishing this thing in 30 minute increments. What a cry baby I've become in my old age.