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Progress......

Getting there on the color

Lots of forearm work coming tomorrow afternoon. Hope to have some pics for y'all tomorrow night

Got a new one today! Six marbles by Dyuntats :)

Pardon the glare. First half a Sailor Jerry type tattoo. The lower half of the blade is going to come out of my chest just above the heart. A very personal spin on a classic. My artist did great this afternoon!

So good! @scottyg

Unless you're pretty young, you do the whole Bourbon St experience in about 2 hours or less. I'd recommend enjoying the FQ during the day and heading out to Frenchman and the surrounding neighborhoods to enjoy local (non-cover) music. B&Bs in Algiers Point are an excellent choice. Casa Pelican is an great choice, and reasonable. The $2 ferry and uber are your friends.

Needed some blood letting therapy this weekend ... caught my homie Richard Harding at Champion Tattoo (Edmonton, AB) just as he wrapped up another tattoo and he was quite agreeable to stay late on a Sunday to do this walk-in second layer tattoo for me: spider shape is based off some old Pat Martyniuk flash, webbing was part draw on, part straight on with machine. we made waxed some ideads for some upcoming tattoo carnage. Turned out to be a really memorable Sunday evening.

Does not even look red! I would look a swollen mess after that - tough Mr!! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

5 days straight about 40 hours give or take, this is as far as we got, about 1.5 - 2 sessions left. done by dan molloy. these 5 days on my back was easier than my 3 days b2b on my arm. kinda regretting not booking 6 or 7 sessions instead to get it done.

This thread has been fantastic, really great discussion so far, thanks everyone for adding your thoughts! After I read the bulk of it I had to jet off to work so I didn't have time to make a cogent reply until now, hopefully some of my thoughts have survived through the past few days of working. Anyways, these are my thoughts on the subject as a client relatively new to tattoos. Though I'd always been a fan of tattoos, I got a pretty late start on my "collection" so to speak, I loved the look of tattoos but throughout my teens and early 20s any spare cent went to drugs and booze so actually getting tattooed was fiscally impossible. I got sober, met some people with rad tattoos in and out of the program, and really started thinking about it again, I visited a bunch of trashy shops throughout the greater Colorado Springs area, and found nothing appealing in my search. I've always been a bit of a collector and really dig researching and finding the best version of whatever it is I'm looking for. I eventually found LST which I credit for helping me learn what makes a good tattoo, and really helping shape my tastes. You all have been lifesavers! Sorry for the long personal discourse but I feel it's a bit relevant to the rest of the post. So after two years of scoring the forum for information, flipping through instagram a few times a day, following an unmanageable amount of accounts on said instagram, I finally took the plunge and booked an appointment with Marie Sena after I had seen her name on the list of artists working at a then new shop (Dedication Tattoo) down in Denver. Her style really spoke to me, I wasn't really familiar with her as a "name" in the tattoo game, maybe read about her on here once or twice but I feel extremely lucky to have such a wonderful first tattoo from such a fantastic person. I never really set out to be the guy who never gets tattooed by the same person twice, but as of yet that's how it's turning out. I am wary of being perceived as some sort of "starfucker" as @Pugilist put it, but with Denver being so centrally located in this country I am presented with a lot of great opportunities via guest spots to get work from great tattooers! How am I going to pass up a chance to get tattooed by Adam Shrewsbury while he's in town for a couple days, he doesn't even make tattoos regularly when he's home! Chad's going to be here in a couple weeks? Well I'd better find a way to stack some cash because I won't let myself miss out on that. I have a list in my head of people I'd love to get work from, some may be big names, but it's all because their work speaks to me in ways that I can't really quantify, I don't want the most star-studded skin, I just want stuff that makes me happy when I look in the mirror. Besides the power of the imagery, it really is all about the experience though. Any time I've been tattooed by someone with a "big name" they have been some of the realest, most down to earth people I've met. Jeff Zuck is a gentleman and a scholar, Marie, as I said earlier, literally one of the nicest people I've ever met. Adam is the most down to earth dude, you can just tell how grateful he is to be spending his life making rad art for people. Every tattoo that I've seen Chad put out has blown my mind, and I was pleasantly surprised to see how humble he was, making sure the other guys in the shop thought the composition was solid on his sketch, ready to wipe it all away and start over if Joe didn't like something about it. Myke Chamber seems to get a bit of grief around here, maybe he's too self-promotional, his drawings are simplistic, but his message in all the interviews is a story of hope for those of us struggling with addiction, and I could tell that he was really grateful for his position in life. Now, @mmikaoj, again, I appreciate you starting this thread, the discussion has been really great! You caught enough flak for what you said about Deutsche, Shige, and Horiyoshi III, but I had to jump in and defend Walter McDonald! I know that some of his tattoos look a little off, definitely not what anyone would call perfect, but goddammit they are fucking tattoo magic in the flesh! That man is one of the best human beings I've had the pleasure of meeting, it's impossible to imagine him without a smile on his face. His shop is beautiful, flash from floor to ceiling, exactly what you picture in your head when you think "tattoo shop," not to mention that he's mostly responsible for me and the rest of the state being so spoiled for choice when it comes to guest artists on a regular basis. Walter is the coolest and I can't wait to get a tattoo from him. Sorry about the rambling, hope I didn't stray too far from what I was trying to get across.

To get back to the questions originally asked, I'm not sure that any of us can really be honest about why we want a certain design or why we want a specific person to put it on us (I believe in the unconscious). For me, I usually decide I want a certain design, then think about who does that design in the way that I like most. (I like to think that) I'm not a sucker for big names, but I do think I am a sucker for "authenticity" and "soulfulness." For me, some tattooers and their works have an ineffable draw that goes beyond form or technical proficiency. Certainly, relatively unknown tattooers could possess that quality, but it's less likely that I would find out about them. In regards to masters and their successors, hopefully the successors would be doing something new or different enough to be recognized for their own work. As far as the experience of getting tattooed, the tricky thing is that you never know until after the fact. I am, of course, more compelled to go back to people I enjoyed getting tattooed by and talking to than not. It's such an intense experience getting tattooed that I couldn't imagine going back to someone I didn't enjoy regardless of their reputation or skill.