RoryQ

Super write-up, man, you've set the bar pretty high for future efforts. In particular, I like all the photographs. It's nice to get a sense of the people and the place, as well as the tattoos.

Judd Ripley from the Sailor's Grave in Copenhagen. Was looking at his site yesterday for quite a while - some really great large scale work.

That does suck, Ursula. If it makes a difference, I do think they're much better quality shirts in terms of softness, keeping their shape etc. than cheaper shirts I've bough elsewhere.

I watched those vids before we visited Shige's studio last year. It's a really good video diary in that he does manage to capture the feel of Toyko / Yokohama pretty well... I bet cramming the backpiece work in on top of his own tattoo work plus the jetlag must have been a real head-melter and added to his sense of dislocation. Shige's studio is pretty crazy - all the back piece designs he has up in his work area are amazng... sheets and sheets of brilliance. Pretty heavy haze of incense hanging around too. An interview with Tomo is being published in next month's Total Tattoo magazine. I spoke to the guy who did it a few months ago, and he said he thought it was going to be a really interesting interview for people, to get that insight into the sempai / kohai relationship in a studio as famous as Yellow Blaze.

I waited to pull the trigger on some of the Hooper shirts before and they sold out... You've got to be quick...

The problem with coffee before bed is that it's a diuretic that will have me up to pee, to put it bluntly...

What happened with the ones which are way off centre - drunken archery? Behind-the-back trickshooting? Blindfold?

I think before you try to sleep you want to create the right conditions- -Make your room as dark and cave-like as you can. Blackout blinds are good (especially for shift-workers). Unplug any heavy electronics or artificial light sources if you can. -Avoid anything that is going to release a load of sugar before you try and nod off. More good stuff in this book: 'Lights out: Sleep, sugar and survival'. http://www.amazon.com/Lights-Out-Sleep-Sugar-Survival/dp/0671038680 If I try and sleep and it's just not happening then I check the time. If it's within 2 hours of the time I will have to get up I usually just get up early, shower and get ready, and then use the extra time to check e-mails, brew coffee and relax. Sure, you're really tired over the course of the day, but at least you're more likely to sleep that night - because you'll have built up that sleep debt and your body is going to try and fill it. If the same thing happens the following night then ... Well, I think there you're into dysfunctional territory and insomnia is one thing I've luckily never had to contend with. I'm not a huge fan of lying on in bed, versus getting up, because I find that I toss and turn and chances are it's only when I'm about to have to get up anyway that I manage to nod off - and, IMO, an interrupted sleep cycle after a period of lying unsettled is actually more annoying than just getting up early and making the best of it. If I can't get up, for whatever reason (like, I'm in a strange house or a hotel or something), then I'll read.

Tattoo Energy and Tattoo Life are great. In the UK and Ireland Total Tattoo is a good 'un. Just got the new copy today with Jess Yen as the main feature.

Turns out Chad Koeplinger is back in Ireland in February - I have a 3 hour slot. Sweet...

Statham seemed to nose-dive after Snatch, with the Transporter movies and whatnot, followed by some straight-to-video actioners (Wesley Snipes territory) but he's on the up these days, right? Expendables 2 is on the horizon...

They could have made it a Jason Statham vehicle! (Not that I don't like Jason Statham... In context... And small doses)

Spike Lee is apparently re-making Oldboy. Christian Bale is rumoured for the part of the villain, Clive Owen has said he turned down the role of the main character. Loved the original. Spike Lee is a great director, so I'm sure he'll do something unusual with this ... But my earlier comments about needless remakes applies here, I think. Saw 'Mean girls' last night on TV by chance. Actually has some funny moments. Weird to see a non-convict / shoplifter / playboy posing early Lindsey Lohan. Pre-crash and burn.

I have a half dozen of their shirts - Thomas Hooper, Jondix etc. Good quality stuff.

I'm afraid I'm invoking 'London Ink' here, but FWIW Louis Molloy did a butchers / meat themed half sleeve that turned out pretty clever, I thought. Butcher's chop tattoo gets an airing - Ealing Gazette Can't find a decent picture of it online though. A sort of meat angel with a giant pork chop and some butchering bits and pieces. In a way isn't the tie between tattoo and profession kind of an uber-traditional thing i.e all those nautical designs and the original sailors who got them...

@gougetheeyes Good link. A long-suffering partner is definitley helpful for aftercare and the back ... Unless you're pretty flexible. I could just about reach everywhere, but it would take me three times as a long to do as my GF.

Apparently Christopher Nolan has supplied a new 6 minute cut of the teaser for the new Batman movie to some IMAX cinemas in the U.S. It's supposed to have significantly cleaned up the Bane dialogue so that it's easier to hear. If that's the case then super ... Because I saw it before a screening of MI4 the other day and I couldn't understand every second word he said. BTW MI4 was even more rubbish than I expected. It didn't even deliver as a brainless diversion for me. Simon Pegg's role seemed to drag the whole thing down to the level of a farce almost from the beginning. Paula Patton looked convincingly brawny but Cruise is starting to look leathery and orange (not in a good way). I've had 'A Prophet' on DVD for ages but consistently failed to watch it. Off work tomorrow and when I've got various odd jobs out of the way I may get down to it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZs2vL2my7o (NFWS)

A sharks thread'd be cool.... This is only a small one, from Chad Koeplinger, but it's one of my favourite animal head tattoos ever. If I were going to tattoo my hands .... (As it is I'd love something in this vein for my feet next year) There's a lot of larger scale work I've seen that is amazing in a probably more obvious way, but this is the one that popped into my head when I read this thread.

Reminds me of the time I drunkenly tried to take down a friend who had had a few pro-MMA fights, without warning him. He stuffed the takedown, and me, onto an iron road bollard, before he'd thought about it. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Fair point, I guess it is a slightly different situation than Hollywood re-making the likes of 'Rec' and similar, in that, as you say, there's the novel as source material. You could say the same thing about 'Let the right one in' (although I'm not sure that without the Swedish-language movie having been a success, in that case, an english-language movie would have followed, given that the book was relatively unknown unlike the Millenium books). I am a little leery of the constant stream of reboots, remakes and adaptations that we're fed - smacks of a lack of imagination / conservatism. The nadir, for me, was 'The Dukes of Hazard', 'The Mechanic' etc. Although I guess it can be done well too - 'Miami Vice' by Mann, although that seems to be a love/hate movie in the reactions it illicits amongst my friends. I gather a Hollywood re-make of Cell 211 is in the works - it's worth seeing the original prior to that, very good stuff.

With longish sessions on my back I found it useful to listen to music from time to time, and once or twice I even cracked open a book. I know some people consider that a bit rude, but I asked Ching first and he really didn't seem to care either way. At the end of the day if it helps you sit stiller for longer then it's got to be a good thing, provided it doesn't interfere with the artist?

Just saw the Fincher version of 'The girl with the dragon tattoo'. Pretty good adaption, if you ask me - although I'm not sure the swedish original really needed to be re-made. A fair bit has been made in reviews about the differences between the two movies ... IMO the similarities far outweigh the differences. Very visually slick and I liked the opening credits - very Bondesque and the Trent Rezner (sp?) version of 'Immigrant song' is awesome.

When I was a little kid my next door neighbour, same age as me, had a phobia about dogs. At the time we had a tibetan prayer dog (basically a little ball of fluff, slightly aggressive because it had such a small brain). Anyway, one day I told my neighbour that I wanted to show her something, and led her to a cupboard just below where the hot water boiler was in our house. I open it up and kind of gesture her to crawl halfway in ... Predictably enough the dog was in there waiting for her, because it liked curling up under the heat of the boiler. There was a lot of screaming. She still talks about it, about 20 years later. I guess these formative experiences can have a big effect.

I wonder if some of the clients are oblivious to the fact that they're wearing copied designs? Say a girl walks in looking for a traditional-style lady head with some surrounding stuff (or he talks her around to that), and then comes back when he's drawn the design up... Maybe if an artist is unscrupulous enough to lift a whole design he may not come clean about that to a client? All they know is that is that he's come up with a polished-looking design for them. And there are plenty of people out there who just aren't up enough on tattooing to necessarily pick up on it.

Re: Instagram - I don't even have an Iphone - I just wait for the updates to be posted on Facebook.