Chelsea Shoneck

To me, the difference between a collector and the average client is that the collector does their research... They have plans for what they want and where, and when they plan a vacation they probably visit a shop or two if funds allow. I like the term, personally; I'm actually surprised so many don't. I guess I just never considered that people might find it a snooty term. Someone mentioned an artist feeling pressured/nervous tattooing near existing top notch work... The other week I did a tattoo on a talented tattooer (already stressful!) about six inches above a full lower leg piece by Rubendall. I was simultaneously stoked and sweating like crazy. And damn, that Rubendall piece looked PERFECT... Absolutely stunning. I felt privileged just to get to see it!

I agree with @Badtaste ... I would much rather tattoo some of these hipster tattoos than silhouetted birds, infinity symbols and lots of other Pinterest specials :) dinosaurs on unicycles, owls, and animals dressed as people? Yes please ^_^ while they may be trendy, they're still infinitely better than rib paragraphs and tribal armbands :)

This part really jumped out at me because my excuse has been "Not until later this spring, if I try to quit now I'm gonna fight somebody!". Maybe I should just stop making excuses. And hey, if the craziness of quitting makes me pick fights, maybe they're fights I needed to have! Lol. Congrats on quitting, @slayer9019. I am super envious :b

This isn't unreasonable, but in reality the people who take on apprentices for a fee tend to spend that fee money on drugs or whatever and do absolutely nothing with the apprentice. Seems to be the trend with everybody I've met who have paid for an apprenticeship. I do know of a couple of cases though where the fee was actually used to buy quality equipment that the apprentice got to have when they had reached that stage (or the end of the apprenticeship, in some cases). I think that's pretty cool, and absolutely a great way to handle things. Personally, I feel there is a comparison to be made between apprentices and children... and that would be that too many of the wrong people are having them (and usually a LOT of them), and many of the people who SHOULD have them and would teach them well either don't want to have any part of it or only have one. This next part I probably shouldn't post but oh well. If certain people see it, so be it. I have had two full apprenticeships. The first one was three years long, and I didn't start tattooing until halfway through it. Due to issues under nobody's control (and completely unrelated to me or my apprenticeship), the studio was having difficulties and ended up getting little experience. After I'd been apprenticing three years, my husband and I were broke and needed to move for his job, so we did. I spent a year painting and doing my best to build up an even better artwork portfolio (I never once tattooed outside of a studio, as I knew it wasn't right). When I felt my portfolio was good enough (though really nothing is ever good enough), I searched out a new apprenticeship. I found one, and in hindsight I really have no idea why I was hired. My boss (mentor is an improper term here) had pretty much zero interest in teaching me anything at all. In fact, he seemed to have zero interest in his own progression and in tattooing in general, which is truly a shame. When my apprenticeship ended, my boss had zero interest in me getting clients, and in fact made efforts to try to keep me from getting any. I work hard and I have learned a lot basically on my own with little guidance, but have been very fortunate to have made some great friends in tattooing over the years who have been very helpful to me. I've had a pretty damn miserable experience trying to do things the right way over the past 6 years, and only in the past year have I really been doing any tattooing (and even then it's been quite limited). It's still worth it. I would still advise anyone to go the route of an apprenticeship, and work hard, and hope to hell you picked the right mentor. But sometimes, having miserable experiences teaches you how much you care about something, and how much you want it. Bad experiences can teach you a lot more than good ones, and will help you appreciate the good experiences you will eventually have. When I hear the entitled tone of "If you don't want me tattooing in my home then teach me" (I did read the whole thread btw, and yes I know @Kahlan has had enough lectures and I'm not going to add to it) - it frustrates me a great deal. If I had decided to just start on my own after the first apprenticeship, I probably could've made a lot more money and been learning a hell of a lot faster. But it never would have felt "right" to me, because I didn't feel I had enough experience (even if maybe I did). It would've been the impatient childish mentality of instant gratification. Maybe I'm wrong, but to me tattooing is a truly wonderful thing, and wonderful things should be difficult and even painful to obtain. But maybe I'm just mean and bitter and have too much of a "well I suffered so everyone should suffer" attitude. Edit - wanted to add that I am forever grateful to my first mentor for giving me my first foot in the door. I have a great deal of respect for him. This post is so going to get me in trouble.

"I want this quote on my ribs, but backwards - you know, so I can read it in the mirror. Cause it's for me." I still have a picture somewhere.

This thread is excellent. I hope I can squeeze my next pimple into a full rib panel of Japanese tigers. What a time-saver it would be! I'll goop up my side with some vaseline and crappy Dove skin cream and tape on a printout of @hogg's Lehi tigers for reference.

He's not currently a practicing lawyer, but does work in the general legal field. His current job has a pretty casual dress code, since all the work is done by phone or computer (hell I've even tattooed one of his superiors!), but who knows what the future will hold? There's a good chance he will one day be working in much more conservative environments. It might sound silly, but not having the "freedom" to roll up one's sleeves to the elbows while working can be a pretty major factor. For many here that might seem like a small tradeoff, but that's the sort of thing a lot of people might not even think of. I worked a job once that made me cover my tattoos by wearing a long-sleeved shirt, and when they decided not to replace the broken A/C for the entire summer, it got downright miserable. In the "tattoos in the workplace" thread, there are a lot of people with the opinion of "well it shouldn't matter whether I have visible tattoos or not as long as I'm qualified" - and that is a valid view fore sure, but I've seen how hard it has been for him finding a job even with his qualifications. It is not easy out there in the white collar world, and doing anything to further reduce your "hireability" can be tough to justify. I imagine it will only be a matter of time though before he decides the tradeoff is worth it - so I look forward to the likelihood of his mother murdering me for tattooing his forearms ;) Until then he'll just have to live vicariously through me haha.

I may have already posted in this thread but I'm too lazy to check. Oh well. Maybe this post will be different enough anyway? When I met my husband about 8 years ago, he probably wouldn't have been the type to really get tattooed - maybe one or two tops. I think being with me has definitely changed that. I tattoo and I have plans to be pretty heavily covered (although we agreed no face or throat - which I am totally okay with -everything else is up to me). He has a law degree and will likely work in very conservative white collar jobs for most of his life, so he is pretty limited as far as visible tattoos go. In the past year especially he has been getting more and more into tattoos, and now follows a ton of tattooers on Instagram. He constantly has ideas for new pieces he wants to get and I think he gets a little jealous that he can't really have his forearms done while I can do whatever I want with my job haha. I feel pretty lucky that he's very open to my plans to be heavily covered, and that he shares an interest in tattoos in general. Some people might not care too much about what their significant other thinks, and I think that's a perfectly valid stance, but how he feels about my body definitely does matter to me. I'm glad he and I are on the same page with that.

Maybe I have a different view on the characters because I watched the first two seasons over the course of two weeks rather than being invested in them for a year and a half or whatever... But I couldn't stand Lori. I think how they killed her off was the next best thing to a zombie baby clawing its way out of her uterus. She was selfish and overall uninteresting. It's her fault Shane tried to kill Rick and it's her fault that Carl subsequently had to kill Shane, hastening Carl's evolution into an angry, jaded kid (which was inevitable, given the whole zombie plague thing). Shane was obviously unstable, but was made moreso by Lori's whole "oh you helped me so much and did everything for me and this baby might be yours!" crap. Pick one guy or the other - I don't care for that stereotypical mixed signal woman crap. I'm more invested in STRONG female characters. I'm bummed about T-Dog but he had so little real involvement in anything recent that it was hard to feel much connection to his character. Dale was a much more tragic loss. I like Michonne and I'm excited to see what happens to her character. Hopefully it involves ditching Andrea and decapitating lots of people :D

@Brock Varty @Juan Pardo thanks for the kind words ^_^

I get irritated with really animated talkers. The client chair I have to use wobbles like a carnival ride, so trying to pull clean lines on animated talkers is an uphill battle. But since this is something most people do unconsciously, there's nothing I can do about it.

I use arches cold press and I love it. I've also recently started using Waverly liquid acrylics (previously I used FW exclusively) and I really enjoy them. I've been doing a ton of marker stuff lately but this thread is making me itch to get back to my liquid acrylics. When I transfer the image to the arches, I use a super fine nibbed pen, and after doing all the shading and color I go over all of the lines with a brush, and that's honestly my favorite part of the whole process. I'm not perfect at it but it's a fulfilling challenge I suppose. Here are a couple I did earlier in the year with Waverly liquid acrylics. Sorry if the images are huge >.<

I get the feeling we know each other...

Most of the bigger tattooed ladies I have seen (or tattooed) had something tiny done on them. I am personally not a fan of teeny tiny tattoos on anybody (especially if they're of the super girly variety or consist of microscopic text) because I believe that bigger is better... and I believe the same for larger ladies too. When I see a big woman with a tiny butterfly on her ankle I think to myself how cool it would be if she had a giant tiger or panther or dagger/skull or something. I love the look of people with great tattoos no matter how many extra pounds they might be packing. And I have no doubt that when I have more extensive work on myself, I'll feel a little more comfortable in my own skin.

Yessss!!!! I seriously can't wait!!!