Cork

That was hands down my favorite one. I would love to own that one day.

Looks great Peter! Ugh anxiety. I have my next appointment in a couple hours. I'm always afraid I'll tap out after 45 minutes, haha. UPDATE From Dana's Instagram and then a closeup from my wife's personal collection. ;)

If you do not like what a tattooer has drawn up, then I would say something. The tattoo is going on you for life, and you don't want to be looking at it 20 years from now saying "I wish I spoke up before this was laid down." A lot of people in this thread already have been lucky enough to really like what the original drawings have been, myself included for my own tattoos. But I can tell you that if something does get drawn up that I do not like, I would ask for it to be changed. The only thing I can really relate to this is when Dana drew up my back piece. Such a huge thing, he never showed me a drawing until I walked in the door for the first appointment. I was apprehensive as hell, but he blew it out of the park and I loved what he drew up. But honestly I would have asked him to redraw it if he went with the 1 faced 2 armed version of Kongo Yasha. That bitch has 3 faces and 6 arms dammit!

That's the uniform.

@MikeL We could go head to head in the back piece competition, haha.

Hey I never updated my experience. To recap, I put Derm on right as the scabbing was starting, about 4 days post tattoo. I had it on from a Thursday to a Monday. Scabs were pretty minimal when I took off the derm. I guess being trapped under a fake skin for so long they softened up and didn't do any damage. Very excited now for the rest of the tattoo now that I know I won't need to be suffering through endless touch up sessions. And sessions to touch up the touch ups.

Roper has covered a large majority of Dana's torso (or maybe the entire thing, I can't remember exactly) and it's amazing. This makes me think of the SNL skit where they talk about the fabled salesman Bill Brasky, and each story just keeps building off of the others. Roper once tattooed the Pharoh's Horses on the Pharoh's horses.

Down with homework, up with miniskirts!

Oh shit, good luck getting it finished in time!!

I might actually try and go to this one. I doubt I'll have cash to get a tattoo, but it's close enough for me to warrant going just to meet some of you guys. Plus I know Dave Fox will be there and I'd like to show him how well my chest has aged since he popped my virginity and potentially brainstorming an idea to bridge the gap between his chest panel and Dana's back piece. And hell, maybe I'll even enter the back piece contest for fun. It should be done by then.

Source - Oinari, Fox Spirit, God of Japan, Photo Dictionary of Japanese Buddhist & Shinto Deities

The experiences with healing a scab with tegaderm seem to be mixed according to various Googlings. We'll see! Like I've said though, the scabbing was barely starting, so there really isn't much. I'll be sure to keep you all in the loop. **edit Okay so the one spot on my lat felt pretty good, so I stripped the cover off. You can see the darkened spot which was ready to scab when I covered it. Now the cover is off, lotioned up, and it looks and feels pretty good. I'm going to keep the portions on my mid back covered for a while longer since it is such a high contact area. Once again, I had it covered from Thursday afternoon until now, Monday afternoon. I'm pretty sure that I have nothing to fear when I am ready to take the rest off. Ignore the crappy healed wind bar that is circled. I was trying to say I wish I had tegaderm when I was trying to heal that, but MS paint was not cooperating so I just left the circle.

Pretty much recognize that ass anywhere at this point.

@Killercook76 No it hasn't been on for just one day. I've had it on since Thursday afternoon! That makes today day #4. So my hope is that the skin under the scabs is nearly healed. * edit - And that's what I'm thinking will happen is that the scabs will flake right off like what @9Years says.

Looks good @BrianH So my Tegaderm came in the mail and I applied it on Thursday. The tattoo was just getting out of the flake stage and into the scab stage so I was grateful for the opportunity to protect them. I seem to scab poorly and lose ink with the scab, so the Tegaderm is acting as a good shield to keep the scabs in place. Right now I am itchy as hell, and I'm hoping to be able to remove it tomorrow at the latest. I keep testing the sensitivity of certain spots, so if it still feels sensitive, ie scabby, I will be keeping the Tegaderm on. Anyone have any experience with removing the Tegaderm with scabs underneath? I'm assuming it won't rip the scab off. That would be a pretty bad product to use for surgery recovery, haha.

Saw this one from Dana Helmuth. What can I say, I'm a fan of his work.

I do not know the source, but I thought this was awesome.

The money argument is so overused.

Damn @peterpoose you have some long ass sittings. The smoke is decent filler. I don't know, you won't get a critique out of me, I don't know anything.

@ironchef Hardly! We are just doing what we have to do. I have a couple vacations coming up in late March/April so I didn't want to lose progress and I also didn't want to be healing tattoos over traveling. Back to back appointments were the only option. @MikeL Awesome! You actually came up in conversation with Dana this past Monday. I was hoping you'd post an update soon. Looks great! I bet it feels good to have that background hurdle over and done with. @William Burgess That looks great! Also, are you a member of an awesome gym who owns a lot of flash, or does the tattoo shop randomly have a lifting platform?

I do normally wrap after the first night, at least after the last 2 sessions. I scabbed real bad probably 4 sessions ago, and each healing process has gone better than the last. Each session I had wrapped for an extra night, haha. It's easy to wrap a leg though, real hard to wrap my entire back. That's what I wanted to rely on the Tegaderm for.

I applied it the same night to try and stave off some ruined sheets. I thought I remembered reading about how some others put it on the night right afterwards and it held up. Like I said I'm pretty sure it was just because I was trying to use the small patches to cover a big area. I would imagine if you don't apply the small ones uniformly, then you'll get them pulling each other off. No pics, but I will definitely try and put them on while I'm stretched better.

Well I already bought it, but the closest CVS/Walgreens only had the small strips.

I tried to make sure it was applied when I was in an inconvenient position. But a spot like my lower back, I didn't realize how much I was moving I guess. @HettyKet And I had to take the rest off. Just had a shower and ended up with little pouches filled with water. Definitely couldn't keep it on after thinking about how much potential germs could have just had their way in. I've used an antibacterial and lotioned up, and I'm just hoping the larger sheets show up soon.

Piling on a lot of little strips is not worth it. After sleeping, then 8 hours of work, I've moved enough to pop off over half of what was laid down last night. This was only meant as an experiment, so I have learned that I should have planned ahead and bought bigger strips. I relied on what was in the store, and it wasn't enough. I'm going to make an online order and hope that it comes in quickly before I get to the scabby part and start losing ink.