jaimilyn

My biggest tattoo so far, scarab and mandala. I love it! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Going back today to finish the shading on this bad boy. So excited!! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Welcome! I have a similar story - I got my first tattoo in March, second in May and the third a couple weeks ago tied those two together and now they all overlap around my forearm (what do we call that here, bottom half sleeve? :)) Unlike you, mine are fairly tied together- black and grey and all at least half mandala. Before I got the third, I'd also put in enough hours on Instagram and knew what I liked and what I wanted my sleeve to eventually look like. So when I was ready, I told the artist I'd chosen to be the one to do the whole thing where I wanted the sleeve to end up, but that this session I wanted to just attach those two and fill in the blank space. Other than my budget, I gave him free rein. When he showed me the proposed design I wasn't entirely sure, but I've got a lot of trust for his art so we went for it. And now I'm getting even more people telling me how attractive and eye catching the whole piece is. So in summary: find an artist you trust, preferably have an idea of how you'd like the finished arm to look (not necessary but can help clarify your intent when you're consulting with the artist). Take your ideas and if possible go see your artist in person for a consult, they'll be able to see the canvas and work with you on a design you both like. Alternately, depending on artist/shop preferences, they may ask you to send over pictures of what your arm looks like now, and your ideas. So in summary of my longwindedness, find an artist you trust, know your budget, and give the artist as much leeway as you're comfortable with. One other thing I've learned on this board: some of our tattoo choices are deeply meaningful and have a story and emotion to go with them, it's also fine to pick something just because it's pretty, you like to look at it, or artistically fits in a spot. My first two tattoos have that deep meaning and I'm always flustered if anyone asks about what they mean because the long version could take half an hour or more to tell but no stranger actually wants to know that! :) On the other hand, this third one is just a pretty design that fills the space and coordinates with the other two. It makes me just as happy to look at it as the meaningful two. Also when getting that third tattoo, when I'd decided on a long term vision for the sleeve, it was a great time to talk to my artist about next steps and how to plan for the rest of it. I mentioned one element that I really liked but couldn't figure out how we'd include it in a sleeve because the orientation and spacing is more suited for wide space not long. He had an immediate idea for how to make it fit with the rest and it'll be a gorgeous shoulder cap. I'm so excited, I just need the money to fulfill my dreams [emoji23] So, tried and true advice that I got from the board and will pass along to you: find an artist you trust. Be willing to pay for quality. Maybe you don't need to pay inflated tourist prices (I live in Las Vegas and know there's tons of overpriced tattoo places that cater to tourists and their vacation budgets [emoji15]), but there's also the places in the not so great part of town that I kid you not advertise $10-20 tattoos. I found mine based on personal recommendations and excellent Yelp reviews. I think a good artist could make you happy with almost any of your ideas, so best wishes in your next steps! And definitely post pictures! We love pictures and can give better informed opinions if we can see what you've got. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

One other option if it comes soon - you can start with regular wash and wrap for the first day or so, then switch over to saniderm as soon as it comes. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Are you in the US? I walked into Walgreens today and got two boxes of Tegaderm today. Actually I got the Walgreens brand, but they had 3M and Walgreens brand available. Walgreens and CVS websites can show store item availability if you don't want to drive around town (I have at least 5 Walgreens in a 5 mile radius here, and they all seem to focus on slightly different stock...) I just got my first ankle tattoo, first time trying tegaderm/etc and I am in love [emoji7]

Can't remember if I said this on the other thread, but your artist knocked it out of the park. Just gorgeous! Looking forward to more progress! I'm finding once I started my arm I really want it filled up now [emoji56] Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It was my birthday recently and my husband's present was a "certificate" (he made it himself, it was adorable) for a new tattoo. Decided to not procrastinate like I seem to do with most certificates, so called yesterday and booked a spot for 8/28 with the artist who did my first tattoo. In an elevator today I was complemented on my stunning tattoo, so clearly I made the right choice to go back for more :) Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Welcome! Dublin is definitely on my bucket list to visit Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yeah it took me forever to figure out that one of the legs wasn't a horse head, I couldn't figure out why he'd be riding two horses at once. Like hogrider said, it's not a bad tattoo, but it's not great. The concept is cool, I truly like the idea. However, if it were executed perfectly you'd be able to see easily what's the horse, what's the guy, and where the wings are coming from (the horse, the knight, or an eagle sitting on his back?) Same as all the other threads, wait six months to a year to let it heal fully and for you to get used to what you do and don't like, then find an excellent artist and see what their concept for expanding on it would be. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm with the other guys, live with it for a bit, it looks pretty nice. And as the others said adding to it may be better than covering. Covering a fresh dark tattoo like that will involve expensive lasering and waiting anyway so let yourself stop thinking about it for a couple of months and see how you feel about it later. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I teaching myself basic stone carving lately and tried making a small tree the other day. After a couple hours I looked at it from another perspective, giggled insanely and without saying anything showed it to my husband. He laughed and said "yeah did you mean to make a penis?" Moral: My poor tree looked way more like a penis than your geometric dotwork, which is actually quite nice. Maybe if you tilt your head and squint it maybe kinda could look like something if you're looking for it. If anyone is looking for that on your arm, there's other issues probably [emoji23] Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Looks fine to me, and ditto to the others on moisturizing, but with one caveat - don't forget to take into account your local weather. I live in the desert, and when it's only 5% humidity, it's a little different than say east coast humidity. I plan on the morning and night application of moisturizer, but bring a travel sized bottle of Aveeno around with me all day, so that if it does get tight and itchy, I can add a very thin(!) layer of moisturizer. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

If I can figure out multiple attachments, I found some examples of your design (Google!) where you can see how quality and placement make a big difference (note on some of the narrower sleeves, they had to lose the staff, and the smaller ones definitely lose detail that the big ones can keep) Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Both my tattoos were designed from source material I provided my artist. The first one I commissioned was to an artist who had a three month waiting period, it was February and I made my appointment for the end of May. I sent her a PDF at the end of Feb that I'd created with all my reference material and detailed text description of me, my history, and how it all related to the end design I was hoping for. Poor girl, it was seven pages long. Beginning of March I was sick of waiting and just wanted to get a tattoo, and pulled another idea out of my idea pile (folders on my phone and flickr and Instagram where I save anything I like that I run across) and called another local studio that I knew had all quality artists to see if anyone had any openings in the next few days. Turns out someone did, and I emailed over a few reference pictures - front desk guy did a quick consult with me on the phone and ended up giving two pics to the artist - one that's the main image of the tattoo (eye of Horus overlaying an ankh) and a vague mandala-ish sort of thing that I was hoping he could work in somehow. Turns out, I love both the designs, and extremely pleased with both. A couple of weeks before the second appointment I did email my artist and let her know I'd gotten the first one, so she could adjust for placement if needed. So the moral of this is: for your artist less reference material is just fine, as long as you just want them to work up something original based on your elements (so maybe bring the portrait, the runes, an example of a rose you like, and be prepared to discuss if there's any layout or placement preferences). If it's an artist that you admire their body of work and trust them, it really is part of the fun of getting a tattoo to be happily surprised with what your artist comes up with. If you're like me though and can't help obsessively trawling the internet when you need reference material for literally anything (tattoo, hair color, hair cut, new car, furniture, shrubs...lol) if it makes you feel better to search, that's fine, just save it all to one location and limit yourself on the printouts you bring in. If you want more places to look, Google your elements with or without "tattoo" as a restriction. Remember your artist can be inspired from anything visual, not just tattoos. Good luck, be sure to post pics! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That's so great that you love it, I know it was a complicated design, so glad your artist was able to do it well for you! Planning your next one yet? :) Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ditto to what Devious said :) Best course of action now that you have a sketch of what you want (which I'll say as a fan of Egyptian style art is gorgeous), find an artist that can do justice to the image - done well it will look really nice, especially if you can find an artist that excels in realistic Black/Grey portraits. In a consult with the artist, they'll be able to give you a rough ballpark of the final cost, but as it depends on many factors and this will likely be relatively large (assuming you want all the detail like the figure's forearm tattoo, your tattoo will need to be fairly large. It's a great image to have a large tattoo of though, so "go big or go home" would definitely apply here!), don't expect an exact amount, but they will give you a breakdown of their/the shop's price structure and how your piece will likely fall into it. Things like time/amount of ink/one shot or multiple visits will all be factor. They'll also be able to talk more specifics about an appropriate size to balance space and detail. If you'd like to tell us a general area of where you live, the group is usually able to suggest a good artist or two. One other thing if you're new to tattoos (if not, maybe other newbies might read this) that was a surprise to me, don't be surprised if your chosen artist has a waiting list anywhere from weeks to months. Believe me, it's worth waiting a few months for a quality artist who will do a phenomenal job instead of rushing to someone who has a mediocre portfolio and the tattoo doesn't do justice to this gorgeous sketch. To be fair, you can get lucky and get straight in with someone amazing, but it's better to be ready for a wait and be pleasantly surprised to get a quick appointment. In any case, welcome! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks Ginger, that's fascinating! I'm also barred from donating blood due to the mad cow thing - my dad worked for the department of defense and our family lived off base in Germany from 1984-7, so none of my family can donate any more, even though we used to be very active at it before the rules came into place. I've got other health issues now that would preclude me being a bone marrow donor, but I'll make sure to mention it to people I know as an option because oddly it comes up in conversation a few times a year, especially when someone mentions blood bank shortages in the news. It's nice to know there are still donation options. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

If it helps, here's one of the first LST threads I ran across when researching tattoo culture, reading will help new folks understand some in-jokes of the forum, and why some terms are preferred: https://www.lastsparrowtattoo.com/forum/t/674-slang-terms-that-make-you-cringe/ Also, if anyone happens to be interested in general tattoo vocabulary, here's one of the ones I like: http://www.inkedmag.com/tattoo-lingo/ Welcome! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The problem with translating your source material is that it doesn't have any light/dark differentiation between foreground and background, the only way to see the foreground is the girl is in focus and the buildings aren't. This doesn't translate well to tattooing, especially small areas like a forearm. If the design (or the smaller one) is truly what you want, find a reputable tattoo artist that you like their style and let them translate it to a tattoo. Simplifying is also important so be prepared to tell them what elements are meaningful to you and let them take it from there. Silhouettes are the same as I mentioned before - if there's nothing to differentiate foreground/background, it will just be a big expensive blob. To sum up, my vote goes for no on original, yes with changes by a tattoo artist. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I started getting my tattoos as part of a conscious choice to acknowledge my life changing drastically from an employed member of the work force who occasionally had health issues to a mostly unemployed life where I need to find myself and on days when I'm not sick in bed, re engage with my hobbies to keep me interested in life. In the last six months I've worked on knitting, crochet, cross stitch, embroidery, beaded bracelets, rock painting, wood painting, and as of yesterday, rock carving and wood carving. It's fascinating how all those art forms overlap, especially with placement and design. I studied a lot of Instagram tattoo accounts including the design and execution. I always felt like I wasn't as good at drawing as I should be to really be an "artist", but for whatever reason watching the tattoo artists sketch and plan their art has given me more confidence and hopefully skill :) Plus I love my tattoos and being able to see them on my arm is really inspirational to me, helping me feel better about myself, having something about myself that I think is beautiful and won't be gone in the morning like a good hair day! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

In a bit of coincidence, ran across this on Instagram today -

Changes to make the white background options better from a design perspective: simplify. Take out any extra elements, don't have so much overlap in your elements (for example, you've got places where there's a paint smudge, flag, skull and lettering together. Lights and darks need to be more pronounced (for example the black letters on red stripes are going to be hard to read, especially when they're blurry like the greek(?) or interspersed with white letters/white stripes. I don't care who your artist is, that many layers of transparency is tough for my printer to deal with much less your artist to reproduce. If you're sold on all those elements, take out the paint streaks and flag streaks. If you want the flag, add in like the other pic where it's separate. And make the lettering more cohesive. If you want paint smudges around the edge, let the artist add them in where it will best suit your design and body shape. The arm design has the simplicity I'm talking about, one central element with readable text, and assorted design bits for emphasis surrounding the central element. I'm not a huge fan of the trash polka style, but I can see the design which makes it better designed. Your skin, your choice, but you run a real risk of needing to cover with a black panther in a year or two if it doesn't work. (Sorry for the run-on! I'm relatively new to the world of tattoos but have been doing graphic design for years) Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Assuming you want on the bicep? IMO both of the ones with white background are too complicated to do well. Just from a general design perspective they look cluttered and are difficult to see the design. The one on the arm is better suited for a tattoo design, I'll let more experienced people weigh in on how hard to pull it off would be. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Assuming the sugar skull will be in normal bicep placement, the girl/mirror/devil bit will be spread over the elbow which isn't great portrait space. If it were me and I had to keep only these elements, I'd keep the sugar skull on bicep but swap the anchor and portrait size and placement. (Or move the anchor to the opposite side of forearm or somewhere else all together?) That way the portrait on the forearm can use a larger non-bendy area of skin. I'm a big fan of black/grey realism roses as background filler, so if it were me planning my own design, I'd have the other pieces done first and end with the roses tying it all together. But all we can do is suggest and make points you may not have considered. At the end of the day, your money, your skin, your choice :) Gook luck, looking forward to seeing it finished! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Welcome! We love pics, looking forward to seeing yours :) Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk