bongsau

saw the start of this piece on the Franz Stefanik instagram and it caught my eye Franz Stefanik @franzstefanik (Franz Stefanik) 's Instagram photos | Webstagram - the best Instagram viewer

Speaking of martial arts...my kung fu school just ran the gauntlet at our annual city parade with our Dragon Team performing. Lots of energy being the Year of the Dragon. This is my 7th year participating in the dragon. I am the guy in the blue Shao Lin robes that runs the fire ball and the dragon chases after it. skip to 45:25 Capital Ex Parade - Special - Videos | Global Edmonton big up everyone here who does some form of martial art, excellent and positive way to improve your quality of life.

My $0.02 Don't rush out and get your sleeves like a lot of the young guns. You could end up with some half-baked, half-assed and most importantly half-finished tattoo work. A lot of young guns start sleeves and a lot of young guns never finish them...they perhaps don't realize the time and money commitment or maybe they are too excited to get their linework featured on Shock Mansion and Instagram. Work a bit. Bankroll some money, build some cred at your job/field. It makes it easier to pay for that high quality big ass tattoo and it makes it less difficult to convince your boss to give you timeoff to go get work done. Patience is a virtue and good things come to those that wait.

well, what the hell... "Flaming Sperm Whale Barfing Up A Skull" tattoo by OllieXXX, Lucky Strike Tattoo Edmonton, AB Canada 2012

Finished up the flaming sperm whale on the back of my leg. Survived the knee ditch without magic soap. Jesus. Christ. We have another session left to fill in some of the cracks between the whale, the shark and the octopus on the lower part of the leg. Sea monster leg sleeve hooray! By OllieXXX Schell, Lucky Strike Tattoo Edmonton, Alberta, Canada 2012

ditto, first thing that came to mind was St. Sebastiano, patron saint of Mistretta, Sicily.

Once my non-tattooed friend observed and commented that "tattoos only look bad ass on skinny dudes or fat dudes". I thought it was hilarious. "Go big or go home" - Vince Lombardi

You now have a perfect opportunity to get your wrists tattooed in the future!

You asked for feedback... The hand tattoo (that started this thread) is average at best. The design is bland in comparison to the many unique skull and cross bone designs I've seen out there. Skull and cross bones is a timeless design and this one came out a little soft and cartoonish for a hand tattoo in my humble opinion. I think it could have been slightly larger to fill out the hand and looks lonely without anything on your forearms as others have already commented. It's your tattoo to wear everyday, not ours. So really what's important is that you are happy with it and you believe it is awesome. "It's just a tattoo" was some of the most prolific advice I got from one of the top tattooists in town. Though for you original poster, "it's just a tattoo...on your hand".

I read a funny internetz comment somewhere where buddy called those "Warp Tour Tattoos", the trend where young kids are getting necks, hands and faces done so they can look super bad ass in their hoodie at warp tour or the bar but got no mileage to show for when they hit the beach.

@CaptCanada I took a bike spill 2 years ago. I was trying to impress this girl on one of our first dates by catwalking down the bike path (it worked, we are still together 2 years later!). It was a decent catwalk until the bmx came flying out below me and i crashed with my knee breaking the fall. The knee cap scabbed over and lost a small chunk out of the centre, knee got banged up pretty good. The knee tattoo design is a flower and the chunk happened to be dead centre, so while there is ink missing it isn't too noticeable. I'm working on knee/thigh pieces adding onto the damaged knee tattoo now, it will get re-touched in one of the upcoming sessions.

Never heard quarter sleeve before. My tattooist called my matching left and right tattoos "short sleeves" when I first started my tattoos. They covered the top of my shoulder and barely peaked out of my t-shirt. What about the legs? "Leg sock" is just retarded. Nevermind...

knee ditch...IS the worst. thankfully i have a turbo-tattooist who will use his 'magic soap' on me (placebo effect? who cares, it works!). All I had to do was involuntarily try to roundhouse kick him. knee cap...is gross. not so much the dead centre but the ring around the cap. brutal. i have both done. i specifically remember this one time where the needle snagged on something. me and my tattooists just looked at each other in terror and then started laughing. the area just balloons up, swelling didn't go down for 48 hours. elbow ditch made me want to wimper like a little bitch. likely because my tattooist went over the area like 4 times to blast in the most unbelievable amount of white. looks awesome. sternum...i barfed in my mouth. just a little bit. rib cage...the spot 3" below your nipple is terrible. around the nipple...just awful, in an erotic time-to-masturbate type of way lol/ frankly, it is all horrible. so much poor decision making. to think the next spots are going to be the butt, the spine and the stomach. i'm never getting tattooed again.

I work as an engineering consultant. It's a small company and very flexible, do-it-yourself. Everyone knows how covered I am and if it is the end of day in the summer and I wear a t-shirt it is no big deal. I always wear long sleeves when I meet with clients or am on a work site. I don't need "sweet tatts brah", "what is the deep meaning behind your tattoo" or "what are you going to do when you are older" distracting from whatever the focus is. Believe me, adults, have a hard enough time staying focused in a meeting, nevermind me rolling up sleeves to really take their ADD for a shred. On the flip side, if I am doing industrial type projects and I am meeting with contractor/trades types I'll flash some skin. You'd be surprised how much goodwill that can bring when the rough-and-tough contractor realizes that you are not a square, engineer-with-a-pocket-protector type.

The long awaited and dreaded P-Knee #2 sesh These leg-top tattoos are in progress by my homeboy @caspermugridge (Instagram) at Shades of Grey in Edmonton, AB. My knee ballooned like a cantelope, so gross. But the colour purple...delicious!

Hogg, we are going to get along just fine :)

China - lots of staring. people are mostly curious and would say "ah very beautiful". there is the Triad/Mafia connection to tattoos in China however a smiling white boy with sleeves in a far east land is pretty obviously not part of the chinese connection. In the markets I was a spectacle, people so excited...i have sleeves, legs, both ribs and big ass chest piece but when they found out my back was empty the crowd got pretty bummed haha. also a bit of a celebrity, i went to the hotel front desk and before i could give my room number they would say "oh we know you, very colourful" Japan - people would slowly move away from me and avoid eye contact on the subway when they noticed lots of tattoos. my experience (and friends who live there) is that there is still a big social stigma and yakuza connection with big tattoos. Cuba - mang, they love me there! so crazy, people would stop me in the street, make me take off my shirt and pose for pictures. i was touring with a punk band so i already had the mystique of being part of a Canadian rock star. They wouldn't let me keep my shirt on at the shows. I still keep in touch with some of my cuban peoples, this girl Meidy sent me a handwritten letter saying that I inspired her to get her first tattoo, spongebob square pants on her leg haha! My colourful tattoos (and delightful persona haha) gave me celebrity status in the towns and freaky (that's what they call punk rockers) scene. Other bands have gone down on followup tours and the Cuban freakys want to know how Erico is doing, everytime. There is a Cuban dude who moved to the central part of the island where the underground punk scene is growing to tattoo the freakys. My buddy was saying kids are just getting chopped man, neck tattoos hand tattoos, a real fuck you to the traditional way and regime down there. If you are a tattooist and want to experience some real shit in Cuba, link up and I can get you in touch with our posse. Jamaica - well, this was interesting. they nicknamed me "Colouring Book" wherever I was, which is a reference to a song from the infamous Vybz Kartel, yknow the dancehall superstar who bleaches his skin so he can get more tattoos. I'm pretty well versed in reggae and dancehall so when I start singing the Kartel songs back at the people they just love it up. Anywhere on the beach HEY COLOURING BOOK I GOT THE GOOD WEED MON Think I'm some sort of gangster tourist. LOL. The tattoos also seem to provide the Jamaicans with the belief that I am a millionaire tourist and gwan a hustle all mi money, bumbaclat.

SLATES SLATES I left the band last year after recording 2 LPs and a bunch of 7" singles. We toured Cuba for 2 weeks bringing a punk rock to a socialist country that has historically frowned upon rock music (solidarityrock.com for the whole story). After I left, the band toured Europe and is going coast to coast in Canada in July. Scope the bandcamp downloads, wicked music, really talented group of dudes I got to play with it. SLATeS concert footage from Santa Clara, Cuba 2010 OUR MERCURY - From Below Our Mercury - From Below.zip Toured with this band from 2005-2007, signed to Smallman Records OPERATORS Ops 780 - S_T.zip punky reggae band i played with from 2000-2004. I was the singer and organist! THE CLEATS The Cleats - Chemical EP.zip download an unreleased 4 song EP from a classic Canadian Oi! band i played with download /// share /// en joy

@mighty_romeo pics of reggae, pugs tattoo, bands and fun stuff in Edmonton, AB

I'm working on a 3rd piece with Mr.XXX ! According to my nerd-spreadsheet I have spent 13.5hrs thus far with Ollie (which if you know how fast dudeXXX moves that is good progress). Next appointment is in July connecting the 3 tattoos together to sleeve the leg. I really love the experience and his process of applying tattoo. He's got a fantastic flow, the most consistent, fastest and easy-healing tattoos I wear. I was pretty excited when I heard he was moving to Edmonton, furthermore moving in with the Lucky Strike Tattoo crew where my other dudes work. I really don't have a need to go to any other shop in town or afar now.

haha that guy?

As a spin off on this inventory subject...does anybody keep the sketch or stencil for their tattoos? I've been fortunate to get to keep a few from my tattooists. Now once I clone my beautiful self I can ensure my clone's sleeves are an accurate recreation of the original haha.

Maybe it is my engineering background, but am I the only nerd who keeps an active spreadsheet inventory of my tattoo collection? According to my data, in about 4 hours I'm sitting for Session #43 and Hour #130. $17K in 10 years...YIKES. Better decision making would have seen me invest in the stock market instead. But, that would have been a horribly boring and uncolourful 10 years! :confused:

Looks like a lot of allowance and time in the shop for a 16 year old. Also, when did Lil Wayne claim straight edge?

To prove I wasn't bullshitting on the awesomeness of the bass setup: c'mon I play bass in reggae bands