bongsau

Your blog entries are the best. Thanks for the stories, keep em coming!

Generally twice a month was realistic for me for multisession pieces like my chest, ribs, legs. Getting tattooed is a delicate balance: of finances (save up in advance), time off work (bank your vaca/sick days), time to heal and recover (sched around your activities and commitments while having your body feeling raw w/ limited mobility), and most importantly time to enjoy life (I enjoy the masochism of tattooing my body haha). For my leg it was 1-2 x a month for a couple months. A Leg has roughly double the surface area or an arm, keep that in mind. I would recommend sittings every 2~3 weeks, if your tattooer's schedule works that way. Minimum once a month. Any longer gaps than that and you run the risk of being an unfinished statistic. It is best to keep a routine and frequency, it gets you and tattooer focused on getting it done. The best and most efficient way to get a big tattoo, don't f*ck around get it done in a timely manner! Also consider - find your equilibrium of how long you can/should sit. I don't sit for more than 4 hrs, but that is me personally. I can and I have, but sitting a marathon session just makes it harder on my body to heal and bounce back and keep up with the rest of my lifestyle. Tattooing the body is hard on the immune system. So keep healthy and keep that in mind if you are planning on long and/or frequent sits. Don't be a statistic, there are too many unfinished sleeves that get shown off in the summer. If you can do an accelerated schedule and are starting right away, you will likely be fine for summer but caution that a tattoo may be superficially healed in a few weeks but it doesn't really settle in the skin for about 6 months in my experience. Best is to get your tattoo work during the winter months aka "tattoo season" so you are good to go for the summer sunshine... But this is coming from the Great White North (Edmonton, Canada) where we get like 9 months of dry -30C cold and then 3 glorious months of summer. Yeah, we were colder than friggin Siberia and Mars (WTF) at times! Like hell I want to be peeling, wearing pants and shirt, hiding from the sun fun when I finally get to come out of winter hibernation! The only healing I want to worry about is my sunburn (on non-tattooed skin hehe). But hey life happens and it's always moving forward (well hopefully for ya) so you do what you gotta do. You want this kick ass big tattoo now or do you want to kick it by the pool in the summer? Eh there's always next summer ;)

Like scales-o-justice or fish scales?

Welcome bud! It's pretty tame for a neck tattoo, so your future is still bright as long as you work hard. Now you've popped the tattoo cherry, go get some body work haha Just don't get a grenade on your hand as the next tattoo otherwise I will flame you

I once got kicked out of a peeler bar in Calgary in 2007 because my arm tattoos were showing. That was pretty funny.

That seems very relevant in the context of history and anthropology courses.

University and colleges have art, sociology, history courses on subculture, pop art, etc. So not really surprised to hear this although an academic course on tattooing seems off the mark. The best way to learn about tattooing (whether you are a tattooer, collector or whatever) is to GET tattooed, not a semester listening to lectures and writing a paper at the end of the term.

No mexican this week...straight up diet of bananas and fibre lol

Session #6, 3.5 hrs, 22.5 hours total. Completed the blackground yesterday on my Shaolin backpiece after a really intense session. This was the heaviest session in my 12 years of getting tattooed. Inside the crack and underneath the butt cheeks, down the back and insides of the thigh. All the way. It really comes down to mind over matter. The pain was very sharp and the skin is very different in that nether region thus a spectacular array of sensations. But moreso it really messes with your mind to get tattooing in that very private and sensitive area, doing your best to be loose (not too loose, wink wink haha) and relaxed while your mind is frozen at what your body is undergoing. I'm still feeling mentally scrambled the day after. Unbelievable experience, some very serious tattooing. You really have to let your inhibitions go and have full trust in the tattooer. Steve really helped me push through and said I did really well with the sit. Really learned a lot about myself through the vulnerability of this session. I was chewing down on a towel for the last 30 minutes. But I did it. Exhausted and spaced out afterwards and now I've got this swollen black ass, shit-my-pants shuffle walk happening, at least for a few days. All the way! me-"I can do this" steve-"You are doing it man!" me-"I'm doing this!" steve-"You did it!" I've been sitting fairly regularly so I'm going to take it easy for a bit to heal and re-calibrate. Off to Jamaica in April to relax as my alter-ego Ras Colouring Book on the beach. Then a couple sessions in May to blast in all the colour and patterns and saturate some of the black again. This was a milestone tattoo session for me as well. I hit my 201st hour of total tattooing on my body over a 12 year period. I'm wearing a full body of tattoos now, all pieces new and old interconnected neck to ankle. But I left a few choice silver-dollar sized spots to tuck in a few mini collector tattoos ;) And the Ramones kicked on as I crossed the 200th hour marker...

Got the underside of my buns and thighs tattooed yesterday. Today, I've got a swollen ass, shuffling my footsteps like a zombie and my butt sticks to the toilet seat. oh, and the upper butt and lower back was tattooed one week ago, so the top of my ass is itchy as hell. yeeesh. /nowhiners

I and I survived! hit the 201 !!

This is where my wooden spoon advice comes in...

I'm getting the underside of my ass cheeks tattooed tomorrow. So yeah that should be interesting, like not in an erotic "shades of grey" interesting way (note, there will be many shades of grey) ibut more of a WTF this is dumb is this really necessary? Uh, onward with the bodysuit quest! Also, I'm at 197.5 hrs according to my tattoo spreadsheet...which means hitting the ass crack as I bust the 200hr milestone tomorrow hurrah! feeling pretty excited though, really, truly. Can't wait to burn my shirt in a firepit this summer. Cause I won't be needing that shit anymore! :cool:

Welcome @tacifone Summer is for getting sunburned, swimming and enjoying yourself with minimal clothes on haha. Post-summer...tattoo season, best time to start that new piece ;) good luck!

3 sessions, 40hrs w smoke breaks /nothelpful :p

Electrical - high voltage switchgear, generator systems, data centre infrastructure, and fro-yo joints haha

maybe it's just a dorky Canadian engineering thang anyway, congrats on the publication

@jen7 ERTW !

Welcome, this is the place! Back is full of surprises...but being your first tattoo it will all be surprises and new sensations so you won't know any differently ;) Hot tip for any tattoo session - bring a healthy meal to level up during the session. Get a good nights rest. Stretch beforehand. Wear warm socks. AND bring a wooden spoon to bite down on haha. Good luck :)

this hot stuff by OllieXXX is sexier than the devil himself

Steve's vision was to keep the background heavy and simple to really draw the focus in on the monk. I've got so much colour and wild shit going on all over my front that the simplicity and blackness on the backside balances my suit and really ties everything on my body into it. Visually, its pretty intense to have that much black gradient covering the area. Lots of water, rocks already on the arms (Steve did the R side in 2006, Miles Kanne did the L in 2007) and on my legs (by OllieXXX, Casper, Shawn Oconnor) which he capitalized on and the clouds and horizon lines along the top half all blended together better than I anticipated. It was an interesting challenge though to make my limbs made by different tattooers over several years all blend and look cohesive The rise and fall of the waves and motion of the water on the butt crack and cheeks is one of my favourite parts of this piece. Thanks for the kind words and likes LST budz :) - - - Updated - - - I think for a typical full back the scale might be slightly bigger, but we were limited to a narrower canvas for the design since I already had existing pieces on my ribs. So the monk got scaled back a bit to allow for a more cohesive, fuller blackground. I think the scale/perspective works great with the surrounding works, but most importantly fits my frame.

welcome, you've arrived a great spot!

no biker backpieces! tattoo that bum! ;)

If there is one thing I've learned from tattooing is don't second guess! Go forward with intent :) good luck

I've been holding out on posting pics online of my Shaolin backpiece progress. But now the 'blackground' is just about complete and the time felt right to share my progress. This is 5 sessions deep, about 19hrs and we are getting some wicked momentum. Tattoo is being made by Steve Batt in Edmonton, AB. Thank you all for your LST kinship through this experience!