joakim urma

The Inkbash is good, I've been there the past three times. Sometimes they have really great international artists comming. I remember Seth Wood being one of the names I recognized the first year I visited. I got tattooed by Deno that year, and next to him was Jondix who also regularly works the convention. It's also a nice way to learn about the best swedish artists (all though not all of them come..) since the places are limited I think the standard is pretty high. Yeah, check it out and write me if you decide to go and we might be able to hang out!

It's interesting to read peoples reflections on the subject. Thanks for sharing! Ever since I first understood that I was not a believer of christianity or any organized religion I'd come across so far, I've been interested in religion. Before that, before I conciously thought of myself as an atheist, I kept religions out of my view as I thought it was confusing to think about. But now it's really fascinating and I gladly read books about the teachings, the historical and social effects that they've had. (For example I recently read a book about very early christianity centered on the Gospel of Judas, while still having fresh in mind a thick book I read about secret societies, cults and doomsday prophets. That sparked some very interesting thoughts.) What's the point of all this? For me, it's ok to have fascination and to find beauty in the metaphysical "realities" that are not your own. Christianity shaped so much of language, culture, art and history so of course even an atheist in sweden is going to "feel it". I have more mixed feelings about getting tattoos from other religions that you did not grow up in/spend a lot of time the context of if you are not a believer. I don't know why really, something to do with cultural appropriation and also the posibility of being called out as "a poser" or for not knowing what the image is well enough. At the same time I think you should get whatever you want if you like the image, as it is your body and nobody elses. If they have a problem, that's their problem. There are worse things. I have some tattoos that are from buddhist (tibetan) culture and I don't know "enought" about that. This also touches on if you are of the opinion that images and symbols have a objective meaning of their own that should be respected. I'm more of a subjective, relativistic, pluralistic type of thinker so I don't care. Confusion is good, it sparks creativity. I plan to get a tattoo based on the biblical character of the "holy ghost". I never understood the trinity part I think and a holy ghost can have all sorts of looks. Like a reaper, but less dead and angry, with a some fancy staff and crown and blinged the fuck out in mystical ornaments. Also I might get a Jesus head tattoo because I always liked those. And Jesus was a dirty, anarchist-hippie peace activist.

@hogg @GlaryMilberg Glad you enjoyed the story! It was fun to write and a good way to treasure the memory. @bongsau Thanks for the nice response! You are right, the struggle is part of the charm absolutely.

Thanks for linking this. Was interesting to watch!

@Iwar Haha ;)

Thank you @Iwar :) Yes I'll let you know when the Oslo trip is coming up! Not until after summer. Healing armpit tattoos has to be hard enough even when it's not hot out hahaha... Remember my interesting thread about other ideas that turned into a thread about if Eddy Deutsche was still making good tattoos? Well, I I've been looking at his stuff and people like Walter McDonald since then and.. I kind of changed my mind. It rules! (But they, as any other tattooer, sometimes makes pieces that I do not care for at all) Would like to see your Eddy tattoo, that is!

Thanks for sharing the story + video of your tattoo and also the video of Colin Dale! He seems to be in every tattoo convention I visit, it was interesting to hear him speak his mind too.

To revive this old threat on a good subject, I present the first ever picture on the internet of my Rock of Ages thigh piece Done by Peter Lagergren in the spring of 2013. I like it a lot. Hope for the future of humanity and individual freedom lies in abandoning metaphysical dogmas and authority imposed superstitions. By doing so we can search for what is true.

This thread rules so much Especially @bongsau Thanks for sharing the experience and opinions!

@Lance Thank you! Well, the way I was treating my body for a week: sickness was well deserved :) Surprised it didn't come earlier. Too me it shows that eating and drinking properly goes a really along way! Crucial part of surviving on a low budget tattoo pilgrimage: hit up health food stores in every city you visit, drink water and stay away from alcohol. //Vegan Health Nut, signing out

Fifth (final) session on my back, the long story. Photo Link to my other post in this thread. And here's picture from and what I wrote after the lining session ------ Last session - booked for Sunday, March 29:th, at the Scottish Convention On the friday I was supposed to take the night bus from London to Edinburgh where Iain Mullen and Rudy Fritsch were working the Scottish Convention and ready to finish my back on the Sunday. To make a long story short, I ended up not going on the bus due to having booked the wrong month (Second time this happens to me, damn you Victoria Coach Station!) and instead I found myself after a sleepless night (spent in a night open café in Soho) on the first train to Edinburgh in the morning. Finally I can sleep I thought. Wrong. Turns out scottish people likes to talk a lot and there is no silent compartment. After a few hours of trying, I get perhaps 20 minutes of sleep. When I wake up I have a text from Iain saying "Let's do the session today instead!" (Other clients could only get tattooed tomorrow) This makes sleeping again very difficult due to being severely excited and also scared/psychologically unprepared of a brutal session that I thought I'd get tomorrow. Stupid as I am, I convince myself that it's going to be all right. I sleep maybe 20 more minutes before I arrive to Edinburgh, where the wind is blowing so hard people almost fall of the streets. I've all ready been practically awake for more than 24 hours. By text, me and Iain try to arrange someplace where I can at least get some sleeping hours before the session. His hotel room turns out not to be a good idea. But there is a emergency room at the venue where I could get some peace and quiet. Great. I make my way over to the convention, after having bought pre- and post-tattoo food stuff. Choosing carefully to get a lot of nutrition and powerful stuff that will fend of the tattoo sickness I can all ready feel breathing down my neck. I've now been on a trip for 6 days, from Barcelona to Toulouse (where I got my lower belly/pubic area tattooed by Guy Le Tatooer, another wonderful horrible experience), a 32 hour bus ride from Toulouse to London, one much needed night in a proper bed, staying awake the night before in the café and now I am here. Last destination of the tattoo pilgrimage. Iain tells me to go to the big stage and look for a guy in a short mohawk named Tom/Tim and say "I'm the guy who's been travelling". This code phrase opens up the gate to my quiet sanctuary. Actually, it turns out to be a very small, cold, brightly lit, room where a big scottish man (emergency crew) is hanging out waiting for the emergencies to happen. There is neither a shower, as I had thought, or a proper bed. There is just sort of a portable emergency bed, barely wide enough for one person. I explain who I am and he lets me lie on the bed. I am too tired to fall asleep. This whole situation seems absurd. I pull my jacket and a hoodie from my backpack over my body and turn my face towards the wall. I try to relax, to breath calmly and slow down everything. The anticipation of the last session, and the pain that goes along, is very distracting. Over the com-radio there are sparse messages, barely intelligible in scottish. After a while two giggling girls come in. One of them has fainted ("This happened last year too!") and they are giving a routine check up and some good advice to eat and drink water. Meanwhile I'm this strange traveling, greasy haired, bum sleeping under jackets in the emergency room. After two hours or so I give up on trying to sleep and decide to go out, eat something and have a look around. Everything is like in a haze. I can not be bothered with all these people. I do not want to see the burlesque dancers doing whatever it is that they're doing. I sit outside and eat the big, ready chopped, stir fry with kale and edamame beans that I bought from the store. I eat some nuts, I drink some superberry juice. Must not get sick. I hang out in the both with Iain and Rudy. Rudy is tattooing both of Joe Ellis' feet in some strange tribal architectural freehand style and we talk about him doing something similar on my left elbow since Iain did the right one. After a while I go to the handicap bathroom to have what few people would have called a shower. After cleaning myself up with the water from the sink and slipping into clean clothes I feel a bit more civilized again. It is time for finishing the back piece. I would have much rather liked if the circumstances would have been different but after being awake for now nearly 34 hours I am lying face down at the Scottish convention, with my half covered ass pointing towards the small crowd that is starting to form, and one tattoo machine being tuned on either side of me. Memory of a lifetime moment, right there. Considering probably being in the worst shape ever before getting tattooed, it was not as bad as I had braced myself for. It was certainly bad. Somewhere between terrible and outright nasty, if I had to specify. In the start they added on some liner details that I was not expecting. Then they added some very thick dots that felt like evil torture to my ribs. Then they went on with the shading and I could settle in to the groove of it somewhat. Knowing how bad the first two machine session was, when we did the lines in June, this was almost bearable. It never got worse than the lining session. When it's your back being worked on and two machines are moving from spot to spot, you have no way of anticipating where the pain is going to be and for how long. You just have to take it, so I did. About 30 minutes before we were done I had to go to the bathroom. I was totally in my zone, something like what I imagine marathon runners go into to keep pushing, and was not ready to face a bunch of people watching me. Somebody said "hero" as I passed. I felt weird. The whole non-privacy of the event was strange. Both mind and body was in turmoil. As with the pain I can be amazed by states like this, the things you can experience when pushing hard. How it makes your head feel from the inside. I returned, back on the table, and we did the last bit. When I sat up in the end to have some more straight lines just below my neck I was trembling from exhaustion and emotionally shaken. It had been a profound journey. /// After the tattoo I hung around while the guys packed their stuff, we went with some other people by taxi to a pub but realized they had just stopped serving food at ten in the evening. We split up and I went with Iain and Rudy to have fish and chips at some hole in the wall. Veggie burger in dry bun for me. Finally the couchsurfer I was supposed to stay with showed up and we walked back to his apartment. We had a really good conversation on the way there. I chucked half of the burger in a trash bin. The apartment he shared with three other people felt very much like Trainspotting, except no visible drug related objects scattered around. I feel asleep in a windowless room and had no dreams, just blacked out for 12 hours. Two days later I flew home to Stockholm, had take away-dinner with my girlfriend and took the night train towards the very north end of Sweden. I felt it really bad all ready and for the coming four days I was bedridden with a massive fever and accompanying headaches and cold. At least I could watch the whole second season of The Wire from start to finish. /// I had planned to start my backpiece when I had turned 30. Now I am 28 and it's all ready finished. It's been a fantastic experience and left very warm memories. I am so happy that I asked them both to collaborate, that it worked out, and that I trusted them completely with the design. Since we started in June my personal life, a big portion of the things that happened, have been so good, enriching and developing that that whole time in my life feels very beautiful. Turns out that the biggest part of my body carries a piece of which I didn't even see the design until the hour when we started, yet now it holds so much significance and meaning. I really like the thought of tattoos like amulets imbued with qualities and forces. I'll always have power on my back. That's how I see it.

@beez Thank you a lot! Mindset has a lot to do with it, it's really fascinating to think about. Actually now that you liked my other post I realized I put this one in the wrong thread.. Going to fix it.

Realized I posted in the wrong thread, was aiming for this one haha...

@Abellve Yeah, in my defense (to myself) I only have 5 skulls on me and except for 1 they are just part of tattoos, and one of them I didn't see until the tattoo was done. Looking forward to seeing that tattoo from Zuck! He's on my list of people I will travel over seas to get tattooed by, really in love with his work.

@CultExciter Super good plans, both of them! Wish you all the luck man! My stuff: - Moved in with my girlfriend three weeks ago. Beautiful roomy apartment in the city. First time in my life that I don't live in the suburbs. Even though I really loved living with my four friends in the commune house this feels very exciting and like a new stage to live life from. - Moved out of the commune house but still rent a corner in there as a workshop/painting space. Just painted the walls and started arranging it. It's going to be awesome to have a space like that to really focus. - Started a eight week meditation course two weeks ago. Exciting and interesting so far. Don't think I ever sat down for any extent of time and tried to "clear my head" before. After 27 years of constant input/output, except for sleep, it's fascinating and also very hard. - Got back to spending more time and effort in the kitchen again. In love with cooking vegan food, so much to learn and try out! - Somehow got over my strong fear of interpersonal conflicts. Or, at least I can act the way I want and not choke up or suppress my opinions. It feels really good to be able to be honest with my feelings and opinions, instead of "being easy going" in fear of creating a heated argument. Conflicts are just obstacles to get beyond, it's not dangerous.

Busted my left foot while skateboarding yesterday. 6 years ago I strained it really badly the first time, then again last year and now this. Both previous times it was quite handicapping and kept me out of skateboarding for almost a year. That's what sucks about it. The pain I can deal with, but the way it keeps me from doing stuff that I like really brings me down.

Finally getting tattooed by Jonas Nyberg in a few weeks. Five senses bowl in the armpit. I all ready really liked the motif and had decided I wanted Jonas to do my armpit but was just not sure what to put there. Then I got inspired when I saw the one that Jeb Maykut did and put 1 and 1 together. Sometimes the answer is right in front of you and you are just waiting for someone to point it out with a big neon sign haha.. Also, now I am breaking my self-imposed no more skull tattoos-rule, but who cares.

Read the whole thread and it touches on many things that I've thought about over the course of getting tattooed. Let me try to add something that's not all ready been formulated five times. 1. Tattoos now are like jeans. At first when jeans became a mainstream phenomenon jeans itself was the trend, and wearing jeans was hip. Then it went in waves, with different type of models that were "in", often making the previous model hopelessly "out". I'd say this went on until quite recently when really tight jeans for men became mainstream. Now it's not about a type of model anymore, but different brands and smaller nuances that decides if a pair of jeans are in or not, (good or not). I see tattoos going the same way. People are doing both old and new styles, and even if certain motifs at time/geographic context can be considered in the mainstream as more cool than others, no style of tattoos is really "the only thing" or is totally forgotten and shunned. This is from my perspective of course, someone not hanging out on this forum and keeping track of 200+ tattooers would possibly have a different analysis. 2. Being accused of following trends. I feel that the more tattoos you get, the more people you know/random folks on the street will accept that you are not following trends. Trends are in a way somewhat cheap, you can't invest in them too much if you are to be ready to throw it away for spring and jump on the next new thing. With something as permanent as tattoos, big portions of your skin all ready covered, you'd have to slightly retarded to put so much into a trend. I think most people can see that in general anyone who is so dedicated is doing it for herself/himself and not to "fit in". I also think that a small percentage of people really are slightly retarded and will go to such lengths. 3. The old ideas of earning your tattoos, I believe that they are there for good reasons. Not only because of the very real social and possible economic problems that a "job stopper" tattoo can make you face, but also to separate those in it for the love of the art from those who are more about being a tattooed individual. Generally the later group will be more likely to follow trends. 4. In this time tattoos are still a radical thing. One very tangible example is that certain types of tattoos/placements will stop you from getting certain types of jobs. People will have all sorts of ideas about you when they see your tattos. In some circles you will not be welcomed, and this includes some of the most influential parts of society. This is something you will have to relate to if you have visible tattoos. Some people jump on tattoos like a trend not thinking anymore of it, and in a way I guess that's always been a factor, but even these people will still have to face the resistance inside of society against their behavior. Just like every woman, every person of darker skin colour, different sexuality or any kind of handicap (for example) eventually will feel the problem that the mainstream of society has with her/his person, so will most tattooed people sooner or later feel unjustly treated in some way. It is very interesting that people can arrive in this (permanent) position from following trends. (Excuse my academic language, I enjoy writing like this. The last part was a bit more ideological. Personally, I think subcultures and counter-cultures are a very important channel for change in society. I believe that being at odds with what is "normal" or "correct" often forces people to think about their own position, their choices, the life they want to live, and what needs to be changed in order for them to not feel constrained by social/economic/ideological forces. Tattoo culture and associated subcultures, in my opinion, has this potential for radical awakening. Depending of course on how far you go and the resistance you encounter)

@SeeSea Thanks for the kind words :)

@TrixieFaux @jen7 @pidjones @peterpoose + ALL THE LIKERS Thanks for the comments and likes people! The day after the session, one of the better (so I'm told) tattoo magazines of the UK took photos of the tattoo. I told them that I'm stoked that this tattoo even came into being, the beauty and power of it and also the uniqueness of the collaboration, but that it's actually on me that's just above my head (still)! I feel so very humbled and blessed to have this art, memories and experience. @Dumpleton No worries, happy to provide! The more tattoos you get, the more an empty back seems ridiculous ;) @sophistre Thanks! Actually this was the tattoo that finally made me totally comfortable with stripping in front of people I've only just met ;) I feel there's a certain type of social codes around tattoo people though, I'm not doing it around plainskins. @bongsau Thank you! Two machines is interesting indeed, an experience you can't have without having it haha.. Third time for me. I advise anyone to try. If you discover that you can deal with it, it gives some confidence for more crazy things. Hmmm maybe arm pits next?

I finally got tattooed by Guy Le Tatooer after having tried to book in with him 4 times over as many years. Last year I was even ready to fly over the Atlantic and come to consultation and hopefully tattooing, in New York. Well, I was just about to give up, I said "2015 is the last year I try with this Guy guy..." because the tattoo I wanted from him was holding up a bunch of other tattoos to be placed around it. I had tried to find other tattooers doing the same type of work, and there are, but in my opinion they are all copy cats (not only copying from Guy, but just banging reference material on people with no thought of artistic progress, composition and being inventive) So yes, I am very happy I sticked to the original plan, that's a lesson for me. Waiting is worth it. Getting tattooed by Guy is a great experience in itself and I'm so glad I got the chance. You can tell that he cares a lot, he wants to reinvent himself constantly and try new things. He struggles and he's a crafts man, that goes a long way in this field. I think it's the same with many of the other people mentioned in this thread.

All right. For those who've seen it all ready, for those who've been waiting, for those who don't know what the fuck I talking about, for those who don't care: here is my back now. Finished this Saturday at the annual Scottish tattoo convention in Edinburgh. Iain Mullen and Rudy Fritsch converged for the first time since we did the lines in June, to do some two machine shading on the lower part and add some extra detail. One more touch up session with Iain in Stockholm and then this experience is over. It's been a great ride on so many levels and if I were to explain how happy I am about the result I would have to invent some new words. Both Iain and Rudy rules and everybody who has the chance to get the chance should really consider getting something from them. I will post a longer write up on this thread full-back-piece-experience-thread.html shortly, perhaps tomorrow. Right now I have a bad fever to pull through. One good thing about getting tattooed is that, if you do it right, it teaches you how tough you really are. Peace!

@49531 Love the bacteria or whatever it is on the last one. Would make a weird cool tattoo

I had a dream tonight where I was escorting this girl whom I've never met before to get tattooed by my friend Iain in sort of a tour bus where his studio was (in the driving seat actually). On the way there I remembered that I had gotten a tattoo on my calf recently and looked down to see it. It was sort of a circus tent/monster/UFO in a spot where I actually all ready have a tattoo. Problem for me was that it had colors (I only have black and gray work) So it looked sort of like a Stuart Cripwell tattoo with a lot of black, and just some moss green, yellow and red. I also noticed I had a red and electric blue Higgs druid and some other cloaked monstrosity in a red garb. That part of my leg is in reality all ready covered with tattoos but this didn't stop me from in the dream trying to figure out how I would handle this breach of my concept of only having black and gray tattoos. I figured I could cover the three tattoos with a huge black block of ink and then get designs in white over it. Or, I even said to the girl I was walking with in the dream, I would start adding color to all my present tattoos. Yikes! In the dream I was sort of playing it cool "Ah.. well, it doesn't matter. I'll figure something out.." but I knew even in the dream that I really didn't want to have color in my tattoos.