Graeme

Hanky Panky posted this on his instagram a couple of days ago, it's a Sailor Jerry backpiece. Maybe this belongs in the old tattoo photos thread, but what the hell, that's still an amazing tattoo. I love the curve of the wing.

Welcome to LST, do we get to see pictures of your tattoos?

What about roses with a black outline made by people who have been tattooing for over 50 years? I got this one from Tony D'Annessa around Easter time this year, it's from one of his old roll-up flash sheets.

Hi from another instagram admirer. I also really like that article you wrote about tattoos and nutrition...I have a 5-6 hour session coming up in October and I've been really interested in ways of making it better, so thank you for that.

Just had the inside of my right arm done and it was not good...it was the most painful one I've had so far. There were a couple of moments when I gasped, especially up on the inner arm getting close to the armpit, and I never got to that spot where I can kind of relax and just go with it. Swelled up like a motherfucker the next day too. I think a lot of the problem I had with it was because I was tired...I'd worked a 12 hour night shift until 7am the day of the appointment, and slept for 4-5 hours in the day (ie not quality sleep) before getting up for the appointment and because it was the convention I wanted to get there early to look at other things, and I'm never in the best shape after night shifts at the best of times. Whatever, it's done, and the tattoo is awesome. Give me a week or two before I start getting excited about the next tattoos I have booked though.

Oh hi guys! @rozone @eisen777 Are either of you planning on going to the Messe des Morts festival in Montreal this year? I went to the show ABSU headlined at last year and it was great...I'm planning on going at least one of the nights this year, I'll have to see about work schedules and such though.

@eisen777 Both of those are so awesome. I got this at the Montreal convention today from Ron Wells:

Apologies for the terrible picture, but here are a couple of guns from a sheet of 1950s Earl Brown flash from the Flash From The Past book.

I'm a brewer and while I'm not really interested in a beer-related tattoo on myself, a guy I used to work with got a pretty amazing one: Jesus bleeding beer out of his stigmata into a chalice held by Satan. It was done by Olivier at Glamort in Montreal and is stylistically a bit...uhhhh...French for my tastes but it's well done and the idea is straight-up awesome. The guy moved up north to open a brewpub a few years ago but if and when I see him again I'll try to get a picture of it.

I'm not sure what was the first tattoo I ever saw but one of the first things I can think of is that there was a tattoo shop near where my granny and grandpa lived (Mirella's Touch of Class at the corner of Boundary Road and Grandview Highway in Vancouver BC) and I always thought it was super cool when we drove by it. I would assume that I knew what tattoos were if I thought it was cool. My granny and grandpa lived in housing projects that were built for war veterans in East Vancouver so I wouldn't be surprised if I saw some there. My grandpa didn't have any despite being in the Navy during the war. The first tattoo I remember bring super impressed by and what made me want to get tattoos was on some guy on the street and was this super colourful half sleeve where the top was sky and mountains and then it became an underwater scene further towards the elbow. Up to that point I didn't know that tattoos could look like that. This would have been in the mid-90s.

I saw your sleeve on Hugues' instagram and it looked great! Super awesome that you're getting tattooed by Rubendall tomorrow too.

I'm on there as graemedwilliams It's a lot of pictures of my animals, but there will probably be some from the tattoo convention this weekend!

Welcome to the board. Good advice there from @slayer9019 to which I would add that there's a tattoo convention in Toronto in June with some really great artists attending, and it would probably be a good idea to attend that to get an idea of what sorts of tattoos are out there, plus it will give you the chance to look at the portfolios of plenty of tattoo artists and talk with them in person about your ideas without having to trek all around town. What style are you looking at? Traditional? Japanese? Black and grey? Realistic colour? Hard to recommend a shop without knowing that. I would also like to add that cost should never be an important consideration. Find a great design and tattoo artist whose work you love and if you have to wait longer to save the money, live on a tighter budget, pick up extra shifts at work, etc., then so be it, because at the end of it all, money is only money and it comes and goes and a tattoo is on you for life.

Wait, this is weird?

Right now I'm reading We, The Drowned by Carsten Jensen which I bought because it had a really great illustration on the cover, but is a great read so far. It's about a port town in Denmark and sort of charts what happens to the town through the lives of sailors, which sounds a little bit dry, except for that it's about wars and severed heads, and aging, and things like that. I haven't finished it yet but I am enjoying it do far. For tattoo-related books, I was super excited to find a copy of George Burchett's Memoirs of a Tattooist for $5 recently, and last week I also found a copy of Dan Higgs' The Doomsday Bonnet for $10. Very pleased with both of those finds, especially at those prices.

They've also always been pretty tough about people coming in to work without having a work permit. You used to see this all the time with touring bands (you probably still do but I got old and I stay at home now): they'd be playing tiny shows for gas money but Customs wanted them to have work permits that cost thousands of dollars. I would guess that tattooers run into the same kinds of problems at the border. It's a shame to not get to see Chad Koeplinger work. I was looking forward to that.

Are you the Arno who works at Imago? If so, I really like your tattoos. If not, welcome anyway!

Thanks for the welcome @Dan S @steve1461686340 and @gougetheeyes I think this got passed over because putting in a link to that picture got the post caught in the spam filter, no big deal though. I'm looking forward to being part of this community and sharing future tattoos with you all. And yes, mockery seems to work.

Grass is greener. Brewing is fine work in many ways (in the context of this thread, the most trouble getting my forearms done in the fall is going to get me is hearing, yet again, my boss talking about how many times he's almost gotten a celtic armband) but it's ultimately just manufacturing regardless of what the final product is. The novelty of working with beer wears off pretty quickly. @Our Endless Days I would prefer not to make the name of my employer public but if you really want to know you can PM me.

I posted that during a 12-hour night shift so you probably don't. But if you really like scrubbing buckets you should give it a try.

I work as a brewer and while I'm not certain that wearing long sleeves is disallowed, it generally isn't done for safety reasons. You can't have shirt sleeves caught in motors or mills or conveyors and the like, not to mention the heat of the brewhouse in the summer, so basically if it can't be covered by a t-shirt it will be on display. Plenty of people I work with have visible tattoos and it isn't an issue at all in day to day work. I don't know what they would mean in terms of promotion to management but there is so little upward mobility in the company that I'm not sure it matters that much. They have hired people with hand and neck tattoos to work the bottling line before so there's always that ad an option if you have job stoppers. Wouldn't want to work that job though.

As my wife Pugilist said earlier on this thread I started getting tattooed last year at 32. I'd previously always wanted tattoos but a combination of not making tattoos a priority in my budget and general indecision about what I wanted to get meant that I waited a long time for my first. I have mixed feelings about that: on the one hand, it has meant that I've managed to get good work so far that I wouldn't have been able to afford when I was 18 even if I had the inclination to get something good (mostly doubtful when I think back on the ideas I had) and it means that I can also afford to travel to see tattooers who are doing work that moves me. At the same time, and this is probably stupid to say and I can only say it because I didn't do it, but I regret a little bit not getting a crappy punk rock tattoo or two that I would now want to cover.

Just booked another one with Ron Wells at the Montreal convention. I'm not sure what yet, probably something from his flash...I really love that skull with the forest path in it but there are so many things Ron has done that I would be proud to wear so we'll see what grabs me on the day. Starting a sleeve with Thomas Hooper at the end of October. Booked for a bunch of sessions next spring for a tiger on my ribs with Dave Cummings but when we have our second consultation in December I am going to see if we can change that to a back piece instead of a tiger fighting a snake.