Graeme

That wasn't meant to be a compliment and he knows it. This guy has been an ignorant, disrespectful jerk since he signed up for this board, he gets no benefit of the doubt.

This is why we can't have nice things.

I have two skulls on my right upper arm. One takes up most of my inner arm, the other one is smaller, about the size of a fist, on the outer part of my arm. They look cool because skulls always look cool.

We're staying in Park Slope.

I went into my back thinking that I was going to die from the pain, and it has been fine so far. By that I mean that there have been sessions where I felt that I'd been beat the hell up afterward, and there have been plenty of OH SHIT moments while getting tattooed, but other than a beer during my last session (which was GREAT) I've done it straight and it's okay. Good to go into it with the proper amount of respect for it because it's not a walk in the park.

Welcome. I think that idea could be really cool if you found the right artist to do it. It makes me think of a Lord of the Rings sleeve that Rob Noseworthy up in Nanaimo BC did: (I can't seem to get the image working from my phone so here's a link to the tattoo) I don't know of anybody in San Diego who tattoos like that, but maybe somebody who has better knowledge of the area can chime in with some suggestions.

@cibo Perfect.

I was joking about meeting up around Times Square. Times Square is one of my least favorite places in the world and I'd rather not hang out at all than hang out around there.

Yes. If that works for other people.

I recently rewatched the first season and it's even better than I remember it being, which is saying a lot because I remembered the first season being pretty incredible. It had probably been twelve or thirteen years since I last saw it. It's brilliant TV.

I love this post, and especially the last sentence of it. I wish I'd understood earlier that spaces and asymmetries are ultimately temporary and to not worry about looking lopsided and needing to balance things out right away. Then again, while I never planned on getting just one tattoo, I also never planned getting as much coverage as I currently have, and I think one the super cool things about tattoos is that you end up with a more or less permanent record of the process of figuring things out. I may not have always made the choices that I would knowing what I do now, or will in the future, but that's tattoos. I totally agree with the sense of freedom that comes when you decide you're going to be more or less fully covered. Having a back piece in progress has been pretty wild in terms of how much of my body is getting tattooed in a fairly short period of time.

Welcome! I didn't know about that Asian-influenced traditional stuff, looks pretty cool though, so thanks for introducing me to something new. Other people you might be into are Ron Henry Wells, Dan Trocchio, Matt Bivetto, Erik Von Bartholomaus, Tomas Garcia, and the Aloha Tattoo Barcelona guys: El Monga, El Rotor, and El Carlo.

So who is going to say where we're going to meet up in two weeks? Because if nobody suggests anything, I'm going to make a suggestion based upon consideration of yelp reviews, proximity to Times Square, and possibly most authentic Irish experience not because I don't know any better, but because I can be a prick. Let's meet up, it will be fun.

My recommendation is to stop looking at your tattoo with a flashlight. That shit is just weird.

If it's any consolation, for as much as the back sucks to get tattooed, I've found that it's a really quick and easy heal until you get to ass and back of thighs going into knee ditch stuff. I got the top part of my back shaded on a Friday, the thing was almost peeled by the Monday.

This is a really cool thread and I've really enjoyed reading people's responses. I haven't been getting tattooed that long, but it's been long enough and heavily enough that I find it difficult to make a clear distinction between myself and my tattoos anymore because they're such a huge part of my life and my experience. With that said, here's some cool stuff: Travel. I think one of the greatest things about getting tattooed, and especially by getting tattooed by a lot of people who don't work in my city, is how much traveling I've done to get tattooed, and how it's made travel to seem like a much easier and much more doable thing than it did prior to traveling to get tattooed. Going to New York City seemed like a somewhat daunting trip before; now I realize that it's an easy 7-8 hour drive down a pleasant stretch of the I-87 and can be a weekend trip. While I was working on my sleeve and @Pugilist was working on her back, I think we made five or six trips between Montreal and NYC in a year, and that was unthinkable before tattoos became a priority. If it wasn't for Electric Tattoo in Bradley Beach (now Asbury Park) I never would have considered visiting that part of the Jersey Shore, or probably the Jersey Shore at all, but it was great and I'd love to go back. Barcelona is a great place no matter what, but getting a little tattoo from El Monga when I was there this summer made that wonderful city that little bit better. One of my first thoughts when hearing about a place I haven't been before is figuring out who tattoos there, because tattoos make the best souvenirs. Art. I've always been interested in art, always drawn to some extent or another, always made a point of visiting museums to look at art, I read about it, and so on, but tattooing has really helped me to broaden my perspectives on art. I would guess that I'm not that different than many of you in that it was really punk rock and skateboarding that exposed me to the first art that really blew my mind. That Corey O'Brien reaper deck Jim Phillips drew is my favorite thing ever and has been since I saw it in ads in Thrasher magazine in I guess the late 80s and early 90s. Those Pushead graphics on those Zorlac decks in that same era; the cover art for the Noise Forest skate rock tape, that stuff all still rules. I'm probably not the only person here who was first exposed to Scott Sylvia not through anything tattoo related, but through the H2O album cover he did. My first encounter with Dan Higgs had nothing to do with tattoos, but was through Lungfish. And somehow despite all that, I guess I still thought that art was something that hung in galleries and museums and spaces like that, and that the illustrations on record covers, skateboards, t-shirts, comics, and so on, were something different entirely. It sounds really lame typing this out, but tattooing has really helped me to see all of this stuff as legitimate forms of artistic expression, and that it's totally as acceptable to be in awe of a Greg Irons illustration as it is to be in awe of a Rembrandt painting. I have plenty of time for both of those. I really love that interview Ed Hardy did of Mike Malone in Bulls Eyes and Black Eyes where Rollo talks about coming from the New York art scene, doing projections and shit like that, and then eventually coming around to imagery that really blew his mind from his childhood, like biker patches and stuff like that. I get where he's coming from there. Tattoos have also made me really appreciate technique and craft. Lately, and this is in a roundabout way coming from seeing Shawn Barber's paintings, I've come to really like realism in art, especially as it contrasts with super conceptual stuff that isn't about skill or technique at all. I have absolutely zero interest in realistic tattoos though. Body image. Now the thing that I like least about my body is the amount of open skin I have left. Not that I'm in a rush to cover it all right away, because I want to get tattooed for a long time to come. Spirituality. We've talked a lot about meditation on here, but I think beyond that there's something spiritual (maybe you'd choose a different word, but I'm using spiritual) about tattoos. I don't mean in a direct way, like tattoos of crosses and Jesus heads or Buddhist iconography or whatever, but more about the way that tattooing seems to be a fundamental human drive. When I was getting my arm worked on there was a moment in a lengthy and brutal session where I was laying on the table, I could smell my own blood from the work that had been done on my shoulder, and there was this sudden understanding of how weird the whole thing was: I was there bleeding and in pain, totally voluntarily, and paying somebody a lot of money that I had worked hard for to do this to me. It isn't behavior that is entirely rational; that's part of the appeal of it. Before having experiences like this I was a lot more of a rational and logical person and getting tattooed has opened me up to the possibility that we don't always do things for easily explainable and comprehensible reasons. I think that's a positive thing, personally.

In my neighborhood, having a money tree is called "robbing drug dealers" but somehow @Pugilist thinks this is a really bad idea. I don't get it, it's not like they're going to go to the cops to report being robbed.

I was hoping that maybe I'd be able to squeeze in something small but unless I come across that much desired bag full of money I'm always keeping an eye open for, there's no way I can afford it. Besides, I want something big from Yoni.

@Fala I just saw the picture on IG and it's so beautiful. I really need to get tattooed by him.

@chrisnoluck Josh Mason was at the Montreal convention a few years ago and he seemed like a nice guy and had a lot of great designs with him, I remember a lot of designs of traditional portraits of old hockey players like Rocket Richard. Heard nothing but good things about him and that shop over the years as well.

Kids love looking at tattoos so if you get some new ones it's kind of a present for everyone.

If anybody is going to be in Montreal between now and the 20th of December, Galerie Yves Laroche has a new show opening tonight that looks like it should be really good. It's all pop surrealism and there is a slight tattoo connection as there will be art by Phil Holt being shown as well as work by Jean Labourdette who is only starting to tattoo, but if you've been to Tattoomania you've certainly seen his paintings: that great tattooed fat man hanging in the waiting area is one of his. Here's a write up about the show from Juxtapoz: Juxtapoz Magazine - Influences: Égrégore @ Yves Laroche, Montreal

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@flowergirl Sometimes you get what you give. You got plenty of good advice here--far more than you deserve--but you're still acting like an entitled brat. And yeah, you got a tattoo that was never going to work. Even if the linework was really precise and crisp right now, every tattoo is going to blow out over time because that is the nature of tattoos and skin, and a line an inch or two long with tiny markings at right angles to that line to mark fractions of that inch, is never going to age well. It's on you now though, so deal with it.

He loves you, right? Does he think that a marriage certificate is the best way of proclaiming his love and commitment? No way, that needs to be done in blood. - - - Updated - - - I saw that on his instagram and it RULES.