Graeme

I worked once in a bookstore and while I liked that job, it was pretty much entirely shelving books and answering really dumb questions from customers. I don't even remember how many times somebody asked me to help them find a book when all they could remember about it was MAYBE the colour of the book's cover. I brew beer for a living now and pretty much everybody in the world thinks that I have the greatest job ever, because apparently grown-ass adults think that brewers sit at the bar and drink beer all day. Which isn't what I do. I think I've had a proper sit-down, take the time I'm legally entitled to lunch break maybe two or three times in the seven years I've been a brewer, because I don't have time for breaks in a regular workday. If I may go on a tangent here, I think you're right that there's a lot of envy here and a misperception that there's something, I don't know how to express this, maybe more "soulful" about working with one's hands. That book "Shop Class as Soul Craft" that came out a few years ago and was fairly popular despite being overall pretty terrible was a big purveyor of this kind of bullshit. I think also Richard Florida and the whole bullshit notion of a "creative class" and the idea that we're all involved in some kind of creative enterprise (you know, like working in a big box retail store, and just make sure that this so-called creativity has an economically useful function) hasn't helped with the idea that artisans have these wonderful jobs. Work is work, it's a means to an end.

This came from the shop that you said elsewhere puts out better work than Shige, Horiyoshi, and Eli Quinters? Nice tattoo, but I feel you may have oversold the shop a little bit.

There's nothing wrong with going to different artists for different tattoos. That's how most of us here get tattooed. With that said, I'd suggest reading this thread before committing to a lace tattoo. I think there are ways in which you could take the inspiration from lace and make a nice tattoo out of it, but looking at that link you provided, a lot of those tattoos are going to be a total mess in a few years.

Welcome! I think that design would work okay as a tattoo, though it might wrap too much for an inner arm, but silhouettes like that tend to look flat and there are better ways of getting across the same idea, like this: That was done by Handsome Mike Bialek who tattoos at the Okey Doke in Toronto and Trophy Tattoo in Hamilton. His instagram is here. I'd suggest going to him for a Canadiana tattoo.

Welcome Jiles!

Welcome! Have you or are you going to see Fleetwood Mac on their current tour?

Here's a beautiful one taken from Miyazo's instagram: I will enthusiastically third how much that spot sucks to get tattooed. It feels so awful to get tattooed there.

He should do one of dudes with "old school" tattoos that are a couple of years old making fun of dudes with tribal tattoos. It would be funny because it's true.

I'm excited for this, but I've also watched season two of it so I'm trying not to get my hopes up.

Not now, maybe not ever. Why would you get tattooed on your back anyway, you'll never see it, and unless you plan on spending most of your time shirtless, neither will anybody else.

I love the aesthetics of books. Walls covered in bookshelves are the greatest thing ever. Homes should look like libraries.

I disagree that there needs to be room here for critical opinions and saying what we don't like about any particular tattooer's work, basically because I think most of us are ignorant about tattoos. What's that phrase that I think comes from Brooklyn Blackie? Don't look for faults in things you don't understand? Most of us here, myself included, understand very little. I'm not going to name names here because it isn't important, but I was getting tattooed once and my tattooer was talking with one of his colleagues--both tremendous tattooers in their own right--about another tattooer that they both admire and how he tattoos in such a way that the tattoo isn't going to look quite right until it's settled into the skin a couple of years. This guy is making tattoos for the long haul, that are going to look great throughout the person's life, and not just on an Instagram photo when they're brand new. That, for me, was one of many humbling moments I've had while getting tattooed where I understood how little I actually knew. Things like this are a large reason why I said earlier that we shouldn't base our opinions on photos alone. I don't want this to be a place where we're going on about flaws in this tattooers or that tattooers work when they may not even be flaws at all. This is also making me think of the Invisible podcast with Seth Ciferri when he talks about getting shit from people about things that were said on the Read Street Forum. I'm grateful to Scott for providing this space that has been so enriching and has been so helpful in how I get tattooed that I don't want him to have the grief of tattooers going up to him and giving him shit about why people are talking garbage about their tattoos on his forum.

I use tinypic.com and it gives you options to resize when you upload. I always use "message board" for here, and it gives you the code to embed it and everything.

I really agree with this, and I think there's certainly an extent to which, especially if you're fairly new to getting tattooed and want good tattoos but maybe lack the self-confidence to look at a portfolio and say, fuck yes, this is what I want, that there's a sort of reassurance and validation that comes from going to a tattooer with a well-known name. I don't mean this to denigrate anybody because I've been there and I'm sure most people here have experienced this to some degree or another. I mean, I got my first tattoo from Seth Wood, who needless to say is absolutely fucking incredible and who I really credit with setting me on the path to get tattooed how I do, but when I got tattooed by him I didn't know shit about tattoos, I didn't know he was a pretty big deal, and while I wanted to get tattooed by him because he was the person at the Montreal convention who's tattoos spoke most to me, I remember looking at stuff on the Internet about how to look at portfolios and how to look at linework and shading and what not (this was before I knew about LST) and I was checking that against what I'd seen of Seth's tattoos and to be honest, though everything seemed good, I had really no experience to tell good from bad. I also think that an important part of getting tattooed is that it's the sort of thing that you can only start to figure out by getting tattooed, so maybe the tattoos you got when you started getting tattooed wouldn't be the tattoos you would get when you have more experience getting tattooed, but that's the beauty of tattooing.

I want to get tattooed by people who do tattoos that I can feel in my gut, which is to say that when I see an artist's tattoos, or look through their portfolio or on their instagram or whatever (though more and more for me I want to see the tattoos, and not just pictures of them) I want to have a deeper reaction than just thinking that it's a good looking tattoo, and I want to have a good time getting those tattoos. I've been tattooed by some "big names" and I've travelled a fair bit to get tattooed, and to be honest, I feel a little self-conscious about it because--and maybe this is only in my head--I fear coming across as somebody who buys into that kind of almost celebrity culture that sometimes goes along with tattoo collecting that I think @Pugilist articulated very well. Because for me it's not about that and it was never about that. I just want to get rad tattoos.

I have things to say on this thread that will have to wait until I'm done work and have the time to write a proper response, but in the meantime can we try to distinguish between seeing tattoos and seeing pictures of tattoos? Because the two are not the same at all.

Welcome! You're not going to find information about the technical aspects of tattooing here, but there's still a lot of great information here in the various threads, and especially in the tattoo artist interview videos. Be sure to watch those, they're the best part of this site. I got tattooed at Electric Tattoo in New Jersey fairly recently and when I was there Robert Ryan was talking about the Nepal tattoo convention and how much he likes it. He works it, I'm pretty sure Chad Koeplinger works it or has worked it in the past, and I think there are a handful of other artists who travel to it. Anyway, Robert was also talking about how impressed he was with how tattooing has developed in Nepal since he started going to the convention, so maybe check that out and get to meet and talk to other like-minded folk in your part of the world.

Welcome!

Welcome! I'd love to see pictures of your sleeve.

You are human after all! ;) Looks fantastic, I really like how he darkened it and I can't wait to see healed pictures once it settles in.

I think if a full back is even a consideration at some point in the future it's better to keep your back open to give yourself as many options as possible, and get tattooed elsewhere--arms, legs, ribs, chest--in the meantime. That said, I've seen many an amazing backpiece work around/cover/incorporate existing tattoos. My wife, for example, had her back done in a folky Americana style by Stephanie Tamez at Saved and Steph incorporated an old tattoo of a map my wife had between her shoulder blades and the whole thing works, flows as a coherent tattoo, and looks fantastic. If you look at Jojo Ackermann's instagram, he's working on an elephant backpiece that works in both an older lower back tattoo and a decent-sized butterfly between the shoulder blades and it looks great. I guess what to take away from this is go to a quality artist and you'll end up with a quality tattoo, no matter what you choose.

My current job doesn't have me working with or interacting directly with customers, but I am around them and I've found that I get approached by far more customers when I have my arms covered. Guess that means the tattoos are working like they're supposed to.

Welcome. Like @Al Pascarelli said above, make sure that this is what you want before you get it, because your question about if you can cover it up kind of concerns me. Getting tattooed, and especially getting your first tattoo, involved a lot of uncertainty about if you're going to like your tattoo, the process, what it's like to be tattooed, etc., and that's all fine, but I think if you're wondering if you'll be able to cover it with something else in a year, or even ten or forty years, you should maybe think on it some more until it feels like that or something else is EXACTLY what you want. If what you really want though is a realistic cyborg tattoo, find the best artist you can and go for it.

Welcome! Sounds like you have some great ones!

Welcome! Post links to the shop's website and Instagram!