Graeme

I'm not sure I see what the problem is. It doesn't look like it came from somebody's kitchen, it looks like somebody did his or her best with a not very tattooable idea, and honestly, your post reads like a bad yelp review.

Weird Victorian stuff isn't really my thing, but I am into fart jokes and cats and I checked out your instagram and you do some nice looking tattoos, so welcome!

I'd maybe suggest Saturday pre-convention brunch because if everybody is getting tattooed Friday, and I believe @BrianH said that his appointment is then as well, it might be hard to coordinate in terms of time because I'm assuming that at least Brian's tattoo is going to go late, plus it's a convention and everything tends to run a bit behind anyway, etc. However, I'm sure we'll all see each other on Friday and I'm totally into exchanging phone numbers, etc., and meeting for food/drink after. There's a Biermarkt near the convention, I haven't personally been to it, but I assume it's pretty much the same as the one in Toronto which I haven't been to in probably over a decade, but they have food (including poutine!) and a good selection of beer so maybe that would work? For brunch, what neighborhoods are people staying in?

And it's coming up soon! So for an LST meetup, who is planning on coming? If you're coming from out of town, what days will you be in town and what day(s) will you be getting tattooed? We could do poutine and drinks again like we did last year, we could do a pre-convention brunch, but let's figure this out!

Yeah, I went over the yellowed bits with a layer of white thinned with liquin and it seems to have done the trick. I want to experiment with mediums and see what I like most but this works in the meantime.

I finished this yesterday and I'm really happy with it. Which isn't to say that it's perfect, because there are a lot of things I'll do differently next time, but it was the best I could do and I'm proud of it.

My dad also paints and about a year ago he gave me a bottle of liquin (it says it resists yellowing on the bottle) which I hadn't used until now. Mixing it with the white seems to have masked most of the yellowing. I'll see how it holds up as it dries, and maybe touch it up a little bit if necessary. I'm not sure that I like the liquin because it has this strange gel-like consistency, but maybe I'll play around with it a little and see what I can do with it until I make my next trip to the art store. Thanks for the advice though, it was really helpful.

Welcome from Montreal! Where are you? As for planning, you're right about needing to "start getting tattooed more and letting things happen". Unless you're committed to getting a full bodysuit, Japanese or otherwise, from a single artist, there's a LOT of space on your body and there's no reason why you can't have a full back or front or sleeve and still collect smaller pieces elsewhere. That's been my approach and while I see pictures of these incredible suits and really admire them for their artistry and the dedication it takes for somebody to get tattooed like that, an important part of getting tattooed for me is getting spontaneous tattoos, or souvenir tattoos while travelling, getting to visit new shops, meet new people, and so on. I love those fun little tattoos and experiences just as much as I love the sleeve I have or the back I'm working on, and I wouldn't trade the way I get tattooed for a more coherent, planned look.

Gorgeous, congratulations!

Haha, I saw it on instagram and thought "poor fucking bastard". Looks rad, @exume, total tough guy stuff right there!

Yeah, this is seemingly one of the most difficult things about painting with oils: not only is there the usual artistic stuff going on that makes any kind of drawing or painting hard at the best of times, but it practically seems like you need to be a fucking chemist in addition to all that to make sense of oils. I like the bleaching it with sunlight idea, though I'm wondering if it's just easier to paint over that part of it with either a more concentrated titanium white or have it diluted with turp instead of linseed oil. Great advice on the titanium dioxide vs zinc oxide/sulfide too. I've been thinking that I'm going to invest in some artist-quality Gamblin oils (seems that there's a good balance between price and quality there compared to other brands) and they have a titanium zinc white that might do the trick.

I have a question about oil painting and I am wondering if anybody here with any experience with it can help me out. Right now I'm struggling with yellowing that I assume is related to my use of linseed oil as a medium. If there was any yellowing in early layers on my painting, I didn't notice it, but when I really thin out my paint with the linseed oil it turns noticeably yellow as it dries, so what should be a solid titanium white background is this patchy yellow-white field instead and it bums me out. I'm using Demco Artist Series purified linseed oil if that matters; I'm using Pebeo Studio XL oil paints, which kind of suck but I didn't want to invest in good quality paints when I was just trying out oils, but they seem to have worked out decently on previous paintings so I don't think the problem is the paint. It might also be that I have no real training in oil painting, which I am learning is an incredibly complicated thing, and am kind of figuring it out as I go along so I may be making some real bonehead rookie mistakes. Here's a picture to show what I'm talking about: Does anybody have any ideas?

Social media being what it is, my mom saw a picture of the outline of my backpiece and while she wasn't as upset as I expected her to be (she doesn't like that I get tattoos, but she seems to respect that I get them because I like them), she wanted to know that this would be my last tattoo...but after a certain point what does it even matter?

We started the session on my butt and I thought it was okay as far as spots on the back go, though it certainly wasn't nearly as hilarious as a lot of people think that ass tattoos are. I was much less into the part where the ass joins the thigh, the tailbone going into the asscrack (WHY am I getting tattooed into my asscrack, what the fuck is wrong with me?), and the kidneys and love handles. Me and my wife were wondering after about how the tramp stamp was ever a thing because you potentially hit all the bad spots in one tattoo there.

@beez Speaking as somebody who recently acquired a butt snake of my own, BUTT SNAKES FOREVER! Also, you're completely nuts for getting tattooed three days on a single trip. @Eilin That is superb! I love it!

You are an inspiration, sir. Because of this I've been doing an Instagram cull. Now if I could just wean myself off LST I'd be set.

Great intro and welcome!

Needs more black.

You can have it lightened so that you'll have more options for a cover-up, especially if you don't want something super large.

Have you considered laser treatments?

I'm sure it's frustrating paying more than you initially expected to pay for that tattoo, but a couple of things stick out here: 1) if you go to a different artist to finish the tattoo, you might not have a consistent quality throughout the tattoo, especially when you seem to be happy with your existing work; 2) maybe I'm not understanding this correctly, but it really rubs me the wrong way that somebody offered to finish a tattoo by a local, available tattooer at a lower rate. To me, it doesn't speak very highly of that second tattooer's integrity, and while I'm sure stuff like this happens all the time, it isn't an approach to getting tattooed that we really condone here.

Doesn't every TRASH POLKA tattoo end in disappointment, usually around the time the person with the tattoo realises they got shitty, outdated graphic design and not a tattoo?

Thanks! I love what we've done so far, and that's just the start. I kind of wish it wasn't on my back so I could actually see it!

Can we get your niece on here to give people advice about what tattoos to get? These are all killer.

People have given you advice, it just seems that it wasn't the answer you wanted. Its your body, get tattooed by whoever you want to get tattooed by. Seems you've made up your mind.