Graeme

The colours in that are great. I love the purple.

Your inbox is full, so I am putting this here instead of sending it to you via PM. No apologies for it being wildly off topic: Kenneth Anger: how I made Lucifer Rising

It's summer so I see a lot of tattoos on the street and I occasionally see "painterly" tattoos with no outlines, etc., and I'm sure they were beautiful when they were new, but they don't hold up. The colors fade, as they inevitably will, and you're left with nothing much. Whereas when you see much older traditional tattoos...eagles, crosses, roses, panthers, etc...even if they're old, faded, the lines have thickened, and so on, I still know exactly what the tattoo is. I think people should get whatever tattoos they want to get, but they shouldn't have the same expectations for the longevity of their tattoos.

How shitty is that new Sabbath single that's been getting a lot of airplay lately?

I've always seen us as the barbarian horde. Just saying.

You said the same about the linework on the other tattoo you posted and while I can see what you're saying, there are bad lines that are because the person who did the tattoo has no idea what they're doing, and then there are lines that look like they're handmade and give the tattoo character because this is tattoos and not some sterile photoshop-retouched bullshit, and you got the second, friend.

And it takes balls to do Godflesh and also do something like this:

Maybe your priorities are different than mine but if I'm going to waste my time on things like that I want it to be on somebody else's time.

Good and so versatile too.

No, the point is that for any questions about the specifics of tattoo design and placement, the best person you can possibly ask is the person who is going to be doing the tattoo because they are going to be able to give you far better advice than anybody else. This is what they do for a living so they have a lot more knowledge and experience about this than most of us here, and ultimately, they're the person who is going to execute the tattoo.

I want to be you when I grow up.

I don't tattoo but I'm going to give my opinion on things that I know very little about because it's the Internet and I have a right to make my voice heard, damnit!

@Kevbazz Flash are the sheets of designs hanging on the walls of tattoo shops. I feel that you see a lot of medieval-style stuff on sheets from the 80s. Greg Irons did some cool dragons. Bill Baker's flash from that era has plenty of things in that vein. Go to a shop that's been around a good while and flip through their flash racks and you'll likely find all sorts of good stuff. I'm not saying that you need to pick something off the wall and get it as-is, but these are all designs that have been drawn specifically to work as tattoos so I would suggest at least using them as inspiration.

I have a real job where I work with my hands and don't have a computer, I don't have time for this nonsense.

Look at 1980s flash.

Very nice! I love seeing pictures of his tattoos, I'd love to get tattooed by him one day.

Yep, because when I've gotten my blood drawn or needed a shot it looked nothing at all like this:

Tattoo conventions are for anybody interested in tattoos, and I think going to one is a great idea because you'll get not only to see plenty of people's portfolios and their tattoos in person and in one place, but you can talk to tattooers and get their opinions on your cover up, you can get a sense of their personality and so on. You can get tattooed too if you want.

How horrible that you got a tattoo taken from the highest selling book series of all time and other people got it too. But yeah, claiming to understand things on a much deeper level than everybody else isn't hipster behavior at all.

It's funny because I was thinking of the people I've been tattooed by that it might be Seth Wood who I would get all my work from. His tattoos are great, I love how he's doing more and more large scale work and that it is completely fucking awesome, and I really like him as a person. He's funny, easy to get along with, incredibly smart, and he always adds a little bit extra to his tattoos that really set them apart. The tattoo I have from him is only a couple of years old but it's solid as fuck. I'm glad that I don't have to choose only one though.

I was riding the bus to work this morning and even though the bus was full and people were standing, there was one empty seat...the one right next to me. I believe it was @CultExciter who once said on here that the purpose of visible tattoos was to attract mates and deter foes, so I'm halfway there.

Unstoppable!

So do you represent them as in you manage them or something along those lines?

Andrew Loomis books: Save Loomis! Various old drawing books: Drawing Books - Open books for Creative Minds!

Get tattooed by Lucas Ford and welcome to LST.