Graeme

Skull and rose is a great design. I don't like the placement though. A design like that needs to be bigger than you have it in the mockup (look at the snake and skull tattoo poster Russ just got in the latest tattoo lowdown/December tattoo of the month, that's what size you should be looking at...so around three times the size it is in your posted image) and I can't really see that working on the front of the bicep because it would curve into your armpit and just be kind of weird.

Ouch! So much for that recommendation! Just tried for in Canada and shipping was ~$50. I guess I'll be sending the copy I buy to friends in the US and then picking it up when I visit them.

Doug Hardy said on Instagram that Book Mistress will be carrying it though I don't see it on the website yet. BookMistress Home Page I bought the deVita book in person from her at the Montreal convention and mentioned how expensive shipping was at Last Gasp (I was going to buy the deVita book from them but shipping would have more or less doubled the cost of the book) and she said that her shipping rates were more reasonable. Looking at her website she uses USPS so I would assume that her shipping isn't going to be crazy expensive.

Damn! In NYC two weeks too late for this. Also, thank you very much for making Tattoo Age.

I got a Sakura Koi water brush from my local art supply chain store. I bought the medium with the long handle and I want to say that it's a bit too broad for my liking and that I should have bought the small, but I'd like to be able to better use it before I make those calls. For what it's worth, I always use brushes that are too small and I'm trying to get out of the habit.

Oliver Peck's one is hilarious, but so is Thomas Hooper's. Thanks for the laughs, Stewart, I enjoyed that.

Ah, I was wondering about that because I thought he'd stopped tattooing so I was surprised to see him guesting in Seattle. The deVita book Hardy Marks recently published is also essential and is a real bargain at the $30 or so it lists for.

Saw this on Facebook a bunch today. When this kid gets a big fuck off eagle chest piece when he grows up he's going to have a hell of a story to tell when people ask him what it means.

As I understand this, it isn't going to be anybody ripping off artists so much as it is that if you post a picture of your car or your cup of coffee or whatever that can then be used by Toyota or Starbucks with maybe something saying that you like Starbucks or that you posted something about Starbucks or whatever. To be fair, I think a lot of Instagram and other visually-based social media sites like Pinterest really are about consumerism so it was only a matter of time before somebody tried to make money from that.

They may have always been able to do it, but to me, the change in the terms of service seems to me that they're as of January 16 going to go ahead with a Facebook-style "sponsored links" campaign. And that sucks. I use Facebook because it's useful and because I am a lazy bastard who can't make phone calls or send emails or write letters to friends anymore, but the way they've changed it to, as that article puts it, a "relentless quest to monetize our private lives" really does make me want to delete everything because I really despise the idea of my interactions with friends and family being used and manipulated in order to sell shit. And yeah yeah that's what I signed up for, I know.

On the amateur front, I bought an Arches board and I'm really amazed at how much easier it is to work with than what I'm used to. I don't know how it compares to the rolls or the blocks, but I am very satisfied with it. I also bought a water brush and am finding it difficult to get a feel for, so I need to keep on trying. Question: for those of you using FW liquid acrylics, do you use a UV spray on your finished work to protect it from light damage or are the paints lightfast enough as is that it doesn't need one?

Yes, it is terrible and nobody at all here can relate to it.

Only way to learn is to make mistakes. I see that you've found the painting methods and materials thread, there's a lot of really great advice there but nothing substitutes for just trying things out and seeing what works for you and what doesn't. Got any tattoos?

I love those cat paintings. I bought prints of the cat with koi backpiece and the tebori cats paintings and I need to frame and hang those. I've seen on his IG that he tattoos those as well, I'd absolutely love one when I make it to the Bay Area to get tattooed ie no time soon unfortunately :(

Also Ron's all-black roses. Another tattooer I've really been into lately is Tas. I gotta get over to the UK and get tattooed by him.

Hey dude, maybe I'll see you there!

There's only one Tattoo Archive and it's run by Chuck Eldridge.

That great job interview I posted about that they called me in for last minute and wanted me to quit my current job right away so I could start as soon as possible? Turns out there was actually no job. Fuckin' time wasters. But it is super awesome that a friend commissioned some art from me (never drawn or painted for anything other than fun previously) which is even more awesome because she wants an illustration of skeletons driving a lime green Dodge Super Bee. I am super stoked that someone is paying me money for this!

Plenty that I agree with here and I'm going to add Ron Henry Wells. What first really made me pay attention to him was this "open letter to tattooers everywhere" that he wrote last year about how, while acknowledging that there are some bad things going on in tattooing right now, that there are also a lot of genuinely fucking amazing things happening. Maybe for me a big part of the appeal was that I'd just started getting tattooed at that point and was super psyched on it (oh wait, I'm still super psyched on it) and it was rad reading someone who, for a change, was talking about all the great things happening in tattooing RIGHT NOW instead of lamenting how it was better in the old days. His designs and tattoos regularly fucking kill it. I love that they're proper tattoos...skulls, daggers, torches, lady heads, ships, birds, etc...but with these little twists that I haven't seen elsewhere that just make them so fucking awesome. The negative space tattoos he's posted on IG blow my mind. I have a couple of tattoos from him, will in all likelihood get more, and I'm stoked because me and @Pugilist are driving down to Congress Street at the end of the week to see him again.

1) Latest tattoo lowdown. I am constantly amazed by the tattoos people here get, and it is a real pleasure to get to see it. 2) I wish the Ink Master thread didn't have as many replies as it does. I don't actually mind the thread so much and it's sometimes very funny but I wish there was more attention given to more positive aspects of tattooing. 3) Difficult to say because I got some great tattoos, but for tattoos that are finished I will say the rose and snake I got from Tony D'Annessa at PSC Tattoo from one of his 1958 roll up flash sheets. It is a real privilege and honor to get tattooed by an old timer and to have a piece of tattooing's history on me. Not to mention that it's a tough tattoo and is solid and bold as fuck. 4) @Scott R's backpiece. Not only is it an amazing backpiece but that we can read how he went from thinking of essentially blacking-in his back to getting lasered to the beautiful backpiece he got is really one of the highlights of this board. I'm looking forward to @ian 's visits with Grime too for the same reasons. 5) Jeff Zuck maybe? I'd heard the name before but through here I really started paying attention to his tattoos. 6) My wife @Pugilist pointed it out to me. 7) The forums are great and I love the interactions here and I hope to meet some of you eventually but my favorite part of this site is the interviews. Really truly great stuff there. 8) That said, I spend most my time here in the forum. 9) More interviews! More positive and intelligent conversation here on the forums. 10) Obsessed.

For whatever little it's worth, when I see the pictures you post on IG of how beautiful where you live is and how you get to work with your family putting on great tattoos in a great looking shop, I think it looks like a great life. That said, my tattoo community consists of my wife and the people on here, which I guess is okay, because I'm on the receiving end of tattoos and so however much I think about them, spend time and money getting them, they ultimately aren't my life and my livelihood, but when I get the energy from a good shop or at a convention, I think I get that sense of isolation you're talking about.

Yeah, basically!

If I wanted to get tattooed by Rubendall in September I would have needed to book that quite some time ago! I was thinking a one-shot by somebody named Dan. Don't know which one or what yet though.

I have a wedding to go to in NYC in September so I need to figure out who is going to tattoo me then and what I'm going to get. I wish all decisions in life were this hard.

Forget about looking at designs on the internet, they're almost all garbage and would have to be redrawn anyway. You'll get a far better tattoo by finding and talking to a good tattoo artist and working out the design with him or her. One of the nice things about a phoenix is that there are so many different ways to interpret it so I'd suggest first and foremost finding an artist who does tattoos you love and then figure things out from there. I also wouldn't worry about whether or not a design is "manly" because it's how you wear it. A butterfly tattoo can be hard as shit if you want it to be.