Graeme

That's Elizabeth Weinzirl and unless I'm mistaken most of her tattoos were done by Bert Grimm. @ShawnPorter posted a video interview with her on Occult Vibrations, which is super cool for many reasons including that you can see how good those tattoos look:

That crazy rose and gorilla is on LST poster @mtlsam who's niceness and ability to scrounge up a massage table (seriously appreciated dude!) is only matched by his bravery.

Haha shin wasn't so bad! I was expecting absolutely horrible things and it was fine, it felt like a tattoo.

I got this today from Chad Koeplinger at the Montreal convention. Ed Hardy-inspired hybrid rose right over the shin. I am super stoked on it and all of you should get tattooed by Chad not only because his tattoos are fucking amazing, but because he is a rad dude and getting tattooed by him is super fun.

Moisturising scabs has caused me the most problems in my healing. It's the main reason why I do as little as possible to my tattoos other than keeping them clean. My wife says that this is a guy thing because I don't really take good care of my skin unless I have a fresh tattoo on it so I overmoisturise because I don't have a sense of the right amount of lotion to use. So now I've gone to the opposite extreme and I do nothing to them other than washing and keeping them wrapped for the first couple of days, and I've had much better luck with healing. And yeah, for me keeping the wrap on overnight and rewrapping the next day after washing has prevented the thick scabs from forming. I had some still in my ditch on the last session on my sleeve, but that's the ditch and I don't think there's any way of healing that spot nicely.

Great tattoos! Sean Lanusse was working the booth next to where I was getting tattooed at the Rochester convention and he seemed like a super cool guy who clearly loves tattooing. That lantern he put on you is great! Welcome again to LST and keep on getting awesome tattoos.

Oh don't worry, beer would be provided!

I can't wait to see what you get. I absolutely love that cat he put on you. Real magic in that tattoo.

Welcome! Congress St in Portsmouth is one of my favorite shops. That place is awesome.

This weekend is going to be rad! So for poutine on Saturday so far we have myself, @Pugilist, @Mark Bee, @BrianH and his strangely tolerant girlfriend, @Mushu, and hopefully a real-life friend of mine who will have just gotten his first tattoo. Anybody else? @mtlsam @Dennis? I'll make the reservation tomorrow. This is probably not a lot of people for a 15 pound poutine so I feel that this is going to be a dangerous meeting!

Wait for this weekend. With the Montreal convention starting tomorrow and people here having some crazy stuff lined up, there's going to be some rad tattoos getting posted over the next few days.

I finished Gardens of the Moon and I'll give Deadhouse Gates a try because Erikson set up enough cool stuff that I'm interested to see where he's going to take it, but I did find that there were enough serious flaws in the book that it really got in the way of my enjoyment of it. Again, I thought that it mostly came down to him putting the world he created ahead of the characters and the story, which is a real shame because there was so much in that book that could have been better developed that would have made the book a lot stronger. I didn't feel particularly interested or invested in any of the characters; where was the tension in Darujhistan after Pale fell?...there was a bit of talk in the book about different factions in the city vying to see if the city would resist the Empire or acquiesce to it, but surely this would also show itself in day-to-day life? While I really like that Erikson wrote this world where gods and demi-gods toy with mortals, I felt that this could have been better developed: how do the characters feel knowing that they're being used by gods for purposes they can't understand and will likely not survive? How do people live in a world where that can happen? I really didn't like the way that the RPG roots of the novel showed through in that too many characters were classes instead of proper characters. Though for all that, there are those epic magic and monster battles where everything gets fucking smashed and shredded and that is undeniably rad. I'll give that next book a read and see how I feel about continuing with the series after that.

Oblivion is kind of frustrating no matter what I think. I abandoned the game when Oblivion Gates opened up all over everywhere because going into those to close them was annoying as hell. I should go back to it one day. Skyrim is still super awesome though, I love that game.

http://www.lastsparrowtattoo.com/forum/general-tattoo-discussion/152-non-tattooers-opening-shops.html

I need to organise this and make a reservation...I was out of town last weekend so I haven't had a chance to do that yet, but I'm going to get to that. Oh hell, let's do that now. Saturday evening poutine at Poutineville, let's say at 8pm unless anybody has any objections/tattoo appointments/etc. Who is in, are you bringing your partners, friends, etc? Reply here.

I've been thinking about this a lot since watching the Japan Gypsy Gentleman episode and that Vice Horiyoshi 3 interview. One of the things I really took from those Horiyoshi 3 interviews is that he seems to see his life and the pursuit of his craft as being identical, and while I can't quite articulate my thoughts here, it seems to me that there's a connection between that kind of philosophy on life and living and coherent full-body tattoos. Whereas for me, I'm all about farting about. I've travelled a bit, lived in different places, tried different lines of work, I try to be as interested and as open to new experiences as I can, and in a way I think the patchwork look kind of works with that.

Even though I've never met you, I am going to miss you.

Welcome, Arya! For a scar coverup the best advice I can give is that you should find a tattoo artist who does work you absolutely love, and talk with him or her about it, preferably in person. What is or isn't possible as a coverup is going to depend on a lot of factors and so it's pretty much impossible to offer any specific advice on a forum like this. If you tell us where you live, I'm sure we can suggest some great artists in your area.

I saw an El Monga tattoo in real life the other day and I dig the pictures of his tattoos a lot, but FUCK they look so much better in real life. I need one of those in my life.

No, this has nothing to do with what I think or like, and everything to do with the understanding that all art forms have limits, conventions, techniques, histories, people who have excelled with that medium, pushed boundaries, developed new understandings of it, etc. This is as true of tattoos as it is of photography, of oil painting, of heavy metal, or of any other art form you can think of and to just instead say that it's all subjective is lazy. I'd also say that this attitude that everything is the same as everything else and all that matters is that you like it/it's meaningful to you is a big reason why people get shitty tattoos.

No, art is not and has never been subjective, and when people say that I can only conclude that they don't know anything about art, haven't spent much time studying it and thinking about it, and that they don't really care about art either. Saying that "all art is subjective" is an admission of ignorance.

Awesome! It is an honour to win against so many tattoos that I would love to have myself and given what people have lined up in September, I can't wait to see what next month's competition brings!

Nice tattoos and welcome! What's with the name? I ask because I have a greyhound and am very fond of sighthounds.

It's a convention, things usually run late but it's cool because there are a hundred rad things to look at in the meantime.