Graeme

@spyro I don't think that you should be getting tattooed right now and I'd like to basically reiterate what @MsRad said earlier about it really seeming like you're rushing into this. I think it's great that you're looking for a good artist and want a good tattoo, but it's absurd that you need this much help. What are you going to do in the consult? What about when your artist shows you the line drawing? You have your entire life to get tattooed so there's really no rush to so it. I would suggest to hold off for a while and wait until at least the Toronto tattoo convention in June. Go to it, see what people in your city, across the country, and internationally are doing, see the tattoos in real life, and find out what you like and what you respond to best in person and figure out who YOU want to be tattooed by. In the meantime, lurk here, look at the design threads, look at the latest tattoo lowdown thread, learn about how to look at a tattoo in terms of design, linework, shading, coloring, and learn about different tattoo styles. Go to the library and look for reference. I know that my local library has Ed Hardy's Dragons book, maybe your has the same. It will certainly have books on medieval art where you can look at how European dragons have traditionally been drawn. Basically, what I'm trying to say here is that if anything is worth putting effort into, it's tattoos.

Ah damn, I ordered through Book Mistress. I didn't actually look at tattooflashbooks.com because I don't think that they had it the last time I checked. No big deal though I'll have to look at them the next time I order books.

I just ordered the Tattootime reissues and am having them sent to a friend in NYC so I don't have to pay crazy expensive shipping for them and can pick them up at the end of the month. I am super excited for those. A few months ago I found a $5 hardcover copy of George Burchett's Memoirs of a Tattooist on bookfinder.com, which is an insane price for that. A little while after that I found a copy of Dan Higgs' The Doomsday Bonnet in a used bookstore for $10, again an insane price. I am good at finding books.

Have you seen those identical twins with the same tattoos? Hooper did some of them, I think they have a bunch of Duncan X tattoos...all that kind of stuff. It's weird. I'm going to try to find a picture. - - - Updated - - - Here they are: http://www.th-ink.co.uk/2012/07/15/thomas-hoopers-tattooed-twins-jordan-and-caleb/

Jennifer, when I was getting tattooed at Congress St. Tattoo in Portsmouth, NH last summer, Fat Tony Sellers who works there showed me a split painting he did with Richard and Aaron Coleman and it was ridiculously good. I think Richard painted a fox with a parrot in its mouth and Tony said it took him like 30 minutes to paint it. It's humbling to see things like that.

One of my favourites from 2011:

Tattoo models, male or female, can't go away quickly enough in my opinion. If I had any brains at all I'd go into the laser tattoo removal business because there's going to be so much money in that.

Look through the Instagram thread, look up user names and see who people here are following. I don't really want to see a thread on here where each post is a list of hundreds of names with little variation from list to list.

A lot of really nice tattoos come from that shop and they also have really great guests (Nick Colella is either there now or just finished a guest spot, Mario Desa guests there when he's in Toronto, Greg Christian was there at least twice last year) so yeah, I will totally second this recommendation.

I don't know exactly what you mean by "detailed animal tattoo" but David Glantz at Archive Tattoo in Toronto does really great, nicely rendered tattoos so check him out.

Here's an illustration from George Burchett's book of the Duke of York being tattooed. Apologies for the glare on the page.

Montreal drivers are fairly aggressive but if you can drive aggressively you're fine. Driving in NYC scares the shit out of me.

Sounds fake. Anyway, I hate those shirts that say "I want a tattooed president" but that was the first thing that came to mind when I saw this news story.

This guy is currently polling third in the Czech presidential elections: Vladimir Franz: tattooed composer polling strongly in the Czech elections | World news | guardian.co.uk

I just saw on Ross Sewage's blog that he's uploaded everything Ludicra ever recorded to be downloaded for free on bandcamp: Ludicra Ludicra was, in my opinion, one of the best US metal bands of recent years, and a crazy good live band. Download this because it all rules.

Found this one of Tony D'Annessa on Getty Images. They say the photo is from 1955, but Tony started tattooing in 1958 so who knows exactly when the photo is from. And one of Tony from the 4th of July this past year, posted by Dave Cummings on his instagram: That also answers the question about what a tattoo will look like with a scar through it: hard as fucking nails.

My opinion on that kind of tattooing, or really any kind of tattooing that is more associated with a handful of individuals rather than a certain style, is that if you want it, you should really be travelling to get tattooed by the masters of the style. You're going to get a better tattoo from it, and I think that you'd be way more stoked by a tattoo done by the artists you admire than by competent imitations.

One of the nice things about living someplace with long and harsh winters is that we don't have little fuckers like that guy around.

Turns out that I can get the St Bernardus 12 here for under $9 for a 750ml bottle, going to have to try it now.

That rules! I saw after posting this that Jaie Devore at Perfection Tattoo did a tattoo based on this reference and it was awesome.

Just googled Taylor ham...gotta try this.

I need to stop getting tattooed in Brooklyn where you have no idea what vegan/gluten-free/paleo/whatever dietary preferences are in the shop.

Don't want to offer too many insights into my thrilling domestic life here but when Nick posted that me and @Pugilist were trying to figure out if that was on you. She thought you'd posted that you were getting it done a couple of weeks from now. Looks really great! With the tattoos people here get pretty much every month is a write off! We're not even a week into the new monthand look at what's been posted in the tattoo of the month competition so far. Utterly ridiculous.

Did you get that skeleton greaser and panther tattoo?

That book is great. I don't think it gives many insights into the culture of football but it's a great read and the ending of it is one of the finest pieces of journalism I've read since Hunter S Thompson's Hells Angels.