tacitapproval

Congrats and welcome! Glad to hear you're finally getting to it. Who are you getting them done by? As for containing excitement, I tend to go the opposite way. I just look at more tattoos and stoke my pre-appointment fires. Containment be damned!

@Sean Sinha Nice one. Some of my favorite tattoos are ones that I picked up on a whim or to fill in a spot. I'm a huge fan of impulse tattoos.

"Hi! This is my daughter, Bendy Skull-Shaped Lady."

@marley mission That is an amazing Bill Murray and Rodney's looking rad. Planning on doing an entire Caddyshack torso?

It's been a while, but I just recently got back to reading the forum and looking at what other people are posting as far as new work. By way of jumping back in, it seemed like posting what I've been up to since I last participated in this thread is the right way to go. This might be a bit of a long one. Sorry. Sometimes you're in New Orleans. Sometimes you end up with a butterfly. Brent at Uptown Tattoo did this one: Jake Miller from Cathedral Tattoo in Salt Lake did this little ditch guy for me: I did a bit of a run of appointments at Great Lakes Tattoo. Erik did this one: Nick did this one: And Matt did this one on my calf: Javier Rodriguez at LTW in Barcelona made this crazy tiger head for me: John Raftery, who is also at Cathedral in Salt Lake now, did this snake while he was still in New York at Fun City: Ben Haft at Fun City did the tops of both of my thighs with a sinking ship and a rose of no man's land: And finally, Mike Suarez at Hand of Glory in Brooklyn was able to squeeze me in on Saturday and do this on my shin: I picked up a few little bits of filler here and there, too. Next up is getting my left knee done, I think. All of this has really just motivated me to start thinking about back/chestpieces. Further down the rabbit hole.

The "Rats Get Fat" tattoo is fantastic. Never gets old. Nicely done and welcome!

I haven't been lurking around here as much over the last month or so, so I have a ton of backlog that I'm looking forward to reading and seeing...but it has been a pretty awesome week. Got this lady from Bert Krak on Thursday: And then adopted this lady from the shelter on Sunday: Both are mending well.

@el twe That's pretty much the plan. There are just so many options.... That good kind of problem, I guess.

I'm booked in with Bert Krak at Smith Street for this coming Thursday (7/25). I imagine I'll get some flash, but I'm going in with a pretty open mind as to what I get put on me. I was planning on just going in a bit early and staring at the books and walls until something jumped out at me. That said, I really love his roses. So clean and classic. And I've seen some really nice lady heads he's done. Some pretty great moths/butterflies as well. And some great cat heads and apes...actually, there isn't much I've seen that I don't dig. All of which is to say that I'm pretty indecisive with five days to go. Any suggestions? (Aside from a hatchet man.) More than a little nerdily excited.

I could not agree more. I hate healing a tattoo 1,000% more than being tattooed. I actually kind of enjoy the being tattooed part (that said, I've only sat for about 2.5 hours at a clip, so I have no concept of what a longer sitting is like).

I have a friend who wants to get this painting of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza tattooed. He wants to do it black and grey (nothing remaining of the color background), and I think he's leaning toward his back or a shoulder. That said, I'd like to steer him toward a tattooer in the NYC area who can do something with this that would be rad and make a good tattoo. I've been preparing my friend for the fact that he'll need to be flexible with the image and that it might need to go through some translation in order to make a good tattoo, but I also want to make sure I suggest some really solid people to do the work. My tastes lean much more toward the American traditional end of things, so I don't want to point him in the wrong direction due to my lack of knowledge. Any help at all would be fantastic. Thanks! - - - Updated - - - Wow. That image is gigantic. Oops.

This is in no way helpful with regard to your laser needs, but I'd never read the term "roundel" before, so I googled "BMW roundel" and found this: BMW Roundel: Not Born From Planes - NYTimes.com ...which I thought was a cool little bit of esoteric knowledge. Sorry for the (somewhat) off-topic post, and good luck with your removal/badass new tattoo.

As far as flash, there's never anything wrong with starting with some of the Sailor Jerry stuff. If the tattooer you end up working with has copies of the three books of Sailor Jerry flash that Ed Hardy published, there are some great examples of daggers going through a heart, like you described, in the second volume I think. I don't own it personally, but I've paged through it a ton of times in various shops.

Well, now I know what I'll be watching this evening. Thanks!