sbhikes

I am curious why bad tattoos are so popular. I mean, I can understand that someone who knows nothing about tattoos goes to a bad artist and gets a badly done tattoo. I did that myself. What I don't understand are why tattoos lacking any creativity or art are so popular. For instance, why do people want to put typewriter text on themselves? Why do they want so much text but no images? Why do they want flowery, descriptive text but not an image of what that text is describing? This makes absolutely no sense to me. I've been as dumb as anybody regarding tattoos but one thing I've never had pop into my mind is to want words describing beautiful things rather than the beautiful things themselves. Another one are the fads like the inifinity symbols, the text on the wrist and the exploding birds thing. Back in the 90s when I first got a tattoo the fads (the fairies, the curly tribal stuff on the lower back) at least were flattering. The current fads are so ugly. I saw a girl with the exploding birds and it looked like someone had attacked her with a marking pen. The small crap on the wrist thing looks like you're trying to sneak crib notes in to the test. The straight lines of text tattoos are so unflattering to men and women alike. I just don't understand. Am I just an old fuddy-duddy complaining about the youth of today? Has there actually been a real change in the culture to prefer ugliness over color, shape, texture and art? Any ideas?

I'm almost 50 and have been putting off letting my mom know about/see my leg. It's been easy to hide if she visits in cooler weather. But once I have to wear shorts or capris, she's going to see it. She was okay with it before when my tattoos were all so small. I'm not sure what she'll think now that they're big. She'll probably love the Pacific Crest Trail tattoo I have since she has become one of these trail moms helping out all the hikers that come through near where she lives. My hope is that since my big blue roses are touching it, she'll think it's all one big tattoo and therefore there won't be too much static at the "big reveal".

Wow, that turned out really nice!

My lower leg tattoo is so itchy. I don't remember my shoulder being this itchy. It's itchier on the healed side (the side that was finished two weeks sooner than the other side), too. On the leaves of my roses, not on the flowers.

I know how you feel, Delicious. I woke up feeling the same way today. My tattoo is so big. Maybe I'm fooling myself and I'm the only one who thinks it is nice and maybe others are snickering at my poor taste behind my back. I'm not so sure about the dingle balls and now I'm thinking it needs a butterfly so that means it'll only get bigger. Then I see it in a mirror or by accident and I'm like hey, that's really nice, how can I think such silly things.

Well, that is helpful for me to plan a strategy. There is a small tattoo that I would like and I'm not terribly fussy about the details. So if I see it on a sheet and I like as-is then I might give it a go. Otherwise, I'll just do it more deliberately like a normal tattoo.

Sometimes you see that shops will have these special days like Friday the 13th or maybe fund raisers or Halloween or other holidays. They'll have a bunch of tattoos they'll do for a certain flat price on such a day. I was thinking I might do that some day just for the fun of it, not because I'm cheap or anything. So I'm curious about it. Are these days usually really busy and hard to get a tattoo if you only have time to drop in after work? If you go to a shop that has a couple of really great artists and maybe one or two who aren't so great, do you just get pot luck who will do the tattoo or can you choose the artist? Do you get any kind of choice in certain aspects of the tattoo or is it basically exactly what is shown? For example, if the tattoo is red can you ask for orange instead?

This is my personal opinion. You don't play football every minute of the day. So the minutes you aren't playing football, wear sandals so your skin gets air and isn't stuffed into a sweaty sock. Then play football like normal. In my experience a little sweat kinda helps the peeling stage along a bit. At least try and time your tattoo so you aren't playing football the very next day. I was getting tattooed on my ankle on Monday nights and had a Thursday weight lifting class and was usually good to go (no pain or discomfort) even by Wednesday. Tuesday there was quite a bit of swelling and discomfort. That's just me, though. YMMV.

Oh and Ian if you are still reading my boring post, in case you ever mention this to J, let him know that his tattoo changed everything for me. It was the first really good tattoo I ever had. He did perfect lines, everything so crisp, even the corners. But what changed everything was that it was so big and the subject matter is something all my friends can envy. All the positive feedback made me realize having a tattoo can be fun. It made me want to fix all my ugly old tattoos. I may go back to J someday for future new tattoos. There are three guys in SB I've gotten good tattoos from now. It's fun to try new tattooers.

Yep, that's the leg I remember! So nice!

I have sometimes seen tattoos on reddit and thought to myself I have seen that tattoo before and sure enough someone in Santa Barbara has it. Now I understand why police ask about tattoos. They really do identify people. I mean, if Ian is the guy with the seahorse on his leg, I can't even tell you what his face looks like or what color hair he has, but I would recognize the seahorse if I saw it again. As for my roses, when I came home with them my first thought was that these roses are really unusual. I have never seen one done like this. I wasn't sure if I liked the style, but then I usually don't like the way any roses are done. The red ball thingies were my idea because there was a big empty spot on the front of my leg. All these really pretty tattoos I've seen have little details added that ordinary artists might not even think of, and one of my favorite little rose accessories is the red ball thingie. I'm not sure I like my red ball thingies after all. But when I look at the whole thing I am very happy with the whole thing, red balls and all. So colorful, so big and blue, so bold. It suits me I think. It needs a butterfly now in the front. But I'll wait for a good time to add that. Maybe next year. I think I'm done getting tattoos for a while.

Wow, you remember from long ago. So were you the guy with all the gray sea scene stuff on his leg? I remember a really cool seahorse. J does really nice tattoos. I think he did a great job with mine even though it didn't require any creativity on his end.

A mystery guy named Ian knows everything about my tattoos but who is he?

I got my tattoo finished last night. The healing process all over again ugh. The swelling on my lower leg is murder. And the itchiness of the healed side continues. I feel like I have both poison oak and really bad edema.

Johnny: Yes. J (Pacific Crest Trail): Yes How did you know? Were you there when I was getting it done?

Santa Barbara. And yes, if you have seen it, that is my web site.

I finished my ankle band coverup last night. I now have two big blue roses instead. Hopefully you get the idea. All my ugly tattoos are gone now. From now on any tattoos I get will be all NEW.

My coverup is finished. The inside rose done last night: An attempt to take a picture of the whole thing. I'm happy that I do not have to look at the old tattoo anymore. Even though this new tattoo is a lot bigger than I ever would have chosen for myself, I think it fits my chunky leg better. I'm looking forward to maybe one day putting a butterfly on the front of my shin where there isn't much showing but red antenna balls. I think I'm done getting tattoos for a while. It really hurt a lot last night, like having poison oak in a way.

I can show it the first couple of days but then it starts to look pretty embarassing. Crusty, then flaky, then dry and peely. I don't like to show it until all that is gone. I have really dry skin so I imagine the flaky, peely stage lasts a little longer on me. Even worse than healing is healing it to get more work done. The wait has been killing me. It still itches and I'm going in for more in a couple hours. I woke up in the middle of the night certain I had poison oak and was going to have to cancel my appointment, thus drawing out the process another few weeks. Thank god it was all a bad dream.

I agree with the comment about people being too timid and living life in fear. I quit a pretty good programming job to do this: Got the commemorative tattoo a year after I completed hiking the trail. Spent two summers hiking that trail and the months in between and right after working some interesting and unusual jobs. In fact, even though I have gotten tattoos that didn't turn out that well, I never regretted them because I have always valued living life to the fullest, just doing things that make life more interesting. Even if they don't always work out. Even if that means I've never been much of a career-oriented person.

That's awesome that other people's tattoos make them so happy. I don't know anybody else who has a tattoo so I didn't know how much they make your life different. The other night I was showing my map tattoo like I usually do when someone wants to know what the Pacific Crest Trail is. My new big blue rose is right next to it. It surprised me to see the big blue rose there. It's so pretty. It's amazing to look at myself and think "so pretty." That's not the normal thing I think of myself.

I don't know if you can see the swelling in my ankle, but here it is. I think it was even worse by the end of the day. The other side of my leg is a matching rose but it was not colored in. It was less swollen but more red. Even the untattooed parts were red. Judging by the experiences everybody is describing here, I'd say if you just have nasty swelling and redness that it's probably normal and unrelated to the color. Of course, I don't know for sure. Just thought if your leg looks anything like mine maybe you'll feel better about it. Hopefully I'll get the other side finished on Monday. More swelling...