cltattooing

Awesome, that ship is killer! Welcome to the forum, looking forward to some cool posts. :)

Congrats, Eilin!!

Ahh yes! As a rule, don't judge a tattoo until it has completely healed and all waxiness is settled and gone. When a tattoo is totally healed, it will have the same texture and feel as un-tattooed skin unless it's scarred.

It's loosely based on an engraving from this series: The image itself is an alchemical illustration depicting the distillation of the lapis(or philosopher's stone). The annotations mention three types of distillery: cold, hot, and dry. This one is hot, describing the process as burning the lapis at a high temperature for a very long time. The series shows a homonculoid creature and fire within the bottle, and changes into a snake, which eventually eats its tail(ouroboros). It's all very metaphysical and dense, but very interesting to read about. I'll take some pictures of the book and the images I referenced when I get home if you'd like to see them.

Thanks, Rob! Much appreciated (: I really don't think Mike's tattoo is bad either, and there are plenty of images on this forum that could be considered overplayed. It's as classic of an image as the Durer praying hands, the lady Guadalupe, or any other religious theme.

It's fairly common for that to happen depending on the location, difficulty of the healing process, and how the tattoo was applied. Just go see your artist and have them touch it up, it's not a big deal.

I'm almost positive that's a temporary tattoo.

speaking of slugs... by Jacek Minkowski at Mom's Body Shop in San Francisco. Alright, I'm done blowing up this thread..... for today.

Deb, I know you write for the TAM blog, maybe you've read this article? http://tattooartistmagazineblog.com/2012/08/07/larry-brogan-scheduling-appointments-and-taking-deposits/

This is from yesterday, really fun piece on my buddy as part of a trade before he moves to Australia. A little red and bruised, but I think I got a good picture. be nice, I get really self conscious posting my work among so many amazing tattoos :o (although I am totally open to constructive criticism if anyone feels so inclined!)

stole this from sonju's injungram

aww, that's so lovely. I think mom tattoos are really special, I'm glad that she got to see it before she passed. And in my opinion, tattoos don't always have to be technically outstanding to be good tattoos. A lot of it is in the intention of the tattoo and the personal meaning that you are embodying. Thanks for sharing that (: @guitguy she's 54 :p

Haha, thank you! It was really fun. I had her practice the design on pigs feet for a few hours to get a sense of how a machine runs and feels. It took about half an hour, she was really proud of herself and I could tell she enjoyed the experience a lot.

So since pretty much forever, I'd been bugging my mom to get a tattoo. She can be really socially conservative and definitely came from the "tattoos are trash" generation. After enough bugging, it became pretty clear that she's never going to be tattooed, so I started bugging her to come with me to get a mom tattoo so she can be a part of the process and get a feel for how rad the shop environment is. That kept getting pushed back farther and farther until I realized again that it wasn't going to happen. So basically, I gave her the "you're going to be part of tattooing whether you like it or not" talk, and told her that if she wasn't going to participate as a third party, she can participate as a first party and tattoo me instead. So she did. :cool: isn't it terrible? I love it so much. It's supposed to be a bear, looks kind of like a weasel, 100% precious and motherly. Moms rule!

At our shop, we take a $50-100 deposit depending on the size of the piece. I think it's pretty fair to take a deposit of one hour's time. Our policy is that the deposit is not refundable under any circumstances, it is credited toward the total cost of the tattoo, and changes in appointment date/time must be made 48 hours in advance to keep the deposit in effect.

Worked at this joke of a shop for two months: oakland a’s - Oakland Tribune Outtakes - Did 1 tattoo. I am truly shocked that I even stuck it out that long, I guess I did it out of respect or paying my dues for the opportunity or whatever. The guy who owned the place also lived there, like.. literally in the back room with his dog. I would come into the shop and find piles of full garbage bags and scattered beer cans in the kitchen area(yeah.. an actual kitchen) along with piles of dishes from bbq parties they'd throw during the day. The place had zero walk-ins during the time I was there and it was a street shop. And then other coworker homeboy occasionally lived/slept in the loft upstairs. Found a .45 tucked between the mattress and the bed frame, that was fun! I don't think I saw a scrub-room there the entire time and the place didn't have any kind of stencil machine. The last straw was coming in at opening with my client to seeing homeboy fresh out of bed in his basketball shorts and slippers taking bong rips in the work area. So basically it was just this hack who was avoiding paying taxes by living at the shop and doing the whole "cool guy tattoo artist musician" thing. He claims to have been tattooing for 20 years, you tell me if you believe that after looking at this gem:

6 days after getting my elbow blasted, I've never experienced such intense itching in my life. Holy shit. Oh yeah, and you ingrown hairs can go fuck yourselves too :cool:

Meh, whack... everyone gets the tattoo they deserve, I guess?

My first tattoo was pretty dumb, just this little power button symbol behind my ear. It's covered now but at the time I had already been getting pierced on my own, so when my mom saw it, she just kinda looked at it, said "hm" and left it at that. I did overhear her telling our neighbor about it though, it was a very matter-of-fact conversation. I think my dad made fun of me, it was pretty good. As I kept getting more, and eventually after I started tattooing, they've just accepted it as part of my life. Both of them are now pretty supportive, trust my tastes, and often look forward to seeing the new pieces that I have. I do know that deep down, it really bums my mom out that I will eventually be covered, but she also recently "got it" when it came to why people get tattooed/how much it changes your life in a positive light. So that's cool. I definitely feel like I could have it waaaayyy worse.

what confuses the beans out of me is why your friend keeps going to the same person knowing that he's getting copies every time???

I thought that was a really interesting part of his philosophy as well. I'd agree that it's kind of a bummer how tattoos are becoming so demystified, but I also think that that mysticism can never really die as it's a very intrinsic part of tattooing. What I see happening now is more of a divide between the people who "get tatted" and people go "get tattooed." The former category is generally composed of people who like the idea of getting tattooed and do so to embody the counter-cultural status quo/because it's cool/because wiz khalifa has tattoos. I think that the latter category falls more into people who do their research on good tattooing and solid artists, those who follow a path toward the right tattoo. The people who have a certain reverence for the process and go about it almost ritualistically, and I believe that's what Horiyoshi III-sama was talking about. I don't know if that will ever really die...

This is an interesting topic with a lot of grey area. As a tattooer, it's pretty disheartening and insulting when someone blatantly rips off your work. As a client, well.. I was talking to Mr. Campise about not putting my piece online as to skate around the biters and he laid it out pretty simply. Nobody is ever going to do the original justice, and it's pretty much just free(albeit really obnoxious) advertising. Nothing can ever outshine true authenticity, and whoever ends up with the copy ends up walking around with a permanent bummer. So that's kind of where I sit on that matter... It sucks, it's inevitably going to happen, don't do it if you tattoo, and don't get down on it as a client.

Wow, thanks for posting that! Made my night, I am kind of left speechless cause I don't know what I could possibly say to follow that up. Cool dude :cool:

I've never heard of anything like this, but the website describes the process as "escharotic," so I looked that up and it makes me nervous... Eschar - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia seems like the procedure is an injection of their patented chemical into the tattoo site, causes the cells to die and reject the ink. Makes me think of what happens when injuries happen at tattoo sites and the ink falls out of the traumatized area.