cltattooing

Some of my favorite tattoos that I have were impulsive decisions. Most recently have been a small rooster(right below my knee if you must know) from Alex at FTW, and one of Jacek's awesome slugs from Mom's. A lot of the tattoos I've done on myself have been somewhat spur of the moment decisions, mostly because I was itching for practice at the time.

I'm not sure if anyone has discussed this so far, but I have a question I'd like to throw by some of the other tattooers in this thread. What are your 'rules' (if you will) regarding tattooing people that you are dating? I don't mean long term relationship kind of stuff, but people that you've been with for less than a year.

Thank you, tattooedgirl! And thanks, hogg! I gather that there are a lot of bay area people who post here?

Hehe, no problem. The paint nights over here are open to pretty much anyone. Of course, you do have some influence on who hears about it first!

Thou shalt tip your artist on a job well done!

One of the tattoos that I've done that never fails to make me chuckle was actually a piece I did during my apprenticeship. This 45 year old mexican man had come into the shop and browsed through some of the Cherry Creek crap we had in the flash racks. He found a tribal sun that was intended as a lower back tattoo, and he wanted it as a wrist band. Fucking hilarious. This man must have spent every day outside since he knew what the sun was, cause he had something more along the lines of elephant hide for skin. Reminded me a lot of tattooing pig feet, haha. I think his wife ended up getting a grim reaper from our other apprentice. Too funny.

thanks, party people! I submitted a post with a bunch of pictures, I think it still needs mod review.

Fuck it, who cares! If nothing else, just do it with the people at your shop and keep the doors open. Maybe hang up some fliers or pass them out. Just my opinion, but I feel like people who do really care about making art(certainly over politics) would show up for something like that because it benefits both the individual and the community. All art is basically stealing ;) I do tattoo, and there is a weekly paint night at a shop about a mile from my house. There is also a drawing group out in East Oakland that gets together on a weekly basis as well, and those have both had great turnouts. It's just really cool to be in a room full of creative energy at work, you can totally feed from it and give it back to others.

Congratulations on a thus-far fulfilling apprenticeship! I live in a town where you can't throw a rock without hitting a good artist. This has both positive and negative effects, but I find that most artists really want to share a collective vision of some kind. I think that tattooers in particular can relate to this, as a tattoo is the culmination of the vision between artist and client. Anyway! What I was going to suggest is maybe (if it's ok with your mentor and the rest of the shop) start an art night where you open the doors to anyone who wants to come draw or paint or talk about art with you guys. Cliques are both annoying and useless. If you can draw a group of people who can see beyond stupid things like popularity, I think everyone involved would grow a lot and make some new friends.

Getting tattooed by George Campise at the end of May, that's been on my mind for the last couple of months.

I missed out on last year. Can't wait to attend this year!!!!

oh right, of course (: (I know the webs are very scratchy here ): )

Hello, Last Sparrow. I've finally decided to join you. I guess I heard about you guys from being linked to your artist interviews from TAM blog interviews. So far I think that this is a pretty rad forum, and seems to be lacking a lot of the nonsense and fluff that saturates a lot of other tattoo forums. I also think it's really cool that technical secret spilling is discouraged here. More attention to focus on the actual quality of art, rather than who thinks they know what. But! Forgive me for not thoroughly looking, but is there a section for critique? I'm a novice who has confidence in their potential for great tattooing, but I also feel that I have a really long way to go before that becomes part of my reality. I think one of the biggest obstacles in my progression is that I don't often get to make art in the company of other artists and don't really have a lot of people who are available to give solid and honest feedback. There are a lot of people posting here who I look up to, so I'm pretty stoked to be able to dive into the community here. I live and work in Oakland, California. I would choose no other place to be at this point in my life, it's probably one of the state's best kept secrets. Also, the caliber of tattooing that is present in the area is both astounding and overwhelming. I often find myself comparing my work to those who have been at this for (usually) 5 times longer than I have, and I still haven't made up my mind as to whether that's a good habit or a bad habit. Anyway, hello, nice to meet you all.