Tesseracts

Most forums I've been on allow you to either search by thread or search by post. Seems this forum only allows you to search by thread... that's an inconvenience. However you can partially get around that by using Google to search LST.

It's stuff like this that is the reason it's difficult to Google information about tattoos. You Google something like "good realistic tattoos" or "tattoo styles" or "how to choose a tattoo"... stuff any normal person would want to know... and all that shows up is tons of lists and images of tattoos that aren't even good, on websites that give you no real information and are just designed to be click bait. Most of the time they don't even credit the artists so you can't readily find the other stuff in their portfolio on the off chance you find something you actually like. The descriptions of the images are just superficial uninteresting descriptions of what you're looking at, like "birds are pretty." Or it goes in depth about something pointless, like how this chart is careful to explain to you the difference between monochrome and color (?!). I just now Googled "Japanese koi tattoo" so I could get an authentic example of stupidity, and this is a sample of the literature I found: "Of course, people may love fish tattoos for no reasons, just for cool." Not only is this sentence a worthless introduction to a page of 50 random fish tattoo images (without artist credit) but "just for cool" isn't even proper English. The only reason this sentence exists is to make the website more likely to show up when someone Googles the word "cool." Oh yeah and there is the occasional article you stumble upon filled with cliches about how "tattoos are no longer for criminals and sailors any more" which doesn't tell you anything interesting. I mean I know sometimes it takes more than 20 minutes of research to find something worthwhile, I'm just saying, stuff like this makes the entire internet worse. There is even more nonsense on the internet about tattoos than there is about most Googlable subjects. LST and a few blogs are the only decent sources of information I've encountered so far.

I had a painting instructor who does really nice paintings. He's also a tattoo artist. However his tattoos don't look like his paintings at all. There must be a reason for that. Here are his paintings and here are his tattoos. They're different styles and they emphasize different things. I love paint and I love the way paint looks, but human skin isn't like paper or canvas. I don't think it's just a matter of fading, some things look better on a flat computer screen than they look on an arm. It seems to be that the best way to get something that looks like a painting on your skin, is to find a good tebori artist. For example, this bird by Horimasa has really nice subtle color transitions, more like a painting than like most tattoos. I also like how well white comes out with tebori. Dotwork tattoos also look kind of like drawings or illustrations to me, here is one by Valentin Hirsch.

How do you forget what a compass looks like?!

Seems pretty much every tebori artist outlines by machine. That's how mine was done.

I showed my friend a photo of my tattoo and asked him if I should get it. I didn't tell him I already got it because I wanted his honest opinion. He said I shouldn't get it and told me "a girl with a nine tailed fox tattoo is like a guy with an Iron Maiden tattoo." I have no idea what that means. As an example he linked to this. :confused: Then when I told him I already got the tattoo and showed him my leg, he laughed and said I'm a member of the Yakuza now. I'm just grateful he is making dumb jokes rather than telling me it will look bad when I'm 60 or whatever.

Thanks for tolerating my questions everyone. I'll be honest, my motivation for starting this is my parents have been giving me a hard time about the yellow ink. I can't find any cases of cadmium poisoning though so I'm not that worried. PinkUnicorn, I also asked my dermatologist a while ago about tattoos. He was worried about the ability of my skin to heal itself at that time (that problem is now resolved) but didn't say anything about poisoning.

I don't think there is anything wrong with my tattoo and I don't think I'm poisoned. This has nothing to do with me being relaxed, I just wanted to know if anybody knows what is in the ink.

If I get sick I want to know if there is a possibility I have cadmium poisoning.

I already have one so it's too late for that.

So I can't even know what pigment is used? I guess the only way to be completely safe then is to only get black tattoos, because that's just carbon. Red on the other hand might be mercury sulfite. Has anyone heard of any cases of somebody getting metal poisoning from tattoos?

Can anyone shed some light into what is used to make the pigment in tattoos? I heard cadmium is used for yellow. I have a yellow tattoo and I know cadmium is a poison. I've heard of allergic reactions to tattoos, but I have never heard of anyone getting heavy metal poisoning from tattoos. Is that a concern? From what I understand, the pigment becomes trapped in between your first and second layer of skin and fibers grow around it, so I don't have to worry much about it entering the blood stream. Is that true? If I call up the ink company is there any chance they will tell me what is in the ink?

Something like this seems like a good idea.

I'm just curious what the craft side of tattooing is, but there seems to be a lot of secrecy around that subject.

What are those 20 things out of curiosity?

My calf tattoo is healing rather quickly, despite the horrible pain for the first couple of days. I'm on day 5 and I have no pain and I never had any itchiness. Probably has something to do with it being tebori and not a regular tattoo. I just hope when the scabs come off it still has its color.

I'm going to play devil's advocate here, I don't have a problem with this blog. I sometimes enjoy seeing model-types with tattoos, even if there is too much focus on the model's body and not enough on the tattoo. I think tattoos need to be seen on the body in order to be fully appreciated, and it's nice to see good quality photographs that actually put the tattoo in it's context. I see too many photos on the internet of great tattoos photographed super close up with and illuminated by the flash of a cell phone camera. I'm not interested in tattoos for the purpose of looking sexy either but I'm not going to judge other people's motivations for getting a tattoo or liking one. If they think it's just a decoration for their thigh, that's fine, as long as the tattoo itself doesn't look horrible. I've been an overweight female my whole life and I'm not a stranger to insecurity, but at this point in my life I can look at skinny photoshopped people without thinking I'm supposed to look exactly like them.

Uh... I'm sorry, I don't mean to make you abandon your own thread. If it matters I'll probably try this product some time in the future, but before I try something I like to do my research and gather both positive and negative opinions about it. So while it might not seem like it, I'm glad this thread exists and I don't want to be a jerk and scare anybody away.

In my opinion a troll is somebody who upsets people on purpose. Some of the people here seem to lack the social skills to avoid accidentally insulting people. However the outcome is the same either way: people are upset. I have to say this forum is probably the only forum I've been on that feels this strongly about women's rights without actually being a feminist forum, and that's pretty cool.

Personally, I'm interested in what people trained in medicine think about healing human skin, but maybe that's just me. I know it's impossible for me to really judge something I have never used, but I didn't know it was against the rules for me to post about not using something.

For those who want to know what Horimitsu is like, I found this. It's an interesting story of getting tattooed by him before the digital age when you could just Google everything, and it's written by somebody who actually speaks Japanese.

My tattoo is currently cracking like crazy. Sorry for bad quality image.

I think the lotion I'm using is mildly scented, but does that matter if it's not irritating my skin? I'm not using much either, but I'm curious, what is the risk of over moisturizing? Does it slow healing?

My mother thinks my tattoo is great. My father think my tattoo is better than most tattoos, but he dislikes tattoos in general unless they are really simple and have no color, so that's the best I can get from him. He wasn't happy that I spent so much on it, but I used money I earned myself so it doesn't matter.

EVERYONE! After trying bactine, various painkillers, and various moisturizers, I finally found something that relieves the pain: baby lotion. I don't know why, but it works.