Emil

Booked in with Chad Koeplinger when he’s guesting in Oslo, Norway in September. Super excited! Getting tattooed by him has been on my wish-list for years.

Sooo yesterday I did something awesome worth bragging a bit about. I defended my masters thesis at my university and was awarded the highest possible grade. This means that I can finally call myself a sociologist! During the last months I’ve struggled a lot with my own ambitions which resulted in some bad cases of anxiety, postponed deadlines etc., so finally finishing it up successfully is the greatest relief for me in the longest time. I plan on celebrating this with a fitting tattoo of the good ol' skull-with-an-academic-cap-on-top-of-a-stack-of-books situation soon. Oh yeah, I've also booked a trip to Barcelona next month, which might involve getting a lil' something from Javier Rodriguez if things work out. Good times ahead!

@Hands On Damn, those are insanely cool! Great picks!

Beautiful work!

Cool, his stuff looks very nice!

That's a really nice and solid first tattoo! Excellent placement as well. And no, nothing odd about it at all; nothing odd about only being tattooed on your legs, and nothing odd about having only a single tattoo on your leg either. So, there's no need to rush into getting more coverage on your legs as fast as possible, if that's a concern for you. It'll no doubt look great with some more traditional pieces to accompany it, but it looks killer by itself as well. Regarding the designs you posted, I like the first one the best. It has a cool and solid silhouette, which I think is somewhat messed up by the three added roses. My best advice though, would be to find a tattooer whose stuff you really like, provide a few pointers on what you like and what you don't like i.e. "pilot girl, not too much floral stuff" - and then let him/her do their thing. That's what works for me at least. Either way, it looks like you're off to a great start! By the way, who did your tiger tattoo?

@Gingerninja @SStu Thanks guys! The dude has a collection of 20 or so sketches of these frogs mashed ud with all kinds of cool stuff like skulls, demons, trolls, geishas etc. I swear, for a moment I was seriously tempted to just get a whole bunch of 'em! In other news, with the addition of this piece, my lower right leg is now completely done, up untill my knee. Really wanna do my knee next, to finally tie the stuff on my lower leg together with my thigh piece - but kinda contemplating that move, as I might need some surgery done in my knees in the somewhat near future..

Got this weird little frog today from one of my favourite local tattooers at the moment. Done by Tato Toby at Thank You Tattoo, Copenhagen. Photo borrowed from Toby's Instagram

Ryan Cooper Thompson posted this great one the other day: I think something like that could be super cool. It's simple but far from boring. Personally, I love the folky feel of this one, but I could absolutely see this concept working in other styles as well, if traditional is not your thing.

Those are both amazing! Welcome to the forum!

Is that super cool dragon Henning posted recently yours? Great one! Living in Copenhagen, I'm actually almost ashamed that I somehow haven't pulled myself together to get something from Henning yet. Everything he does is absolutely killer! Absolutely off topic, but - where did you go for dinner?

I'll throw in this healed and hairy hand and rose combo: Got this by Uncle Allan at his shop Conspiracy Inc. in Berlin in the summer of 2015. I got in on a cancellation on the first day of a weeks stay in the city. Afterwards I proceeded to torture it by walking around Berlin for the better part of six days, sweating in my jeans under a 36C sun. There is no way I have deserved it to heal this great.

So, I was procrastinating a bit on Instagram, and stumbled upon this post from last year: Thought it was a good reason to revive this Higgs thread.. Did any of you LST members get in on this? Or, does anybody know anything about how this project turned out? Hadn't heard about this at all untill today.. And last but not least, how INSANELY COOL is that hooded shadow-thing?! Don't know why, but that one completely blows me away right now..!

If I were you, I'd probably simple it down a bit. The ideas you have listed are, in my opinion, plenty for a full sleeve. So if you want to start with the forearm only, I'd probably just get a nice, big Hel/Freyja or Fenris wolf - and then some forest/sky/thunderstorms/something around it. The wolf on the forearm and a big goddess portrait on the upper arm would make a really cool full sleeve, but I think it would be too crammed with it all on a forearm. Something like this is a pretty cool way to incorporate different motifs into one tattoo - but again, personally I would get a piece like that in a bigger spot than a forearm. I'm not a tattooer, though - so maybe your tattooer will have a different opinion :)

Great stuff, man!

Have you decided on an artist to do it yet? I know it's not exactly like the sketch you posted, but maybe you could look into some of that "dark"-ish stuff that guys like fx. Ien Levin (Kiev) and Rob Borbas (Budapest) does..? I guess there's a ton of people doing that style around the world, those were just the two that crossed my mind, since you're located in Kiev right now..

Got a few more pieces from Tato Toby at Thank You Tattoo in Copenhagen today. He did the rose and the butterfly-demon today, and the smoking heart and the small fly about a month ago. Lately I've been really drawn to these more loose, folk-ish styles of traditional tattooing. I'm not 100% sure what it is exactly, that does it for me, they just seem to possess some sort of hard-to-pinpoint naivety and sense of mystery and magic, that's really cool to me. For these, I really like the use of blank space in both the rose and the butterfly - although I do realise, that I'm probably gonna get asked "when are you gonna get those finished?" more than once... Photo borrowed from Toby's Instagram (@tatotoby).

It's been some time since I've posted in here. Just dropping by to show of a cool little something I got today. Done by Tato Toby at Thank You Tattoo in Copenhagen. I've been in love with this design since he posted it as part of a flashsheet on Instagram some months ago. Today I finally got around to getting it done. He also did a really cool fly filler on me, that I don't have a photo of right now.. Photo borrowed from Toby's Instagram (@tatotoby).

Got this burnin' hot chick from Willem Jansen today. What a nice guy, and a great tattooer! Done at the always fantastic The Sailors Grave in Copenhagen. Picture via Willem's Instagram (@willem666).

Haven't posted in a while, but I've finally gotten tattooed again, so I thought it would be a good time to revive my account. Anyway, the talented Johann Ingemar recently started working at my favorite shop in Copenhagen, The Sailors Grave, so this one was a no-brainer: Dragon in a nice big gap on my lower leg. Just healed and still shiny, so sorry for all the glare in the photo. EDIT: Why won't my picture show up as an actual picture in the thread, but just as a link?

I've just returned home from a trip to Berlin. Brought this one home with me: Done by Uncle Allan at Conspiracy Inc, Berlin. I'm pretty excited about this one. A rose by Allan has been on my wishlist for a loooong time, so it's amazing to finally check it off the list. (Picture respectfully borrowed from Allan's IG account: http://instagram.com/unclea)

Unfortunately, no. I REALLY wanted to go, but I was away on vacation at the time. The line-up of artists was really impressive IMO, and I have only heard great things about it afterwards. Hopefully they will host another one in the future! - And thanks for the compliment! The people at The Sailors Grave are awesome!

Got this one yesterday: It is done by Zooki at The Sailors Grave, Copenhagen. My best friend got a matching one. I recently moved to Copenhagen, which is 400 km away from where I lived before, and this weekend my best friend visited me for the first time since I moved here. We got these in celebration of his visit :)

Love this! I don't think I have seen James Clements work before, so thanks for introducing me to him. He sure puts out great looking tattoos!

I have just now discovered the crew at Admiraal Tattoo in Amsterdam, via a video posted on the Tattoosnob blog. I must say that I am pretty much blown away by a couple of the artists there - mainly Rob Admiraal himself and Lina Stigsson, who has already been mentioned on this forum a few times. This is the link to their homepage: Rob Admiraal Tattoo StudioRob Admiraal Tattoo Studio | Marnixstraat 151 | 1015 VM | Amsterdam