Synesthesia

The other day I went to my favorite Chinese restaurant (I'm kind of a regular, the workers usually make small talk with me). I was wearing a dress, and the lady at the front counter approached me and touched on her arm where my butterfly tattoo is and said "Beautifur! Butterfry?" We had a broken English conversation where she asked where it was done and implied a lot of the tattoos she's seen come into the restaurant are pretty bad. Tattoos transcend all languages. :)

It's been 10 days since my newest tattoo and goddamn will it ever finish healing? I have one tiny little scab still holding on for dear life, and I'm still all peel-y looking mostly all over it. There's only a couple tiny spots that are 100% done. This has been way more intense than I thought it would be. At least it was only itchy for like a day, now it's just annoying that it's soooo close to being done but it's been such a drawn out process.

I love the look of a super colorful sleeve, but mostly black pieces can look great too. I think I lean more towards color for myself (maybe a couple black/bng pieces in the future, I love black hearts and roses) but both styles can definitely be powerful and therefore make great tattoos.

Only have one arm tattooed so far, no idea what I want to do with the other one yet.

Two days since my last post and about 75% of the scabs/major flakes are gone, just a couple left closer to my elbow. I think I'm going to have a second peel, which is pretty unusual for me. I am ready for this thing to get pretty again!!

Selfishly, I wish tattoos didn't hurt because I am not into the pain aspect of it all. :D But if I really think about it, I agree that I'm glad they do hurt. It helps weed out "undesirables." If you're not willing to handle even a few minutes of pain to get your upside down wrist script, then you clearly aren't invested in it. Tattoos should be seen as a commitment...that's the part of it I'm addicted to. You do your research on artists, styles, subject matter...you sit through the pain and pay hard earned money for it...and you live with the consequences of your action as you're now "a tattooed person" or a more "heavily tattooed person." If you're not really committed to every aspect of that process, you're not ready to be tattooed. It's just another test to prove how much you want it. And honestly, you feel so much more accomplished and proud of yourself when you make it through a tough session, it makes the experience more fond and meaningful.

Cool! Yeah, it seems like it's something that makes you a little more relatable to the clients, sometimes people think the workers are stuffy and not like them at all. Tattoos are always a conversation starter. I think the people closest to me are starting to realize that tattooed me is way more confident and happy than the non-tattooed me ever was. They still shake their heads in mild disapproval, but I don't get nearly the amount of grief I used to.

I too am thanking fuck I only have two calves, not looking forward to getting the other one done. Nothing can prepare you for that first morning waking up with a calf tattoo. Took me like 10 minutes (and assistance from the boyfriend) to get out of bed the first couple days. I'm on day 3 with my newest addition, it's between my upper arm tattoo and my elbow, so I expected it to be about the same as my upper arm tattoo (which was super easy). Pain was pretty minimal. Healing has been a whole 'nother story. My arm has been sore every day, swollen like crazy, and I started feeling really fatigued and almost feverish yesterday. Not what I expected at all. On the plus side, things are moving along briskly. This morning I finally was not swollen/sore and was starting to scab, and by this evening I started peeling and flaking.

Thanks for making the thread a success, guys. I love reading about other people's ideas almost as much as I like thinking about my own. ;) More thoughts: I'd like to start bigger projects, like ribs, back, chest, etc. But I feel like torso tattoos are really bold statement pieces, especially on women, so I want to make sure my ideas are perfect for each spot. I'm kind of thinking about an underboob type design that's actually not geometric for once...I'm thinking a couple of panthers and/or tigers facing off, with their bodies/tails curled up and around each boob and their faces meeting in the middle. Think this kind of pose, but obviously more suited to the female body: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/8a/a9/38/8aa938f599b1da484ff4d620cbf6cbe5.jpg Gotta think about it for a while, though.

We have a new tattoo thread, and an upcoming tattoo thread, but nothing about what we're thinking of having done. And planning is half the fun. :) Here's some stuff I'd like to get some day: - a rooster fighting a snake, illustrative style, going all the way around my left lower leg - the classics: Rock of Ages, pharoah's horses...either on my forearms or thighs - traditional dagger somewhere, not sure where yet - traditional style sacred heart somewhere - something sickeningly cute from a female artist (never been tattooed by a woman, really want to embrace my femininity with it!) - some sort of evil goat as a tribute to my love of metal Those are set in stone must haves, everything else I'm still thinking about.

Got this today from Antonio Roque in Frederick, MD. I am totally amazed by it...and even my anti-tattoo mom likes it. :)

Thanks guys. We've left all the windows open ever since it happened, hopefully just airing it out will help a lot. If not, thanks for the suggestions @pidjones, we'll look into them. I did already spray one layer of Febreze on everything and vacuum once, I didn't really have time to do any deep cleaning before work tonight. My mom suggested leaving out a couple bowls of vinegar to help absorb the smell, so I did that too...can't hurt. Worse thing that could happen is one new layer of stink to the place. :D Our lease is up in August so we're definitely leaving then, if not sooner. Our luck with this place has just been unreal, I think we seriously were not meant to live here. On the positive side, we can't possibly do worse with our next place.

Cool tattoo, cool story!

Last night at 3 AM, there was a fire in my apartment building. It was the guy directly below us, who is notorious for turning off his smoke detector and smoking inside his apartment. Our smoke detector didn't go off, I'm thinking it was connected to his somehow so he disabled ours inadvertently by disabling his. We were only woken up by another neighbor beating on our door and yelling there was a fire. The guy was dragged out of his apartment and taken to a hospital, he had passed out from smoke inhalation and was burned. His dog and cat died in the fire. The fire department is saying the fire started in the kitchen and was caused by unattended cooking; our guess is he disabled the smoke detector so he could smoke, threw something in the oven, and went to sleep forgetting about his food and forgetting to reconnect the smoke detector. His apartment is destroyed, and the whole building reeks of smoke. Everyone else is ok, and the building is still habitable, thank god. The fire department wouldn't let anyone spend the rest of the night in the building because of all the smoke and carbon monoxide, so me and my boyfriend spent the night at my parents'. Now I'm at work with about 4 hours of fitful sleep, and when I get home, I have to work on cleaning out the apartment to get rid of the smoke smell. I'm just glad everyone is alright and none of our things were lost, but I'm still really rattled by the whole thing. If it hadn't been for someone waking us up, we could have been trapped in there. His kitchen is close to our front door, the fire could have easily blocked our door if it had spread much more, or we would at least have been blocked in by the smoke. I'm outraged this guy tampered with our alarm and jeopardized everyone else in the building; it wasn't until the smoke spread far enough to set off someone else's detector across the hall that anyone even knew.

The first one I remember was my granddad's. He died when I was really young, but I saw some photos of him when I was a little older. He had a naked lady pinup on his forearm that was of course blurred to hell in all the photos I saw of him. But still pretty cool, I wish I would have known him. Beyond that, my first exposure to heavily tattooed people (and my first look at clear, well done tattoos) was probably in some music magazine. Seeing all these tattooed guys in bands really piqued my interest in tattoos, that probably started in my pre-teen years.

Not exactly a devil, but I've been brainstorming for a while about getting a goat tattoo. I can't decide what direction to go in. I definitely want it to be evil looking. I'm thinking either 1) just your normal super serious goat head in a traditional/neotraditional style with a pentagram or whatever incorporated in it 2) something sort of funny and goofy, like a half goat/half human wearing a leather jacket with spikes. Some stuff I kinda dig:

^ This is the fucking coolest thing. Tim Lehi, of course. As far as I know, just a painting, not yet a tattoo.

Bumping this thread back to life because holy shit I love rock of ages and I'm thinking about getting one on my forearm someday soon. Anybody find anything else cool?

I started following a couple people I found with the #lastsparrow tag, hope you guys don't mind. :)

I don't know how feasible going to Hungary would be for you, but have you looked at Robert Borbas' work? (Maybe he travels to Germany?) At the very least, it might interest you: https://instagram.com/grindesign/ I think it's up to you what you want. In my experience, you can't have a single line tattoo (at least not a small one) and also have a tattoo that looks good in 20 years. It's either going to satisfy your immediate aesthetic (small, single lines) or you're going to have to compromise your vision slightly to get something that will hold up. You're going to have to think about what's more important to you...and maybe longevity isn't a priority, that's okay. But artists are just trying to steer people towards thinking of the future. And I don't necessarily think getting a world class artist to do these kinds of tattoos would make much difference as far as them being "perfect"...I've seen world class artists make mistakes, on tattoos big or small, simple or complex. Especially with single needles. It happens, they're humans putting art on other humans, there's a lot of room for error. These mistakes are part of what makes tattoos interesting. Like someone else said, your tattoos look hand poked, which can be a cool aesthetic (I personally am not keen on it, but whatever). If you like them, don't be too hard on yourself about it.

Not bad art, dude, post more in this thread! http://www.lastsparrowtattoo.com/forum/tattoo-designs-books-flash/185-how-about-art-show.html I think as long as you go into a consult with the expectation that things about your drawing will almost definitely be altered, artists don't mind when people bring in their own sketches. It also wouldn't hurt if you gave the artist reference photos out of his own portfolio, like "I really like this rose you did, I like how you did the petals/the color/etc." You're choosing the guy for a reason so if you can explain to him what it was that made you gravitate towards him, that would be helpful for both of you. (I don't know if you're that picky about how it turns out, but it's just kind of general advice for someone who might be really particular.)

I've been lucky that most of my reactions are either ones of fascination, or confusion, or some mixture thereof. :rolleyes: I've only gotten a couple negative (mostly religiously motivated or gender based) comments, which is pretty impressive considering I live in bumfuck PA. For the most part, people either say nothing or have only positive things to say. Granted, I'm not as covered as some of you guys are (yet!), but it seems to some people one tattoo on a girl is equal to 5 on a guy. Generally my tattoos don't affect my day to day life. I work in a pretty accepting environment, social work...tattoos are either welcomed or shunned depending on how far in the government you are and who your clients are. I work with the mentally ill and in these kinds of places, all they care about is you're willing to show up and deal with the punishment. ;) The clients actually like my tattoos and I think it makes me a little more of the "cool" girl in their eyes, which helps a lot with rapport. So far I have some illustrative work (which everyone seems to approve of) and some traditional work, which is more dividing. People either love how classic and old school traditional tattoos are, or they have these reactions like "Those look like what my grandpa had...why would you want THAT?"

Well now that I've made a deposit, I can post about this...getting a panther head coming out of a rose by Chad Koeplinger when he comes to DC at the end of July. He's one of my very favorite tattooers so I am so thrilled.

I have a skull with some storm clouds/lightning, by Brian Via:

I guess I'm lucky, every artist I've worked with has been more a "per piece" than "per hour" artist, so for stuff they're excited to do, you end up getting a good deal. Plus I was grossly undercharged for a lot of my work, and felt the need to leave huge tips to make up for it! I think if you're on a strict budget, it's important to tell the artist your limits and figure something out together. Worst case scenario, the artist will just have to break it up into sessions and you would pay what you could afford as you go. I think most artists are more than willing to make adjustments for people's budget if it's something they're excited to finish; it's way better to make accommodations than to not get any work at all, or have a client go to someone else to finish it. (And I always bring way more than I think I'll need anyway, just in case.)