SeeSea

There aren't many times in my life I've used the word "exquisite." This is one of them.

Awesome! Stolen from Horitomo's Instagram. These two are so darned close to my two kitties I dream to have tattooed by Horitomo someday. (Me tattooed, not the kitties :-) )

Is this something that's common? I only had one session on my back fall out - it was some mid- and lighter blues of jellyfish, but not as dark as the blue for @Cork. It needs a re-do, although it didn't have all the layers on top of it anyway so not a big deal. I did have a lot of deep dark blues last time, and they settled in fine.

I think that would be cool for a quick meet-up if folks are into it.

@scubaron - awesome! I love the lightening around the forehead - it looks like he's getting ready to camouflage. The eyeballs are intense - a little hypnotizing. Nice!

I'm in!

Triangular = hipster?

No. Then I looked them up. Not really for me. The "About": The requirements: Why must my tattoos be visible, and why 5? My big freaking back piece, which is NOT visible unless I am in a swim suit, doesn't count? I'll put my square footage up against your 5 infinity/quote/mustache/star/feathers any day. (Ooo, ooo, speaking of feathers, look who has her feathers all in a dander this morning :cool:) I get that they want people to link tattoos to charity in order to (I think) give tattoos a better rap, but really? They want to demolish stereotypes, but create their own with a silly definition about what "modified" means and what a modified woman "should be." I never thought of myself as a modified woman and I never associated tattoos with being "modified" so I guess it's a wash. :: pins on race bib to raise more $$ for charity :: My $0.02. Maybe I just need more caffeine. And sorry if you are a Doll or are looking for members. No offense intended.

I've had muscle aches where I realized later I'd been tensed up for hours, like once I was grasping one hand with the other to make it dead weight while he was working on one side. Then I couldn't figure out why I couldn't hold a pen the next day :-) Another cause of nausea and muscle aches can be dehydration. Your body went through a lot and it's chewed through water and electrolytes. I read somewhere a guy compared a long session with a sports endurance event, and recommended eating and hydrating similarly - small bits of food throughout, easy to digest with sugars. I down some Gu's (these little packs of goop that are sugar and electrolytes that runners, etc., use). Keep drinking a lot of water afterwards too. I screwed up my first marathon session and woke up very dehydrated the next morning - it felt like a bad hangover. Learned my lesson on that one.

I think my specific sheets for healing are all the ones in my house right now! I'm going to buy new sheets with a "thou shalt strip these from the bed immediately before a session" placard.

Yes, but I'm not sure if it's a left/right thing or how comfortable or mentally ready I was on a particular day. My guy did mention one side can hurt worse than the other, but I can't remember which he said is which! I seem to think my non-dominant side hurt a little less. Both both have sucked (all on my back). I think a truer test would be a tattoo that is worked on on both sides in the same session.

Smile :-) I can't wait until summer when my small granddaughters realize they can find Nemo on my back! There will be a lot of wonderful innocent touching then. Now that's just screwed up. Maybe you can just look at them and say, "ehhh, I'm not really that into you."

^^^ He cancelled the session because he was getting sick. Easy come, easy go. I should finish healing last weekend's work anyway. Oh, soooo enjoying the itchification.

Second this. It takes me about 2 weeks to recover fully physically and to get my head back in the game. It depends on the length of the session - we usually try to go as long as I can tolerate, so YMMV. My guy recommends every 2-3 weeks between big sessions. Two weeks in a row can accumulate some stress. tl;dr - you're good.

I sat last weekend for 5 hours, and my guy texted me at 3am that he has me on the schedule for tonight - forgot to take me off the schedule since we had a session last week. Sooooo, looks like I am sitting again tonight! The bummer is I don't have any brownie mix to bring down a plate of fresh chocolate goodness.

I knew I saw a thread like this, and I just tripped across it. It's not just about varicose veins, but about skin and scars in general. This might have some useful stuff in it too. http://www.lastsparrowtattoo.com/forum/general-tattoo-discussion/5489-our-imperfect-skin-scars-stretch-marks-more.html

A more appropriate book for around here would be the Star Bellied Sneetches with stars upon thars.

Bump. If they become the engorged ones that are big enough to change the contour of the skin (think: rivers under the skin) then yeah, a design what would flow with that would be good - nothing with straight lines! I would think flowers would be good, or anything with swirlies or background. I'm curious about the vessels being so close to the surface but I don't see how that would be different than regular veins. Boy, the skin over the river veins on the back of my hand is soooo thin. My granddaughter tried to wash the "dirt" off the back of my hand ... it was the blue from the veins! So cute :)

Oh, heartbreaking. Sorry to hear this. I hope you an get another one started, that is, if you don't spend it all on tattoos first!

I've gotten sucked into the comments. I'm surprised and actually gladdened to see this on LinkedIn. But I'd like to smack the middle aged white guys stating I think this guy has never seen or known anyone with a decent tattoo, or just immediately formed his negative opinion and climbed up on his high horse. Next time I look up someone I might do business with, I'm going to check back and see if they commented on this thread. That should tell a lot about a person.

i kicked your ass. I'm 7 out of 119. Does having a back piece count has having a tattoo on your lower back? :cool::D:cool:

^^^ I don't think that's what Dr. Seuss had in mind. At least he got the apostrophes correct.

The shading just started - first session with a magnum was last week. I think he mostly uses flats, but I have very little clue about how this all works. He's shown me a couple times but since I can't see what he's doing, I haven't learned much. I felt like the magnum was a little easier to deal with, but not much time on one yet. It was nice to finally cover some ground, though! So far it's just been grinding over and over the same area until I think there must be no skin left. I think this piece would be really troublesome if he had to work in smaller time chunks like 2-3 hours. It's not really enough time to get in all the fine details of a couple critters and once you start, you really have to finish one. For example, the jellyfish and some coral outlining was aborted when he came down with a cold like a ton of bricks during the session, so it was only 3 hours. Even though I regularly sit for 5-6 hours, it's not solid time. There's probably 4 small breaks in there so he can catch a smoke. Thankfully. Thanks! Do you still have a tank? I love looking at them but am afraid of the time commitment and accidentally killing them off o_o There are some spectacularly colored small eels that I love, like the snowflake moray.

Thanks - it's hard to see where it's going without seeing the entire design he's working from. Once more background is in, it's gonna become more obvious it's a scene rather than a bunch of critter stickers.

Progress after 6 sessions. Sorry about the bad angle and lighting, but I figured I should finally put something up as this continues to evolve. Looks like a mess up top where he's starting the background into the blue up to the circle which is the location of the sun and the hammerhead silhouette. I had to tap out before he could get to a decent stopping point on that. The only parts close to done are the sea snake, the two orange fish and the bottom clownfish. Everything else is the first or second layer of paint and we're still missing a critter at the bottom. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-3hP0yv6rOoY/U2mOmwxTK7I/AAAAAAAAAE0/qYK1YJycKO0/w716-h1074-no/Session+6+done+sm+sm.jpg https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-wj42u_1k8b0/U2mQfeL008I/AAAAAAAAAFQ/KNPdI4dlpvw/w970-h1074-no/Session+6+3+sm+sm.jpg