JasonTO

It's the weather. It's too cold do anything other than drink and get cool tattoos.

It's the weather. It's too cold do anything other than drink and get cool tattoos.

I feel like i should move to Canada. Seems like the Canadian members here just know how to live life.

I popped into The Pearl today and had a couple of little fillers in and around my right knee. My lower legs are really filling in nicely, and I've made a stab up into the thighs as well. I was speaking to Tim Pausinger today, and we are going to get back to work on my back-piece in the summer. It will be nice to have that beast taken care of.

This is a really cool thread and I've really enjoyed reading people's responses.
I haven't been getting tattooed that long, but it's been long enough and heavily enough that I find it difficult to make a clear distinction between myself and my tattoos anymore because they're such a huge part of my life and my experience. With that said, here's some cool stuff:
Travel. I think one of the greatest things about getting tattooed, and especially by getting tattooed by a lot of people who don't work in my city, is how much traveling I've done to get tattooed, and how it's made travel to seem like a much easier and much more doable thing than it did prior to traveling to get tattooed. Going to New York City seemed like a somewhat daunting trip before; now I realize that it's an easy 7-8 hour drive down a pleasant stretch of the I-87 and can be a weekend trip. While I was working on my sleeve and @Pugilist was working on her back, I think we made five or six trips between Montreal and NYC in a year, and that was unthinkable before tattoos became a priority. If it wasn't for Electric Tattoo in Bradley Beach (now Asbury Park) I never would have considered visiting that part of the Jersey Shore, or probably the Jersey Shore at all, but it was great and I'd love to go back. Barcelona is a great place no matter what, but getting a little tattoo from El Monga when I was there this summer made that wonderful city that little bit better. One of my first thoughts when hearing about a place I haven't been before is figuring out who tattoos there, because tattoos make the best souvenirs.
Art. I've always been interested in art, always drawn to some extent or another, always made a point of visiting museums to look at art, I read about it, and so on, but tattooing has really helped me to broaden my perspectives on art. I would guess that I'm not that different than many of you in that it was really punk rock and skateboarding that exposed me to the first art that really blew my mind. That Corey O'Brien reaper deck Jim Phillips drew is my favorite thing ever and has been since I saw it in ads in Thrasher magazine in I guess the late 80s and early 90s. Those Pushead graphics on those Zorlac decks in that same era; the cover art for the Noise Forest skate rock tape, that stuff all still rules. I'm probably not the only person here who was first exposed to Scott Sylvia not through anything tattoo related, but through the H2O album cover he did. My first encounter with Dan Higgs had nothing to do with tattoos, but was through Lungfish. And somehow despite all that, I guess I still thought that art was something that hung in galleries and museums and spaces like that, and that the illustrations on record covers, skateboards, t-shirts, comics, and so on, were something different entirely. It sounds really lame typing this out, but tattooing has really helped me to see all of this stuff as legitimate forms of artistic expression, and that it's totally as acceptable to be in awe of a Greg Irons illustration as it is to be in awe of a Rembrandt painting. I have plenty of time for both of those. I really love that interview Ed Hardy did of Mike Malone in Bulls Eyes and Black Eyes where Rollo talks about coming from the New York art scene, doing projections and shit like that, and then eventually coming around to imagery that really blew his mind from his childhood, like biker patches and stuff like that. I get where he's coming from there.
Tattoos have also made me really appreciate technique and craft. Lately, and this is in a roundabout way coming from seeing Shawn Barber's paintings, I've come to really like realism in art, especially as it contrasts with super conceptual stuff that isn't about skill or technique at all. I have absolutely zero interest in realistic tattoos though.
Body image. Now the thing that I like least about my body is the amount of open skin I have left. Not that I'm in a rush to cover it all right away, because I want to get tattooed for a long time to come.
Spirituality. We've talked a lot about meditation on here, but I think beyond that there's something spiritual (maybe you'd choose a different word, but I'm using spiritual) about tattoos. I don't mean in a direct way, like tattoos of crosses and Jesus heads or Buddhist iconography or whatever, but more about the way that tattooing seems to be a fundamental human drive. When I was getting my arm worked on there was a moment in a lengthy and brutal session where I was laying on the table, I could smell my own blood from the work that had been done on my shoulder, and there was this sudden understanding of how weird the whole thing was: I was there bleeding and in pain, totally voluntarily, and paying somebody a lot of money that I had worked hard for to do this to me. It isn't behavior that is entirely rational; that's part of the appeal of it. Before having experiences like this I was a lot more of a rational and logical person and getting tattooed has opened me up to the possibility that we don't always do things for easily explainable and comprehensible reasons. I think that's a positive thing, personally.

It's been a while, but I just recently got back to reading the forum and looking at what other people are posting as far as new work. By way of jumping back in, it seemed like posting what I've been up to since I last participated in this thread is the right way to go.
This might be a bit of a long one. Sorry.
Sometimes you're in New Orleans. Sometimes you end up with a butterfly. Brent at Uptown Tattoo did this one:

Jake Miller from Cathedral Tattoo in Salt Lake did this little ditch guy for me:

I did a bit of a run of appointments at Great Lakes Tattoo. Erik did this one:

Nick did this one:

And Matt did this one on my calf:

Javier Rodriguez at LTW in Barcelona made this crazy tiger head for me:

John Raftery, who is also at Cathedral in Salt Lake now, did this snake while he was still in New York at Fun City:

Ben Haft at Fun City did the tops of both of my thighs with a sinking ship and a rose of no man's land:


And finally, Mike Suarez at Hand of Glory in Brooklyn was able to squeeze me in on Saturday and do this on my shin:

I picked up a few little bits of filler here and there, too.
Next up is getting my left knee done, I think. All of this has really just motivated me to start thinking about back/chestpieces.
Further down the rabbit hole.

My Raijin and Kirin by Dave Cummings at PSC, in Montreal. It's all don except for some background to tie in my rock of ages below it. Stokes.

Here's my new one, done yesterday at the mondial du tatouage by Chad Koeplinger! STOKED!!!

Franz Stefanik, The Okey Doke, Toronto, Ontario

Some crappy phone pics of my Lehi tiger. He is being mean to a dragon.

I'm a bit biased being an ongoing client, but I personally love Henning Jorgensen's tigers. I plan on getting one on my front right thigh soon as he finishes up my left thigh and the collaboration back piece he's working with Rubendall on. Check out the pics!

this one from greg christians instagram today:

A lot of people do great tigers, but none of them do them better then Tim Lehi.

Just finished with the captain america coverup on my left arm. The pic was right after, so a little swollen and still a little bleeding, but anyway.....

Thanks @Patrick Bateman!
Day 2 with Emily done, and boy am I so very glad that is over. Was quite a mental challenge today, the left side of my body seems to be more sensitive than the right, and I stupidly saved the left thigh till the second day. Here is the tiger, and I stitched both pics together so you get an idea how they look together. No photos of the horse today as she is swollen and distorted.

from my little nyc adventure thursday. pretty shit picture of this one and theres a lot of ink still on my hand that refuses to come off but oh well.. tamara santibanez @ saved tattoo, brooklyn, ny

akira latanzio @ r&d tattoo, queens, ny

I feel like I'm doing a double post because I already submit my last tattoo for the February contest but I guess it would fit here too! ^^
So here it is! Done by Valerie Vargas at her shop Modern Classic Tattoo in London. So Stoked of this one, it's more awesome
than I was expecting (I knew it would be massive but for me it reach the perfection!)
Here a video to show how it fit on my knee: Video by Valerie Vargas(valeriemodernclassic): Manu came to @modernclassictattoo a... | iPhoneogram

Franz Stefanik, The Okey Doke, Toronto, Ontario

Marius Meyer started this one a couple of weeks ago. Gonna add more dragon next time.

Franz Stefanik, The Okey Doke, Toronto, Ontario

Got this on the same day i finished my sleeve. lol.

Franz Stefanik, The Okey Doke, Toronto, Ontario

Franz Stefanik, The Okey Doke, Toronto, Ontario

Franz Stefanik, The Okey Doke, Toronto, Ontario

Franz Stefanik, The Okey Doke, Toronto, Ontario