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DEEEEEENNNOOOOOOO at the Bay Area Convention of the Tattoo Arts Dude was so cool, I had such a great time. I also got to practice my spanish and many laughs were exchanged. I asked about some of his tattoos, he asked about some of mine, overall a lovely experience. Also, my forearm now somewhat resembles a balloon. Ha

Head Shot of my Panther by Chris Garver , Invisible NYC. Adding Roses next session!

My appointment with Matt ran late, which is par for the course at conventions. It also allowed me to go to an impromptu LST dinner with @Reyeslv and his wife, @cvportagee and his wife, @ian, @Scott R and @Lance. Three Jill Bonny backs at one table! When we got back, Matt was ready to roll. He drew on the eagle and banged it out in no time. It was fun; I had Thomas Hooper on one side of me and Steve Byrne on the other, while @Stewart Robson and @Valerie Vargas were right across from me. The eagle, by the way, came out great: And @beez, your back looks great! You were handling it like a champ. - - - Updated - - - And @MoistTowelette, don't make us beg!

New one from the Krak/Wilson book tattooed by Paul O'Rourke @ All-star in Limerick,Éire. Gonna add another animal head from that book in a couple weeks.

Boom! Teaser shot until my sesh on monday! Gogue tomorrow! I will spare u guys pics of my robert hernandez piece I got on friday since I know this forum is traditional biased, but I will say that its sick as fuck! - - - Updated - - - I stopped by the diamond club booth but I got there a lil after 5pm and junii wasn't tattooing anymore so I missed u... :(

@MoistTowelette you must have *just* missed us; we didn't stop til sometime between 515-530! I hope your Gogue appt tomorrow is awesome! It was nice meeting: @Scott R @ian @Lance @cvportagee @ reyeslv @hogg - who am I missing here? The LST shirts did it for me each time! Junii had a last minute idea she wanted to run by me before we started, so instead of doing snakes this time we are doing a snake and a peeking hannya mask next time. We added some rocks, waterfalls, clouds and colored in my peony from last time. I met: @Deb Yarian (we met In the elevator!), Jill Bonny (when I got my book!), Lil Roy, Jack Rudy, Chris ?(tattoo land), Shige, Chuey, Horimitsu, Thom Devita (he tattooed Matt (dr claw) right in front of me!!!!! Out of this world moment), & Stephanie Tamez - all who came by to see Junii while I was being tattooed and she was so very gracious and introduced me by name to every single person - WOW!!!!! It was really cool to meet all of these people whose work I have long admired from afar. Insane! I also met Robert Ryan, when he gave me a bad ass tattoo that I do not currently have a pic of - never fear, tattoos are forever and I'll have a friend take a pic (of the back of my arm) when I am all settled in Seattle. I got one of the cat books (signed!), but when I went back for prints later the sets were sold out so I snagged the two that were left and still available! What an awesome experience. I was immediately overwhelmed the first day and had sort of an out of body experience - overstimulation from noise and colors and art and so many people I'd seen only from afar - I had to leave in order to literally bring myself back to my body. It was nuts! I am not usually good in crowds, so this was a brave experience for me! After being tattooed all day and then getting the one shot by Rob Ryan, I was in crazy weird endorphin mode where all my words were garbled and I had trouble speaking complete sentences. The first stop where this was apparent was when I stopped by the Tattoo City and bought the incredibly affordable Tattoo Time set from Doug Hardy, the second uncomfortably garbled stop was when I impulse bought the bodies + sleeves set from Analog Tattoo (signed and shipped!). I was definitely having trouble communicating at that point (this is sort of standard for me post-tattoo, and normally it's not in a bright/shiny/crowded environment) and I hope the guys I spoke to didn't think I was too weird - there was a definite struggle for me with complete, coherent sentences! Expensive but well worth it, and these books have been on my list since publication. I'm over the moon guys. This was a new and exciting experience for me and overwhelmingly awesome. And now they're telling me we're boarding early! Seattle, here I come! Enjoy the final day, guys. Can't wait to see what you have to say. PS - more pics coming soon. I def took convention pics!

SMH...

this is my girlfriend's newest from ashley love at ny adorned in nyc, I am way too jealous

No service in the convention! (If you have AT&T) Back to the table. Met @Scott R and @ian already! This is fun, guys. :)

Ishmael Johnson Austin Tattoo Convention 2013 Interview for Tattoo Artist Magazine (VIDEO) | TAM Blog notexpected please watch the whole thing or at least skip to about 6:00 mark or so

So this is what happened yesterday, last tattoo of the year and until scottish convention in march (if I got extra cash by then) Tattoo by Iain Mullen, original design by myself. It is super strange, but it makes me super happy, that some tattooers that I REALLY like pressed "like" on this tattoo. When I checked yesterday it also had Thomas Hooper and Greg Christian on the list. I mean, who am I?

you stirred up an angry mob.

well I'm not biased,I want to see the other pieces bro !

When I designed the layouts in TAM where Ishmael and Dave were essentially having a conversation, I immediately realized I wanted to get tattooed by both of them.

Eh, not really interested in a work related tattoo. I love what I do, but I feel like there needs to be separation between my work and private life. Tattoos are about art and escape for me. If I wanted a constant reminder of work, I'd pick up extra shifts.

I think all of my tattoos could be considered work-related tattoos, haha. Although a tattoo of a tattoo machine is a cliche I've never been terribly interested in.

My lady metalsmiths and myself have simple anvil tattoos.

Nice @trill been noticing a ton of boxer babes lately, too. My wife got one from Virginia the same week she just happened to do two others. Next trend: lady owl boxers with wolf hats and monocles and geometric patterns.

I am also stupidly broke and I feel like I did not even make a tiny dent in everything I wanted to buy. Also I'm a genius and forgot my camera at my coworker's house and my phone died so I didn't take any pictures. BUT-- I met Thom DeVita, Ed Hardy, Jill Bonny, Valerie Vargas, Deno, Jondix, Micah Caudle, Dawn Cooke, Deb Yarian, and ran into a whole bunch of other people I already knew. It was overwhelming, to say the very least. I had a blast though, everyone was just so damn nice.

The problem with the idea of tattoos needing to have meaning is that it usually seems like the design of the tattoo is overlooked in favour of its meaning, which more often than not leads to bad tattoos. I literally have no idea what "A Beautiful Chaos on my front shoulder with almost water color looking glass" would look like, or even what it is. Maybe there is a tattoo artist somewhere who could take that idea and do something great with it, but then again, maybe not. I'm going to suggest that based on what you've written here about the tattoo you have that you had a profound experience last weekend. There is something about tattooing, something about willingly putting a permanent mark on your body, that had a deep effect on you in ways that you might not be able to articulate. It brought you out of your regular routine into an unfamiliar and exciting world, it made you feel strong and beautiful, it made you feel like regardless of what other things are going on in your life and around you that you have some measure of control. Or maybe other things, or maybe none of them. I'm also going to suggest that you would have had this experience regardless of what you had tattooed on you. You would have felt similar things if it was a rose, or a swallow, or a dragon. That's where the meaning of tattoos is. Obviously you still need to choose imagery that appeals to you, but if you want to convey a sense of beauty there is no shortage of tattooable imagery that works for that...you can absolutely never go wrong with birds and flowers, for example. You'll end up with a far better tattoo that way.

Here is my bleeding moon. I posted this a long time ago. Matt Brotka in Richmond, Virginia, but that fine gentleman is now at Left Hand Black in sunny San Diego.

Ended up getting something from DJ Rose yesterday. I gave him a fairly vague idea (and no descriptive imagery whatsoever) and he came up with the perfect tattoo. Like @hogg above, I was in a pretty great vantage point: I had Henning (doing a dragon head on some fellow's hand) and Rubendall (tattooing a fellow's head, I didn't see the design) on one side, and Grez on the other (working on a big squid on a girl's thigh). Instagram

For a tattoo like that I would go to Jondix or not get it at all.

Lol heading to my gogue appt now. I'll post pics later I promise

well jeez @beez, sounds like you did the convention right! A little envious and a lot happy for you over here!!! edited to add: @MoistTowelette please do not "spare us" any pics! I don't have any traditional tattoos, I think most ppl here regardless of style like to look at any good tattoos, and I'm assuming yours is.

Here's mine tattooed by Jondix last year. Painful is an understatement. I broke out into a sweat the moment the needle first came into contact with my palm. Jondix is such a nice guy though and has a really calming persona. The healing and aftercare is a bit different as well. I was told it was important to keep the fresh tattoo well moisturised, to stop it cracking. As it heals the dead skin, which is quite thick starts to peel and you've got to be careful not to catch the edges. Planning to get the other done in the new year.

Ben Rorke from westside tattoo Brisbane Australia is working at this show, well worth checking his work out, well I like what he does. Pic stolen from his instagram, tattoos he has completed at this convention. Wish I was there.

Done by Charlie Cung in San Diego. Instagram

I'm so fucking broke now

Robert Ryan:

but your avatar... :confused:

I immediately thought of Kenji Alucky, Thomas Hooper, Roxx at 2Spirit, Dan Mattia, and other artists doing blackwork/dotwork, etc. (The aforementioned are names that popped into my head.) If you asked someone like that to do a Rorschach inspired tattoo, that might look super cool. In all honesty though, I'd start looking at a bunch of different artists/shops and see if an artists' style/work jives with your personal aesthetic, you can figure out the rest from there.

I definitely agree with this. My girlfriend works as a bartender/server in an Outback restaurant, she ALWAYS gets comments from people. A lot of people will flat out tell her that "tattoos are ugly, why would you do that to yourself?". I, on the other hand have not ever once received a comment from someone being rude. I get the "where do you get your ink?" questions a lot and "doesn't that hurt?" but other than nice comments I've never come across anybody being rude. I'm not even sure how I would react to a rude comment about them.

Or a Charles Maggio portrait?

Just Paul. And Theo Mindell. And Stuart Cripwell. And Bryan Randolph. And Aaron Hodges.

John Sultana of Saved Tattoo - moon/dagger project

getting tattooed by robert hernandez on saturday, jeff gogue on sunday, and shige on monday at diamond club!!!! gonna the best week of getting tattoos for me!

I'm a big fan of the ol' "I don't really like tattoos, but yours are so____" (insert your choice of favorable adjective) People are funny.

This tattoo is basically perfect. Damn.

Empathy! Honestly I just began to ignore it because I kept getting so worked up about it. The body will take care of itself! The healing takes a lot longer and is a little rougher than any other spot I've healed. But it healed mostly fine! I accidentally scraped the one area that did not heal fine. I conifer that user error. Do not scrape it. ;)

Maybe not what you were thinking, but this moon is pretty cool. It's on a buddy of mine and done by Aaron Mason at Soul Expressions Tattoo in Temecula, CA.

One time I tipped Hector Fong in dried squid. True story. And some cash too.

My tiger by Steve Boltz. Three years old, and the reason I first went to Smith Street. Edit, I lied, it's only just over two years. I wanted to be cool and say it was older.

Sorry for the delay folks! Winner of September 2013 Tattoo of the Month Contest is....... @Rebushido with the fantastic Tiger tattoo he got from Henning Jørgensen. Congratulations Robin!!! Thanks everyone for your submissions. Keep 'em comin! Please PM @steve1461686340 with your shirt info (size and male or female) along with your address. October contest will be up shortly :)

Why? It's their money and it will be on their body forever. Asking for a specific tattoo to be done in a particular style or technique, to means the customer has some research at the very least.. Right? Help me out here, what am I missing? Personally I take an example if what I want, tell him what I want, how I want it to look and where I want it and he makes it happen.. Again, am I missing something here? Is there some kinda unwritten code where I gotta take whatever the artist wants to give me if I have no tattoos? :confused:

robert ryan posted a cool one today:

Bart Bingham! Love this so much.

I have a ladyhead tattoo because i'm a goddamn pimp.

I would hate to have the eyes of a dumbass.... In what world do those tattoos, or even when they were drawings on paper, look good.... It's really just mind boggling to me... People who are cheap in tattoos are just idiots.

I mean I've done two one on a guy and one on a girl. They were both beauty marks otherwise I wouldn't do em. It's alarming the volume of young kids getting facial tattoos. It's my opinion that you don't look hard when all you have tattoo wise is a few knick knacks on your face. You just look like a dumb asshole.