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Just finished last night! Chris Garver , Invisible NYC Timeless tattoos Rock!!

Souvenir piece from my trip to Japan last month. Completed by Mutsuo at Three Tides Tattoo.

I got this from Chad Koeplinger earlier this year. I love it, and I want to share it with you:

So during my trip to SF back in October. Our first area we ended up in was Mission, and I was so inspired by the murals painted there. I took a lot of pictures and decided I wanted one of the beautiful traditional roses tattooed on my arm. We went to Oakland at Temple Tattoo, I wanted to visit this shop anyway because well....its fuckin historical. So there was only one artist there that day, Jonah. I asked if he had time for a small walk-in tattoo, and showed him the pics of the murals. Ended up being him that painted those murals! :) We definitely made each others day! So he drew up a rose while we were talking to him, fuckin awesome experience overall. Having someone with 15 years experience tattooing me was epic and especially in that shop. One of the best trips ever. I have to go back to California. <3

Started my back last week. Definitely one of the craziest things I've ever done... Can't wait for the next session!

got this today from justin hyde my cousin got this one from him

I took this photo and a bunch of others at the New Jersey State Fair in Cherry Hill. It was August 12th, 1990. It was a blast meeting Jack Dracula. He had such a crazy mystique about him. There were all kinds of crazy stories about him and I was afraid to meet him but he was a fun guy to hang around with for an afternoon. He rode back into town with us and told us old corny jokes. RIP Jack Dracula and Sonny Tufts.

Needles and Sins Tattoo Blog | Demetra Molina Interview with Loretta Leu

Knee hurts like fuck! 5 hours on this by Piotr Deadle :)

Anyone defending this guy is a complete moron

Here is my back-piece from @Stewart Robson Started - 11/25/2011 Completed - 11/24/2013 The tattoo has 78 hours in total.

Well LST, I am happy to announce that after a brutal session we have finished the motif on my back! Not going to lie there where some moments when I wanted to tap but half way through Hiro dropped into the shop just to see it completed and that gave me what I needed to keep on keepin' on. All I heard was the door open and the war cry of "No Pain, No Gain". I nearly laughed but figured it wasn't the best time. Funny how the little things can keep you motivated and focused. I would have been pissed if I was so close to finishing and tapped on the final leg. I'm so wiped out but am also on that high that's probably going to keep me awake most of the night lol. Don't worry I'll post pics as soon as I can ;) and @RoryQ I don't think there will be any hard liqour tonight, I am well and truely spent.

@Ragen looks good, who is doing it? I go on Monday for my final session of the year.

deleting. sorry, not the place for me.

Just finished my first session with Tomo from Yellow Blaze. Super sweet dude with a magic touch. Plus the place itself is incredible - located just up the road from Yokohama's Victorian-era studios where all the Euro(-trash) royalty got inked in the 1800s. Got a few weeks for the ink to settle and then back for the colour...

First time posting hopefully I uploaded the image correctly. Finished this little guy in the summer.

He should do his day job for free.

Obvious comments about people getting the infections...errrrr...tattoos they deserve aside, this guy is an idiot. Given that it's a pretty nasty feature of contemporary capitalism that it's even harder to make a living as an artist, illustrator, photographer, musician, writer, etc. because increasingly fewer people want to pay for that kind of work--not to mention the number of other careers that now practically require countless hours of unpaid labour in the form of internships--there's nothing at all "refreshing" about working for free. Maybe if these people actually valued artists and paid money for art that instead of complaining about how they, the oh-so-romantic-Jawbreaker-is-my-favorite-band perpetually starving artists, don't have money for things like tattoos (but please don't ask them how much money they spend on drugs), they would have money for things like tattoos. Maybe they'd have to live on tighter budgets, pick up extra shifts at work, wear clothes and shoes a little longer, and so on, to save the money to get tattooed and that it would be worth it because if you love tattoos you'll find a way to make it work even if it doesn't mean instant gratification. Not to mention that if you have a respect for tattooing as a craft, or shit, for crafts and craftspeople in general, that you should understand that this stuff always comes at a price and that the craft isn't less "pure" because of it. I can't wait for the hipsters to be eradicated by a plague of hepatitis.

Alright... here goes nothin. Pharoah's Horses tattooed by me, finished in October.

Finally making a trip down to Electric Tattoo in NJ and getting tattooed by Robert Ryan. I'm going to be at the Philly convention at the beginning of February, so i'm just going to NJ the Friday of the convention. Probably not going to make any appts for the convention but we will see.

Thank you!! Yeah, do that! Say hi and tell him that I will send him a healed photo soon

Guys, scratchers fucking suck. We all know it. Lets just do our best to talk about good tattoos. We don't need the negativity this kind of bullshit brings.

Congrats @Wilhell !!! I'll let Rubendall know next week when I see him!

Second session just finished on my thigh. 6 and a half hours in. Swollen, bloody and inky but here is a pic. Tried to get some details in on the right side pics.

Bleeeuuggghhh can we just remove this article from this forum so as to not spread this spewing uninformed BS. I hate people with that mentality, especially since my fiance is a musician and supports himself the same way as a tattooer. He recently had a regular gig and the guy shorted him because of something he didn't like (but he didn't tell my fiance anything, just gave him less $) and he had to give up the gig, because he can't afford to not be paid or worry about not being paid. That's true among all service jobs.

Chances are this guy is lying about his apprenticeship. People do that all the time to try to gain credibility. And it's a real shame that most people reading the article won't be able to read the subtext of what this guy really is saying which is that he sucks too horribly and is too lazy to get a spot at a real shop, and because of that he could never actually charge anyone for his work. He's probably just using this to be "cool" with his jerkoff hipster friends. Yet another crappy side effect of tattoo TV shows.

Really love the cowgirl! I got some roses off Rich Hardy last weekend whilst he was back in the UK.

I got this Cowgirl head from Rich Hardy while he was doing a guest spot at Third Eye Tattoo about a month ago.

Second session yesterday. Was a lot easier this time around, not so apprehensive I guess and also made a point to just focus on my breathing for the few lines that needed finishing. Looking forward to the next session! Thanks again Stewart.

Is it a LST record that a tattoo of the month contest only lasted 9 minutes?

i think one of the main things that adds to the mystique of higgs is that he doesn't tattoo any more. not because he can't but because he chooses not to. he worked with some really talented folks and for most of us that do this, it's something that we'd probably find hard to give up if we had the same opportunities. also, it wasn't until after i started tattooing that i really even knew that he tattooed. i always knew him to be the singer in lungfish, it was only through diligent efforts that i was even able to obtain the lungfish albums back then and that was from working in a record store. back before the intervebs, if you didn't have an excellent book store or some type of real active art scene, you didn't get to find out about much that went on in the world. so i dig getting to hear stories about and from people who were there and got to work with him and it's obvious he had an impact on them. plus, in reality he is an important component in tattooing history due to those interactions. so rock on!

Hi there, my name is Dave Sobel and I'm a tattooer. I've been tattooing since 1990, Starting in Los Angeles, and now in Maryland for the last 21yrs. I'm really crappy at talking about myself. I love the fact that this forum has rules aimed at protecting and respecting this thing that I love and have devoted the last 23yrs of my life to.

hello och välkommen! you found the right place for sure! where in our godforsaken land do you live?

Damn I wish every winner had reaction photos!

I have a swing arm lamp that I use similar to this one: Daylight Combo Lamp - BLICK art materials I use a large frosted floodlight as the center bulb (full-spectrum, at the maximum wattage since I like lots and lots of light when I work.) Sometimes I'll use a second swing-arm lamp as well, but generally speaking that's only for night-time use. Don't have much glare with the right angles/distance of the lamp. I think a curtain/shade/blind would be a great solution.

@Duffa amazing layout! Looking forward to seeing the progress on this piece. Mike

If you look at the pictures on that article and are still so confident that he's taking adequate precautions that you're willing to bet a million bucks on it then I accept your bet and I hope you have the money to pay up. Please point out to me where his clip cord cover is.

Welcome! So happy to see more NYC people here too!

And we are off to a brilliant start!

Just want to throw out there that these smell nothing like green soap... was super disappointed when I actually smelled one.

Happy birthday to me! (2 years ago :p ) If I look a bit sweaty, it was almost 60 degrees centigrade.

Hello! I'm Adam, 29 years old, been living in New York City for the last 7 years. I love BIG, BOLD, TRADITIONAL tattoos, always with lots of black :cool: @suburbanxcore always makes fun of me for liking BIG lines i.e. a lot of the great artists from Spain (El Monga, El Toro, Deno, etc) or their American contemporaries some of whom I've been tattooed by, some of whom I've yet to meet. I work in specialty coffee and have a huge passion for food as well (Chad Koeplinger's IG feed always has me salivating). I'm also a huge camera/film/photography geek. I'll post up some photos of some of the work I have soon. Good to finally get involved!

When I began getting inked, I had only two weeks before separated from the US Army (honorable discharge) after five years service in the Infantry. My last duty station had been Coleman Barracks, just outside of Mannheim, West Germany. It sucked, and the (albeit, shortened) tour ate it. So, "how do you react to stares, JB?" Nowadays, just fine; 37 years ago? Like you wouldn't believe. I'd give people "hard eyes" and a "get super-aggressive real fast" attitude. Back then, ink had a secondary (primary?) role of non-verbally "giving someone the bird". For some reason, that was important to me. Thankfully, times have changed; people, too; and so have I. Since coming back to the US, summer of 2004, I've had nothing but pleasant, polite interest from people in my tattoos, if they respond to them at all. Maybe it's that the tattoos, themselves, have always been classic, traditional American designs -- with the exception of a few places, all my work is "sewn-together" flash, designs from sheets on the wall. Nothing anybody gets angry about. I especially like the stares -- and the conversations that follow -- from age-appropriate women of a certain type.

I make a special cameo in this:

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.

Sometimes I really can't tell the difference anymore. Tattooing is SO over saturated that it feels like i work at hot topic most of the times. I mean when everybody has a fucking tattoo what's the difference anyway? I've seen tons of kids with tough traditional tattoos wearing hipster v necks and thick rimmed glasses. But what about tattooers? Dickies and flannel? I mean fuck! It's all been done and over done. None of us are original, we might have got there sooner but does it matter anymore? How about we all dress like it's the 30's? Oh wait that's done... How about ties and button downs... Fuck another cliche. Today tattooing not just about the tattoo it's about the total image of the client wearing it... And I think that's bullshit. When "alternative" is the mainstream, what's alternative? I don't have a clue... Side note: some of the above tattoos are really stupid!!!

poor Dan. he left and tried to distance himself from tattooing and persued music only to find himself playing and looking out on audiences packed full of tattooers that look just like him. dude cant get escape.

i have some photos of higgs tats and the murals he painted in robert ryan's apartment...but i'll never post them online!!!