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New one from Chris O'Donnell. Flaming traditional dragon head.

Got this subtle vag-rose from Olivia at Mom's Body Shop in SF today. Super fun! Loving the pink and black. The little 13 is cause this was the 13th tattoo of 2013 :P

Horitomo cat from a few months ago ... sorry for the dark picture

Horitomo cats & my cats :)

My arms are all pick and stick tattoos, and if I were to start over with the same aesthetic, I would definitely get large tattoos in the large spaces first. Nothing sucks more than wanting a big tattoo in a certain area and realizing that you don't have enough room for it. Also, when advising clients on where to put a design that they have already chosen, I tell them to put it in a spot that is the same size and shape as the design. So if I were starting my arms over again, I would start with larger pieces on the inner and outer biceps, large vertical designs down the backs of the forearms(mid upper bicep, over the elbow to upper wrist) or a large diagonal design wrapping from back of the elbow to front of the wrist, central/circular designs over the ditch, and then porkchop sized pieces on the inner forearms and wrists. It is always fun to put smaller tattoos between the spaces that are already well-framed and fit nicely in the area. That is just my own opinion on what I think looks best in terms of placement on the arms, but really it is up to you. I think the most solid course of action is to definitely start from the top to the bottom and place things where they fit best.

After 1st session with Horitomo. Back was much easier than I thought/ heard, of course we haven't hit the problem areas yet...

This is probably the most comprehensive explanation I've found on the internets of the "what goes with what" vis-a-vis flowers that I think you were referring to. Some of this seems like common sense -- like don't mix plants from different seasons -- but I agree: if you're not super hung up on what's "traditional," get what you dig. From an interview with Horihide: "Tattooists who have not been apprenticed and trained by tattoo masters do not know the reasons or meanings of the traditional designs. For example, there are four seasons (spring, summer, fall and winter) in Japan. The seasons should be expressed in tattoo art as well. Real Japanese tattoo artists express each season on the skin. However, the untrained tattooists do not know traditional thoughts on Japanese art. The untrained tattooists draw a snake and cherry blossoms, but this is a wrong way in tradition. When cherry trees begin to bloom in March in Japan, the snake still hibernates under the ground. So the snake and cherry blossom cannot be seen in the same period. In other words, it does not make any sense if the snake and cherry blossoms are drawn together. Some tattooists draw a carp climbing up the waterfall together with peonies. Actually, we can see the carp climbing up the waterfall from the late September to October in Japan. It is supposed to go with maple leaves, not peonies. (The symbol of maple leaves refers to the autumn.) When hutatsugoi (twin carp) and huhugoi (a married couple carp) are drawn, two carp (one carp for the arm, for example) can go with peonies, because we do not have to express seasons in these cases. There are several traditional combinations: Karajishi, which is a combination Shishi (lion) with botan (peonies), and ryu (dragon) with kiku (chrysanthemum) and menchirashi (men means “a mask,” and chirashi or chirasu means “to scatter”) with cherry blossoms. Those images are particular sets for Japanese traditional tattoo designs.” Re-post from: ANCIENT ART OF THE JAPANESE TEBORI TATTOO MASTERS | INK IN HARMONY | The Selvedge Yard

The only thing better than an original from Horitomo...an actual monmon cat tattoo! AWESOME!

its hard to say. i normally set out to do the exact opposite of what inspires me for the soul purpose of trying to bring something of my own to the table. i definitely love his tattooing from the late 90's and early 2000's( i started tattooing in 97-98) and have always loved his painting. the little that ive seen of what he does now still gets me going but i dont try to emulate it consciously. there are so many things that are floating in the back of my head. i honestly can say that what i like the most, is the art that would be associated with metal. specifically heavy metal magazine but i cant stand most metal. puss head, biz, frank frazetta... shit like that. i also like the classics. my whole point to to build off of history. to copy your contemporaries just helps you produce whats popular which is definitely necessary to survive. i have more thoughts but i cant sort them right now. kinda feel like i jumbled a bunch of shit together to answer your question. :p ive been doing off beat weird shit for a long time took a long ass break to clear my head from family shit so im just getting back to where i feel i should of been a few years ago... see im rambling again anyway hope i answered your question lol - - - Updated - - - heres a couple more

Seriously, it's like you all have the same taste in music

So many penises..

I know Dave Lum used to do the whole "I'm gonna tattoo you for free, but you don't get to see what it is until I'm done" on April Fools Day. I can get behind that. I've never done the Halloween/Friday The 13th thing.

Thanks! It was done in the private studio. I always go there. It's a lot closer and easier to get to from CT. Plus it's quiet and no distractions which makes me feel better when I'm getting tattooed.

I didn't read through the whole thread, but has anyone mentioned Aaron Coleman? He did a quite large sized panther today on my calf ( ditch to ankle) in only 2.25 hrs. Don't worry, pics will be coming soon...

Pick the spot you want to get your first tattoo. Doesn't matter where it is, you can work from there. There is no right or wrong way to start that kind of collection (other than on your hand)!

Friend of the forum, Jon Loudon, ladies and gentleman. Haha. I'm just going to do a top 6, because I hate basically everything. 1. Touche Amore - Is Survived By 2. Deafheaven - Sunbather 3. Mark Kozelek x Desert shore - S/T 4. Russian Circles - Memorial 5. Comadre - S/T 6. Self Defense Family - Try Me

George burchett flash dragon done by Cheyenne Sawyer at Atlas Tattoo in Portland

The legends book has a fair amount of Coleman flash. The lost love book also has a handful of flash sheets and photos of Coleman's.

Ehhhh.. wouldn't go that far. I'd reword it, "a thing that has sprung up in the last ten years." Or "Tatty zapper party time!" Or "That day where you don't make money tattooing people who don't really want tattoos." Blame that party animal Pecker guy! :D

Okie dokie, the interview videos are working again after a fun little exercise with re-uploading them all after Google deleted them when I made a change to my email address. ;) Word of warning to other youtube users - changes you make to gmail can and will affect your linked youtube account.. Thanks @suburbanxcore for the heads up.

I'll be there. As I've said elsewhere, I have an appointment with Mario Desa. I have mixed feelings about the event as a whole, but it is definitely a lot of fun to be able to meet, talk to, and maybe even get tattooed by all of the great tattooers that come through.

I didn't set out to get sleeves, it just kinda happened. I started at the top of my shoulder and every few weeks or months I'd head in and get something new. I had a couple of much older tattoos to work around, but they didn't prove to be a problem. I thought I'd have to get them covered up, but the people at The Pearl talked me out of it - I'm glad they did. In fact, everything they told me has been confirmed by the advice I've seen others give here. After a while I realised that I needed some help figuring things out. I set up an appointment with Tim and we mapped out a series of small/mid sized pieces, that still left room for some fun little filler pieces. I think @clatattooing 's advice is great. We each do things our own way, but there are some underlying principles that if we are open to hearing good advice, will serve us well. Good luck!

I can understand how he feels. He can play whatever he wants live, but he can't stop me from playing 20 year old records.

Iain Mullen from Imperial Tattoo in Stockholm did the one one the left on me last year. Took about 2 hours.

@Delicious Well, @huggernaut and I have been best friends for about 10 years now...and we met at local punk rock shows. Haha. It just so happens that @CultExciter is a friend of a friend. Small world!

This is pretty funny. It's a shame that these guys are selling records, playing shows and just have notoriety at all. I'm willing to bet they aren't spitting anything profound in their lyrics.

I was told Kumonryu Shishin can be paired with almost any flowers assuming other rules (i.e. seasons) are observed. I have a Kumonryu Shishin back piece with kiku.

A good read. Apologies if it's been posted before. Horihide still practices the dying art of hand tattoo Hand tattoo artist Horihide is one of the few tebori practitioners who remain, as body ink carries a stigma in Japan and young apprentices are few. GIFU, Japan — Hidden away in the backroom of a modest apartment in this central Japanese city, one of Japan's last remaining hand-tattoo masters is preparing his tools. Over the last four decades Oguri Kazuo has tattooed notable geisha and countless yakuza, members of Japan's notorious mafia. Today, the 79-year-old artist, known professionally as Horihide (derived from "hori," meaning "to carve"), is working on a client who is a little more subdued. Motoyama Tetsuro has spent hundreds of dollars, traveled thousands of miles and waited more than three decades for a session with Horihide. The Japanese-born American software manager wanted the master's ink in his skin — a living legacy for a dying art. With old masters passing away and young apprentices lacking the patience to learn the painstaking craft of tebori (hand tattooing), many followers believe its days are numbered. "If you know the master, why would you want to work with someone else?" asks Motoyama, 62, who first received the outline of a dragon by Horihide on his right shoulder in the 1970s. Motoyama lost touch with the master — who works only by word-of-mouth introductions in backdoor locations — before the work was complete. Last November, after a 30-plus year search, he finally located Horihide and traveled back to Japan from his home in Cupertino, Calif., to finish the piece. Japanese tattoos are steeped in thousands of years of history and bound by rigid tradition and social mores. This distinguishes them from American tattoos, which are largely personal expressions of individualism. Japanese masters spend years perfecting their craft and learning the stories behind the tattoos, derived from woodblock prints and Chinese folk tales. The body-suit tattoos, spanning shoulders to below the buttocks, can take hundreds of hours to apply and cost as much as $20,000. Banned during the Meiji period, irezumi (literally "to insert ink") remains underground today; many hot springs and bathhouses still bar tattooed individuals. Artists such as Horihide work under a cloak of secrecy plagued by associations with criminality. Still, social stigma has not put off the soft-spoken Motoyama who, with square glasses and salt-and-pepper hair, appears the epitome of respectability. Although the grandfather is happy to show off his tattoos in California, he, like most, is careful to hide his arms in Japan behind long sleeves despite searing summer temperatures. Controversy is now flaring up again. Last month, the right-wing populist mayor of Osaka, Toru Hashimoto, ordered all government employees to voluntarily divulge any concealed or visible tattoos. The 100 or so discovered to be inked, who mostly work in waste disposal and transport, are likely to face an ultimatum: Get the offending tat removed or find another job. Such pariah status has led to a decline in tattoo masters, with Horihide estimating that there are only five or six left who can do the traditional black-and-white tebori as opposed to the machine-operated colored tattoos. (Horihide offers both.) "Specializing in tebori is not commonplace," says Kip Fulbeck, an art professor at UC Santa Barbara, who is organizing a 2014 exhibition of Japanese tattoos at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles with tattoo artist Takahiro Kitamura (known as Horitaka). "For one, it takes a great deal of time to traditionally learn how to do it correctly. It's also a much slower tattooing method, so it takes much more time. [unlike machine tattooing] it's very subtle, it's very quiet." Although Horihide has eight students, none can yet draw their own designs and just a few are learning tebori. Horihide became an apprentice at age 19 and spent five years learning the craft. "It was very strict. In the morning you have to get up at 5 o'clock and clean the house. If you didn't do it right, you could be beaten," recalls the artist, as he sits cross-legged on the floor, carefully filling in the yellow hues of a tiger on Motoyama's other shoulder. "But nowadays young people can't do that. Some people who want to be students ask me, 'How much can you give me as a salary?'" He laughs, shaking his head. "So things have changed." As a teenager, Horihide fled to Tokyo after a street gang fight. When money ran out and hunger started to gnaw, he saw a sign offering room and board to a tattoo apprentice. Despite lingering prejudices surrounding the once-forbidden art (the ban was lifted in 1948 by the occupying forces), Horihide carefully practiced on his own skin — scars of now faded squares and circles on his thigh today. Past clients were largely the yakuza and an occasional hot spring geisha, who marked themselves with phoenixes, dragons and killer whales. Horihide's memories of the yakuza — who provided generous gifts — remain fond. "Younger people do not know how to be courteous and do not know how to speak to me," he complains. Today, however, his clients are largely construction workers and firefighters, members of fraternal organizations who are traditionally tattooed. Asked what a popular design is, Horihide describes the Japanese carp. When caught by a fisherman, the carp does not thrash around like other fish, but remains still, quietly accepting its fate. "So Japanese guys take the spirit of the carp," he explains, "rather than struggle against fate." Motoyama pulls a white T-shirt back over his head and then buttons up a black shirt — carefully hiding both the dragon and newly inked tiger, which still bubbles with small specks of blood. "Today, tattoo artists just use a stencil and copy designs," he says sadly. "With Horihide's designs, every one is unique. [but] in the long run I don't know how long they can survive." Horihide still practices the dying art of hand tattoo - Los Angeles Times

We've done a few at our shop... the first one was in the summer of 2012, and we had a decent volume of people, about half new and half repeat clients. Several of the new folks have since been back a few times, one of them every few months to add palm sized pieces here and there. The second one was this last October, and we were barely busier than a normal Friday. But, of the two of us doing them, there were only two or three people that weren't regular clients, and they came with someone who was. The first one was mainly to get new people in the door, and the second one was more to try and thank our customer base. In those goals, we seemed to be decently successful. That being said, we don't intend to do them every Friday the 13th, because we'd prefer doing it as an occasional fun sort of thing, rather than a gimmick.

Different opinions I guess. Being a tattooer myself I see it as cheapening the craft. Any other professional tattooers are free to agree or disagree with me. Sorry if I don't count customers as having as valid an opinion as a career tattooer does. No disrespect intented man, I'm not trying to insult anyone.

Outer thigh finished. A bit bloody.

New guy from NOVA, currently working on a Japanese body suit by Horitomo of State of Grace.

Hello everybody, my name is Matthew Welch. I'm a tattooer since November, 2004. Currently traveling, I began working in North Florida and have been on the road since August of this year, after living in Southern New Mexico from 2011-2013. I enjoy many styles, and focus on traditional styles of tattooing and painting. I like to be an active and welcoming part of the tattoo and art community. I'm here to share art and discussions in the forum, network with other artists, and be involved, in general. I'm also inviting anyone to find me on Facebook, or take a look on my instagram, @matwelch if interested in my work or travels. Maybe we'll get to meet in person someday, have a little fun, who knows:cool: thank you!

The only thing better than an actual monmon cat tattoo would me an actual monmon CAT! These mythical creatures probably only wander the streets of japan, the mind of Horitomo, or the dreams of LSTers.

He is very FAST! Have 2 pieces from him in sensitive areas and it wasn't bad at all due to his speed!

Very nice CL! Sent from my LG-E980 using Tapatalk 2

I saw that on Instagram @cltattooing, I really liked it

By Robert Ryan at Electric Tattoo, Bradley Beach, NJ http://robertryanofjudah.tumblr.com/image/70126340846

Great work! Reminds me a lot of Valerie Vargas, but from what I've heard, you may have been tattooing longer than her... Anywho, welcome!

...so on wednesday i flew out from germany to poland to meet up with one of my favorites, rich hardy. he started my back piece...and i`am more than glad that i chose him - i`m absolutely in love! one the one hand it was such an amazing and satisfying experience for my mind but on the other hand it was so horrible for my body. i wouldn`t call myself a pussy when it comes to tattooing but this time i was almost ready to start crying and stopping this whole thing; but somehow i made it through. :)

Myself, I go to whichever tattooers I'm familiar with and whichever tattooers who's quality of work I think is good. I've been tattooed by 16 different guys with 160hrs (and counting) over ten years. Tattooers with different style/vibe, different equipment, different processes, different touch. Hammer hands and gentle-gentleman. I've gone to most of my tattooers for more than one piece. This has really expanded my experiences and journey becoming an illustrated man. By going to different tattooers I've had the opportunities to be tattooed in new shops, old established shops, local shops, travels, private home studios, different shop setups and so now I know what I like, who I like and where I like to go to receive a tattoo. I've been tattooed by apprentices and I've been tattooed by some legit people that have been doing it for decades. Having Some tattooers are great to just slap on a banger and have some fun. Some I know will squeeze me in at the end of a day and sharpie one of my ridiculous ideas on. Some I know give that little bit extra in terms of refining a design/idea and being very particular about placement. I am lucky to say I have had nothing but positive experiences and NO REGRETS which is an important thing I attach to being a tattooed person. If you have one tattooer you trust, that's great and enjoy it. I like to think that variety can lend itself to a wider range of opportunity and experiences.

This is a pretty common thought from clients....... ......I explain to them that tattoo "collectors" are different than people with tattoos.... I push clients to explore the world of tattooing and collect tattoos from folks who create the kinda stuff they dig. Especially if your already interested in travel. Work a tattoo appointment into a vacation..or a trip.... Get work from outside your bubble. So...whether it be from 3 guys in one shop.....3 shops on one block or 3 shops around the map.... The goal should be to get excited about your collection. Any shop that has tattooers tattooed by many, should endorse you getting tattooed by ANY... As long as it's good solid work.... Go get it... Anywhere you find it....

The waiting in line experience: Only the first person in line "camped out", I was told he got there at 2am and the shop manager (Jen) hinted that his request was for something you wouldn't expect someone to go to Mike for. A few people arrived around 6-7am and then the majority of the line showed up between 8am and 11am. I got there a little after 11am and there was about 25 people ahead of me. I finally got to the front of the line at 4pm. Waiting in line was actually a good time. More than half the people already had work by Mike and were looking to extend half sleeves, start sleeves on the other arm, backpieces, etc. It was cool seeing Mike's work in person and talking with other people who are passionate about tattoos. I'm excited about getting my backpiece started and wish the first appointment was sooner, but the 21 month wait will allow to me research what I want more thoroughly (although in the end I will probably just throw a few general ideas at Mike and let him take control). Also the wait time gives me plenty of time to save the money for this huge investment. I also think I should use the long wait to adopt a healthier lifestyle so I can survive the 6-8 hour sessions I have scheduled. It will be worth the wait!

The Kings Ave crew has been great about putting up temporary screens when I have to drop trow, hahaha. Mostly because they don't want the other customers disgusted and throwing up from my nekkidness, hahaha. I usually keep a long sleeve t-shirt handy during breaks. I end up tying the sleeves around my waste so that the body of the shirt blocks the privates and nothing touches the back/rear that's being worked on. Then I can traipse around the shop or head to the bathroom. It works for me, still scares or surprises the other clients, hahaha. Here's a pic of one side of the Kings Ave Manhattan shop from opening week back in 2011. Yours truly on the left getting worked on by Henning, Rubendall on the right working on another client (Grez and Sara Carter (Schor) in the background). As you can see, sometimes the crew likes to be close by to keep good conversation going and things can get pretty intimate between clients proximity to one another and their state of dress (or undress) haha.

They couldn't give her proper sized gloves? Well probably because 7 year olds shouldn't tattoo!!! *smh*

took this picture yesterday 4th day of healing already peeled Scott sylvia blackheart tattoo SF SF trip was better than i could have ever expected or deserved. found LST(pic 1) got great advice (pic 2) listened to said advice !(pic 3)

Can you train squirrels to scrub tubes? That could actually be an advantage in the situation.

Ask and ye shall receive my friend ;) in all its glory - The "Vans Warped Tour Body Suit"

My back is in progress and last session I realized that getting one's back tattooed is like getting your ribs done all over again. I foolishly thought going into it... "At least my ribs are done. Nothing could hurt that bad." If I'd given it an ounce more thought and considered the anatomy involved I might have realized that ribs wrap from front to back... fucking duh! I told Scott we will be finishing this thing in 30 minute increments. What a cry baby I've become in my old age.