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Some recent stuff: this was my end of the trade with Olivia. We decided to use her birthmark as a nipple. :cool: And then this was a medical illustration of a humerus bone. This is actually on a dude who is from the same town that I apprenticed in. It was pretty nuts actually, he told me that he had gotten work done at the shop I was at, and turns out he had a tattoo that I had drawn for my mentor to use. Small world..

I wouldn't have said Halloween. I would have just let us assume you always wear a sparklymask. Life is more fun with a sparklymask.

Me and @Pugilist just booked an appointment to get matching tattoos from Doc Forbes flash from Chris Hold at Sacred Heart in Vancouver on December 27. Stoked.

Here you go http://www.lastsparrowtattoo.com/forum/tattoo-designs-books-flash/185-how-about-art-show.html

All-time favorite is on a friend of mine, mostly because of how silly it is. What do gorillas think about? Bananas, duh. By Drew Rash. Additionally, here are three I've seen on Instagram recently that I've loved. Another Tim Hendricks. Squeezing a readable ROA on there blows my mind. Grez. Does it get better than classic roses on a hand? Grime. And to totally tweak out the classic rose, a rose skull morph.

hahaha so yeah totally not anything I'd "planned" in my head. Blue peony upper right arm. Will do a pic when I get home and get it uncovered. Did some more planning for more work on the area too..

wow great pics everyone. @Graeme "squidmitts"! Hah! I don't generally seek out dotwork so those Jondix, Weisbeck, and Hooper hands are completely blowing my mind right now. Amazing! Unfortunately if I am ever able to get my hands done, it won't be for several decades. But in the meantime, here's a couple more on other people. Rich Hardy Grez

Agreed! And since I still can't get the glitter from that thing off my stuff, my desk at work is in constant party mode.

Philip Yarnell does some great wolves - - - Updated - - - missed the Yarnell devil/wolf Love this from Florian Santus too

I like Uncle Acid's Bloodlust a lot, the new one is similar-ish? I also youtubed some Blood Ceremony, songs from the new album, and I like it.

Someone's got a secret admirer <3

I'm old too , I only brought two albums released this year Mind Control by Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats and Infestissumam by Ghost B.C. of the two the former got much more play .

Oo nice, i'll subscribe to that one thanks!

@Gregor Wolf People is one of my favorites for sure. Glad to see someone else is into their music. Thanks @JAllen and @Graeme for the other posts.

At least 4, maybe 5 of mine, when I walked in the door for my appointment I had no idea what I was getting. The rest I had an idea ("how about a dragon?") but I've never seen sketches or anything ahead of time. I like it like that, I like surprises! :)

Absolutely. I will pm you my information, and maybe we can get together. We have a dog and two cats so you guys should be right feel right at home.

What is your aftercare routine? I scabbed bad when I tried healing with ointment (aquphor, etc) and dry healing. As a result I have some large patchy areas on my first tattoos :( but I think I only notice because I can inspect my tattoos all day long and can find at least one healing "imperfection" on all my tattoos. It was very frustrating so I switched to rewrapping the area in plastic wrap every 8 hours for the first 2-3 days. Ans have had great success so far. Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk

Have to disagree with you there Graeme, looks pretty awesome to me. Maybe that person asked for a doily anyway ;) Another piece by Dotwork Damian Dotwork portrait by Zack Singer

I have a dragon, so I must be safe!

Remember reading someone, somewhere, saying that every time you get a tattoo you should ask yourself why it's not a dragon. Don't have a dragon myself (plenty of space left though) but it seems like valid advice!

I've done it and I think one of the super fun things about tattooing is walking into a shop not really knowing what you want and getting something that feels right at the moment. I'm thinking of trying to get a walk-in somewhere next week when I'm visiting my parents. Spontaneous tattoos rule.

Thomas Hooper does my favourite squidmitts. A couple of examples stolen from his instagram:

Love these photos! Here's mine, taken around Halloween time.

So today's Father's Day and my dad is celebrating the only way he knows best...by spending the day at the mah-jong parlor. My lady is working so that leaves me with a free day to my own devices to which I decided to mount and hang up the Horitomo cat prints I have accumulated. I love the entire series and the various ones that are not in print but posted on Horitomo's Instagram. Patiently waiting for more prints to come out and the much rumored book that collects all of the various tattoo cat incarnations. Hopefully one day I make it out to the west coast to get a tattoo cat from him...would be an awesome experience.

I liked American Gods , though , I thought it lost cohesiveness at times . Lots of great ideas jumbled about a bit. Anansi boys flows way better . I absolutely loved it. I have read loads of his comics (most recently Marvel 1602 -very clever). But those are the only 2 novels I have read. I really want to read The Ocean at the End of the Lane now I find this very exciting too : Joseph Gordon-Levitt is working with Neil Gaiman on 'The Sandman' movie | The Verge

@Graeme I really like every track on the album but I haven't heard Bloodlust so I can't comment . I've posted the first single Mind Crawler in the metal thread but here's a taste of another track -

To begin with, after looking around a bit, I wasn't sure if there was another thread already on this subject. This is also my first thread ever.. Sorry if I overlooked it. For this thread, I'd like to gear it towards sharing the artwork and designs that parallel the craft of tattooing. Whether it be inspired for making tattoos, like flash sheets and large watercolors, or, it could be art inspired by tattoos, of any medium. Curricular and extra-curricular. Old and new. This is a pretty wide margin for tattooers and collectors alike.. I try to paint and make drawings just as often as I design tattoos and stab people with them. I want to see what everyone else is doing and looking at! Thanks

No idea, we'll see what feels right then.

Anansi Boys is great fun.

Haha @spookysproul swap !! , its been raining for about 2 weeks solid now !!

Hi Harry, Thanks for the kind words. I was put off quite a bit on my first thread, i almost deleted my account. But I stepped back and tried to learn why everyone had such a strong response. I started reading old threads and really informed myself. I really was "ignorant" to the entire tattoo world before coming here. I am so glad I didn't leave and that so many people took the time to answer my questions via Pm as well. People looked at potential artists and taught me why some were better than others. I am completely grateful for this. Not only did I get great advice that helped me, my wife benefitted as well cause she used Great Lakes Tattoo as well. Once again, thanks to everyone and Merry Christmas! Sent from my LG-E980 using Tapatalk 2

Hahaha big pimpin...

Well since a lot of you have seen me on IG and in person, and not only do I look dashing in this picture (RARE!), but my arm and shoulder tattoos are visible... enjoy!

Yep, Rhode Island or New Hampshire. Strongly leaning towards Rhode Island at this point for a number of reasons, and me and @Pugilist have talked about including a visit to Boston as part of the trip. No firm plans made yet, mind you. A New England LST meetup would be great.

me in my big pimpin days.

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

I am a stout appreciator of the holiday season. My house smells awesome, the shop has christmas lights up, and we're getting a little tree! I have also just put an end to a really unhealthy relationship that I've been engaging for like 6 years, and while part of me is sad, the bigger part is like FUCK YEAH, I'M FREEEEE

Update: I still look like Burt Reynolds with a better mustache.

nothing spectacular here. I like arriving a little early so I can soak up the shop, read a tattoo magazine and after eat something shitty on the drive home.

Just exchange "How to shave your beard like a man" with "How to tattoo without an apprenticeship" One of you pros out there should make that video. Seriously.

Natasha also sounds like a perfectly fine name.

I spoke to another Veteran at my work yesterday. He was pretty covered, and out of curiosity I asked him politely where he got his tattoos (or pieces of crap, as he called them) done at. He couldn't remember the artists who did most of them, but he pointed out two specific ones. He told me that he got two (on his outer biceps) done by Charlie Wagner in Portsmouth, Virginia. He told me Charlie mixed the ink with his spit then said "tattooing has changed a lot from those days". I wish I could have spoke with him a little more, but I didn't want to keep him from going about his day.

Ever since I became aware of what the world of tattooing is, I've also been aware of the closely guarded secrets and the policy of not sharing the gold. And it's a good policy. Not everyone deserves to see the end of the rainbow. And then there's other times where I see that keeping everything to yourself or the immediate close circle isn't always necessary, or that it's more like brass not gold. I also scanned the Rudy interview from the same old copy of TA that I scanned and posted the VyVyn article from in that other thread. I tried to make the scans less crooked this time. Seems to be the best place to post this.

I like to walk around a giant boulder three time. Upon reaching my third rotation, I point a six shooter pistol in the air and fire twice; in one second increments. After the second shot is fired. I hop on one leg backwards, around the boulder Three times. Guaranteeing a 100% successful heal. Hope this helps ;)

hope this helps.