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Had some work done Friday 07-17 :cool: Getting there !!

Aside from all the monmons, I love this one by Jim Sylvia:

I posted here a while back that I had never had a tattoo itch before. Cross that out. My entire back feels like it was attacked by a swarm giant mosquitos. I've never itched this bad even from poison ivy and contact dermatitis.

I think Japanese yakuza movies from the 60's/70's have some of the best movie tattoos. They also prove that tattoos other than tribal can still be very legible on screen. I think it's safe to say that watching these movies as a kid is the very reason why I have an interest in tattoos today. Here's a trailer from a movie called "Tales of Chivalrous Women: The Chivalrous Geisha". 0:32 and 3:02. Takakura Ken is a badass!

Decided to use Josh Howard from Solid State Tattoo. Sent from my LG-D850 using Tapatalk

I have been talking about getting an old tribal tattoo covered for years and I am finally going to get that done this Friday. I had been bouncing between a panther vs wolf, both with daggers for some time now. I decided on getting a wolf/dagger combo and then letting the artist decided on anything else needed to cover the tattoo. I asked him to either add a snake, roses or really anything he saw fit. I will post up some pictures Friday. Sent from my LG-D850 using Tapatalk

My "cat"

Welcome Whitney. I think discontinuing putting anything on your tattoo is the best option, and I would also recommend asking your tattooer if he or she has any advice. In my experience, the summer heat tends to be an irritant for some of my tattoos and I have tattoos that are a few years healed that still get raised lines in the summer, especially if I'm under hydrated. Six weeks is stil pretty fresh and the tattoo will still be settling in so I don't think there's necessary anything especially weird going on.

Black and grey for now, color for the other arm. No need to choose - you can have it all!

Yes, yes I do. Edit: Let me also say that my tattoos are not on my face, not on my lower arms, or anywhere that I could not easily cover them in my relatively conservative profession (medical), though I do have probably more freedom than I used to. At work I tend to keep them covered, but otherwise, NOT. I have them as an artistic expression, and want to display them, and that means even if I am in a non-work setting where I will see professional colleagues, meaning that in a professional work setting I tend to hide them, not because I don't want colleagues to know, but because that setting is not the place to display my personal artistic expression. When I'm on my own time, and happen to run into them, my colleagues are welcome to see my body art and I don't mind a bit.

This is what I did yesterday with Jereme Galloway at Time and Tide in Bloomington, IN.

Got this from Greg Christian at Tattoo Faction about a month ago and these from Tomas Garcia at Old Soul last weekend. all stolen from their IGs @Gregchristian4130 and @tomas_garcia I used to complain about not being in a great tattoo city like NYC, but being a 2 hour drive from cleveland and pittsburgh isn't really too bad.

Me and my girlfriend got tattooed yesterday by Marcus Kuhn while he's guesting in Paris at Laura Satana's shop!

Freddy Corbin put my son's name on me last night. Simple, tasteful, and just right. I'm so happy with it.

Might as well laugh.

I can't find a thread about cat tattoos that doesn't involve Horitomo! I just ran across this day of the dead cat and I think it's kinda cool - something about the eyes. Nate Beavers.

Getting tattooed right now. Butt and thighs day! Although only one cheek, hahaha

I echo Graeme's comments. Your tattoo looks like it is still healing, even after 6 weeks. Could be that the tattooer grinded pretty hard on the outline. Could be your heavy dose of sunscreen and too much lotion irritated a healing tattoo. That would be my guess based on your photo, linework should be pretty easy to heal otherwise. Just leave it alone and let it heal, it may take a bit longer. I used Lubriderm to heal for my first couple of years getting tattoos with no problems, the tattoos healed great. But several years later when I used Lubriderm a similar thing would happen to me, the outlines would raise, skin would get red and burning/itchy. Lubriderm has lanolin in it. Ease up (or eliminate) any lotion or topical goop on the tattoo until the red goes away.

This is really the important bit, right here. Work is work, and is where you apply your skills, and get paid for it. If you have an artistic vocation then you're probably expected to inject your personal style into it, but in my line of work it is a distraction to have "too much goin' on" and I prefer to be put together, stylish, clean and appropriate, but anything beyond that could take away from my performance, perhaps. It is not the time or place for it, in other words. I personally don't mind it in others, because I have a very open mind and tend NOT to be distracted by others' expressions of personal style, but many people would be distracted by it, and I prefer to just keep things simple and let my professional skills shine and be the thing that people know about me and remember about me, primarily. In other words, there doesn't have to be any angst about it, it is just business. :)

@TrixieFaux - Sigh...You are right, I am a bit afraid of being judged. :( I'm in my late 50's and I started getting tattooed when I was around 50, and I guess I'm from a generation that still remembers when tattoos were only on people on the fringe of society, and had very negative connotations. Even though I know intellectually that perceptions have changed, and I totally embrace and love my tattoos, and will be getting lots more, there is still this little thing inside of me that fears being viewed negatively. It must have been imprinted in my brain from an early age. I guess its hard to unlearn old lessons. I am in a medium sized town, and actually there are a fair amount of tattooed younger folks around, but it is very rare to see a "conventional" (and yeah, I'm pretty conventional) person my age with tattoos. The few times when I have gone out with my half-sleeves exposed, I've felt uncomfortable, like, "OMG what if I run into my boss?!!" Honestly it is a big mental conflict for me. There are days when I think "Screw em! I want my tattoos to show." But when it comes time to walk out the door I can't bring myself to do it. This probably falls into the category of TMI, but I'm sure there is a need from some sort of psychological intervention here! :) I think the fact that I am totally relaxed and even enthusiastic about showing when I'm on vacation is informative. It's funny - in that setting, showing my tattoos makes me feel really confident and even powerful, its almost like I'm a different person. I feel alive, more like "me." I need to capture that at home. I'm mentally working on it, and I do see the day that I will be able to feel more comfortable showing my tattoos in public. I just need to step off the cliff and do it. But like @LizBee, I don't think I will ever show them at work, because I just like to keep my work image conventional, without distractions. - - - Updated - - - I'm really working to realize the difference between being at work and being on my own time!

Holy hell man, I didn't realize how small that guy was.

Post away @MoistTowelette! Post away!

I'd like to see yours :) Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I typically like them to show. I wear tank tops most of the summer. Bought a couple of racerback tanks after getting my most recent tattoo back/shoulder blade area tattoo from Chris Conn. That lady is too lovely for nobody to see her! My co-workers and the parents of my students can see them when I'm off-duty. So far, I've gotten such a warm reception about them with parents I've become friends with, that I might roll up my sleeves a little more this year at work as well. The students always like them. @soraya, it sounds like maybe you're a little afraid of being judged. If people want to judge you, that's their problem. Then again, where I live I am not really a spectacle for being tattooed, and tattoos aren't shocking. Los Angeles is diverse and there are many of us illustrated types around here. Do you live in a small town?

Having a great artist locally doesn't hurt either! Hahah

Good for you! They don't have to be mentioned on here to be great artists, IMHO. Glad you resonated with him.

I have a couple on my upper arm, a couple on my lower legs, and one on my foot. Plans to get at least moderate coverage. I always wore flip flops and shorts whenever I felt like it, but I used to be really insecure about my arms and never wore anything less than a t shirt. Now I've bought probably at least 5 tank tops in the last couple months and love showing my arms whenever feasible! ;) There's days when I just want to go out and do my grocery shopping or whatever and don't want to chance people bothering me, even though most of the comments are polite and curious...just don't always want to be talked to while I'm trying to do my errands. So I'll throw on pants and a shirt that covers them and no one has to know. But yeah, for the most part, I love having my tattoos visible and the attention I get, whether it's negative or positive. Positive attention is always nice, and negative attention is usually amusing. :rolleyes: But it's more than that of course. They make me feel more confident about myself, and obviously I got tattoos because I like how they look so I want to look at my own as much as possible too.

@Graeme Looks amazing! You're cruising through that thing! I need to get tattooed more often. Usually I get something every 2-4 years! Hahah

ah its a cool topic i think i generally like showing off some tattoos i wear shorts alot except a few winter months and i have good coverage on my legs of course once i go forearm in august it'll be game on even at work i enjoy talking about tattoos but still get suprised by how rude some folks can be like last week i was at a doctors office and this guy stares down my my tiki tattoo then he says "too dark - needs more color" I stared back - didnt say a word - then when back to watching the tv he couldnt give up of course and continued to trash talk his sons tattoos to which i said - "hey - different styles for different people man" thankfully he was called away to see the doc :)

Just a warning - you may think that you won't get more and bigger tattoos in the future. Yeah, remember that.

no poetry here go bigger is good advice - always! not judging the content myself just wondering if you had an issue with it meaning - were you second guessing yourself on it

Another option you might think about is getting a slightly muted color scheme so it's not so "out there" or go something like black/grey/red. That seems to work well and I've seen plenty of tattoos with that and it works great.

I have been messing around with Adobe After Effects for funsies. Never touched it until a week and a half ago, but I dig it. It's just similar enough to photoshop that I'm not completely in the dark with the UI, and Video Copilot has some amazing tutorials available. I made this by following one of them. It has EXPLOSIONS.

I dunno, i saw a tebori piece on someone's kneecap that was 4 years old, and still the brightest, sharpest sky blue I've ever seen. It genuinely looked like it was a month old still.

Just emailed back and forth with Scott Sylvia and nailed down a time for a big ass snake on my leg at Pagoda City.

Started mine yesterday evening with Kelly Edwards. It was amazing... and much more painful than I anticipated, and he tattooed for something like 5 hours with only a short break. I was actually genuinely surprised at how hard it was. Took my breath away more than once. He tattoos fast and hard, and I am humbled and proud to even be wearing this line work, sat like a rock. Next appointment will be in August for scales on the rattlesnake and starting to shade. - - - Updated - - - Oh yeah, and did the left side, or one preferential side, hurt a LOT more than the other?

So this got started today. Kelly Edwards. Three words for getting all that line work in one sitting: Fuck. That. Shit. Worth every second of pain though!

Since we're sharing progress, here's what we did on mine last week. We have to put the greys in some of the water and then do the details in the faces and the tiger's paws and things like that but we're getting super close to wrapping this up.

Fort Collins was a cool little town. Curtis blazed through our crab-turtle-Ray so I had a ton of time to cruise around.

A reminder, every backpiece is different. Design, subject matter, linework, colours, details, finer details, ink saturation...your stamina, that tattooers stamina, your height/weigh, your skin and health, the tattooers' experience, work flow, skill and speed, the needle clusters used, how many smoke breaks you take, the frequency of sessions...a lot of variables at play.

I posted this over in "http://www.lastsparrowtattoo.com/forum/general-tattoo-discussion/5952-thread-posting-while-getting-tattooed-page9.html#post107507" mid grind last night, but here's an update. Right ribs to arm pit and detailing out the right side. I'm still limited to what he puts on Instagram, so it's not close up and the lighting isn't great. But man this is getting me crazy happy! Although, of course, next session was supposed to be my last one ... but now it's not again... ;) But he can detail it out all he wants - I'm just in love. Ahhh, he just put up a detail shot. The right is finished - second pass on the blue and rays are next, and finishing the left ribs, then a final pass for whites and blacks. Stolen from Sean Zee's Instagram

I like this one by Lauren Jayne Gow:

I've posted em in a few different threads, but why not one more? Haha. I got these done by Grez at King's Avenue Tattoo.

Cat tattoos make me happy. One day I'll get likenesses of my guys done, probably dressed up all dapper like. Artist is Sherlane White. (Skin not mine)