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Old left knee and new right knee from Chad Koeplinger. If feels good to finally have this shit out of the way.

got this dietzel-birdie last week from the nice dude johann. https://instagram.com/sign_of_the_wolf/ healed - not settled.

Just got this from Scott Sylvia at the Elm Street Festival in Dallas

pretty excited to have booked appointments for my GF and myself to have quite a bit of chair time with Freddy Corbin. This dude is such a standup guy. He answers my email, calls, etc... within hours. I have messaged many of the harder to schedule artist and have never heard from them in 2 years. Living in Portland, I am hoping to make one trip from Portland to Oakland, then going to my hometown and having Tim Hendricks due a piece all in the same weekend. But for now, Freddy is a lock.

Background ribs done, lightning will be done last session (End of March/Beginning April) and left "cheek" done (those 2 stripes in the middle hurt as I've never felt before)

So good! Miss you guys!

@AuntTudie - wait until you are fully healed, and then a few months down the line reassess what you want to do. I have a couple spots on two different tattoos (two different artists) that had little blowouts due to the nature of the location, and within a few months the blowouts were gone.

I am almost certain it is. Just waiting g for my artist to wake up and tell me what he thinks.

Kore posted a picture so I thought I'd share it here Shou from 36 Ghost by Horiyoshi3 Made by Kore Flatmo About 30 hours so far

I had a couple of jammers done by Franklin Reeves at The Pearl Harbor Gift Shop on Thursday. Awesome guy. It had been a few months since my last tattoo, and it felt good *you know what I mean* to get back to it. I'm running out of room on my lower right leg. Hopefully getting a larger piece done on my thigh in the near future. Franklin did the cat and the chalice. Other visible work my Tim Pausinger (The Pearl), Franz Stefanik (Okey Doke), Mario Desa (Great Lakes) Chad Koeplinger (Rock of Ages), and Glennie (The Pearl).

Today's work was intense, and we still have a bit left to go! Yoni Zilber at NY Adorned. https://www.instagram.com/p/-Cj6--MGq7/?taken-by=yonizilber

I've been too busy/lazy to post these...... from the last 5 weeks: Wrist and Left Ankle/Achilles - Jon Larson @ Harlequin Couple little guys on the bicep- Lightning Bolt and Flying Eyeball - Tony Caporusso @ Lucky Monkey Right Ankle - Greg Christian @ Tattoo Faction

Birthday sticker from Bert Krak at Smith Street...I think what space I have left on my leg, I'm going to let him fill it.

First session from my long and humbling journey with Horitomo, in August. Ignorantly assumed that I'd be able to schedule within 90 days and was sadly mistaken. Won't have my next appointment until July. It's probably for the better, I needed to pump the brakes.

I just finished this on my back calf, with Rob Ryan at Temple. Having him do a Divine Mother in the presence of Freddy was a bet. Friends don't understand why I'd want this as an agnostic... shrug.

Texas style devil sparrow, Charley Marquez at True Blue, ATX.

Well it's been a year since I've had my back worked on and per our usual fall schedule, Henning was in town and this time we FINISHED my back! Some of you might have seen the updates via Instagram. So happy with this collaboration between Henning and Rubendall being completed! WARNING, PIC HEAVY!!! Put your browser on FULL SCREEN! The master himself, Henning Jorgensen. Such a great artist and humble man. Filling in the phoenix...tail feathers, breast, head and a few touch ups here and there. Such a pleasure watching Henning work. I was so stoked with the zebra/tiger striped pattern he chose for the remaining tail feathers. Touch up on a tender spot...the spare tire. Slowly getting there. Details details details... Close-up of the phoenix...beautiful! Full view from my right side. There was poor lighting inside since it was dark out, so they propped me up on a table and surrounded me with lights. A quick reminder of the work Mike Rubendall did on the lower half of this collaboration. LOVE his water! Another angle of my lower half. Here's the finished top half. Finished full back in all it's glory. My back is a sea of colors! Hope everyone enjoyed my show and tell! (don't mind the feet on the left or right, hahaha)

Jay Thurley (@jaysoos on IG) put this panthernator on my shoulders yesterday. These neck tear-throughs are tough to photograph, didn't get one from above my head to show the whole effect.

buffalo by bh robinson. good dude~ pic is sideways bc i like to be as horizontal as possible

I would say that technique aside I'd be really bummed if any of those were on me, but the truth is if you showed me your drawings I'd refuse to be tattooed by you so it's a moot point. @CultExciter offered you excellent advice above. Those people would be a lot better off with some simple Sailor Jerry flash because at least it would be drawn correctly. Trace classic flash. Take up drawing from life to understand how things work and go together. Always use reference. Traditional style should be about taking objects and distilling them down to their essence: look at Scott Sylvia's roses. They're simple but they fully capture the elegance and beauty of a rose. Work hard to draw like that.

Good for you for working it all out. To be quite honest, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, it looks like you're just starting to figure out some of the basics of drawing for tattoos. I'd spend some time tracing stuff. Seriously. That SJ rose you see on the wall. Trace it 100 times. That way you know it by heart. Repeat. On whatever subject matter you like. Nothing too big. Just things to get your understanding down. I would hesitate to do any of those as tattoos just yet. That whole crawl before you can walk thing. I started in the same place, and not too long ago at that. While I have a fine art background, learning to draw a panther, or oni, or rose, or swallow, or dragon, or whatever...it takes a lot of practice to do so correctly. I'm still figuring it all out...much like the rest of us.

Reading something someone wrote here, that it will never be unprofessional to wear a long sleeve shirt at work, emboldened me to go down to where I wear my watch. In hindsight I wish I'd been convinced earlier since it would have let me get bigger forearm pieces.

My current job doesn't have me working with or interacting directly with customers, but I am around them and I've found that I get approached by far more customers when I have my arms covered. Guess that means the tattoos are working like they're supposed to.

Let's be clear: neither getting tattooed nor not getting tattooed helps to assert you as an "individual" who is outside some kind of norm. Subcultures are cultures too.

And here I was, thinking I was going to come and post an opinion opposing the norm... I totally agree with the last few posters. If you want tattoos that you can't hide, or even tattoos at all, you should be prepared for the consequences. Such as not being able to get certain jobs. Do I agree with certain businesses not hiring tattooed people? Fuck yea. If you could potentially lose business because a customer doesn't want to see a tattooed person working there, you'd be ignorant to hire the warped tour bodysuit kid. Simple business. If you want visible tattoos, you have to have a skill set that compensates. Plain and simple. Also, I think them even using the word "discriminate" in that article is unfair. Discrimination is based (in my mind) on factors out of your control, like race, gender, sexuality, etc. Not something you willingly chose to do to yourself. Just my $.02, as a tattooed youngster working on being heavily covered one day.

I think the kid going for a job as a bus boy is such an interesting example. When you have no skills you are basically at the mercy of everyone, in the context of menial work you are going to be judged for your tattoos; because frankly you haven't got much else going for you! The way I see it the answer is not to spend your life doing shit work and not getting the tattoos you want, but as @Graeme says, embrace the margins. If you can develop a skill set that demands you be judged on the quality of your work rather than your tattoos, then you got the best of both worlds. There's a guy who drinks at the bar I work in who I've become friends with, older guy in his mid 40's who has made a very successful career in fashion buying. He's got one the the best collections I've ever seen, two Thomas hooper sleeves as well as hands, bailey Robinson, Chad, Steve Byrne and many many others on his legs, Ian flower on the back of his neck...you get the idea. One of the other barmen asked him if he had ever worried about it effecting his job opportunities, in his thick Manchester accent he replied 'nah, I know who I am, and I'm fucking good at my job'

I might be in the minority here in having this opinion, but I hope the general public doesn't stop seeing tattoos and tattooed people in a negative light. I have a hard time having sympathy or patience for people who claim that they're discriminated against because of their tattoos, especially when these people work in shitty low-wage, low-job security jobs. Where I work I saw a guy with a nice neck tattoo have an interview to be a busboy. Guess what? He didn't get the job, because if you're getting your neck tattooed while applying for jobs that pretty much any chump off the street can competently do, you're a dumbass. I probably wouldn't hire you either. For me, part of getting tattooed and becoming an increasingly heavily tattooed person is accepting and taking on something that most people don't understand and being okay with it. I think that responsibility, that willingness to put yourself at the margins, is an important part of getting tattooed, especially when into getting into less concealable areas.