hogg

I'm a sucker for a well-executed munewari, and no one does them better than Horitoshi:

And my jaw hits the floor pretty much every time Brian Kaneko posts anything. Example:

Same goes for Drew Flores. The head he's working on is also a nice reminder that tattoos can still be shocking:

Everyone already knows this but Marius Meyer seems to melt brains on the daily ( well, mine at least… ):

In business and in life.

I think about this stuff too. Just use your best judgement and don't compromise your beliefs for money. If you're not going to lose sleep over it, go nuts.

I love it.
I think that is a tennyo - kind of like an angel in Japanese Buddhism. The feathers are hagoromo, which is a celestial mantle.

I found this today. Does anyone know about it or have you ever seen it? I want to take it to my artist and have him do his own thing with it. Any thoughts?

I've been tattooed by dozens of people, and I wouldn't trade those experiences.
That said, after seeing this arm by Paul Dobleman, I wish I had given him a full limb:

BUMP.
Re-reading this thread and then reading several recent threads made me realize that the level of discourse has fallen around here. I didn't start this site, but I've been here since the beginning, and everything that @SacramentoDan said in this thread's first post is what I loved/still love about it. If you wanna find strangers being rude to each other on the Internet, go to literally any other forum. LST is different, and as a moderator, I'll ask that you respect and help to maintain that difference. I've met several of you in real life and have really enjoyed getting to know you a little better. Some of you are now real world friends (imagine that). If one of us had made a shitty comment to the other online, we'd both be less inclined to want to meet in the first place.
If there's a poster you don't like, put them on ignore. Have a snide comment typed out that is guaranteed to lower the level of discourse/add nothing? Feel free to delete it. If someone's really out of line, trust that the other mods and I will gladly swing the banhammer.
Thanks.

Thank you for calling this out - I think what you are doing is the best/only thing that we can do short from changing our hashtag.
If everyone here flags the spammy posts as spam on instgram it should help get them taken down sooner.

Hello all. My name is Valentin and i'm from Bulgaria, Plovdiv. Got my first tattoo 3 months ago and i would love to discuss more tattoos with people here. :)

BUMP.
Re-reading this thread and then reading several recent threads made me realize that the level of discourse has fallen around here. I didn't start this site, but I've been here since the beginning, and everything that @SacramentoDan said in this thread's first post is what I loved/still love about it. If you wanna find strangers being rude to each other on the Internet, go to literally any other forum. LST is different, and as a moderator, I'll ask that you respect and help to maintain that difference. I've met several of you in real life and have really enjoyed getting to know you a little better. Some of you are now real world friends (imagine that). If one of us had made a shitty comment to the other online, we'd both be less inclined to want to meet in the first place.
If there's a poster you don't like, put them on ignore. Have a snide comment typed out that is guaranteed to lower the level of discourse/add nothing? Feel free to delete it. If someone's really out of line, trust that the other mods and I will gladly swing the banhammer.
Thanks.

Ha! I saw the original post, too, @BrianH. That's good internetting.

BUMP.
Re-reading this thread and then reading several recent threads made me realize that the level of discourse has fallen around here. I didn't start this site, but I've been here since the beginning, and everything that @SacramentoDan said in this thread's first post is what I loved/still love about it. If you wanna find strangers being rude to each other on the Internet, go to literally any other forum. LST is different, and as a moderator, I'll ask that you respect and help to maintain that difference. I've met several of you in real life and have really enjoyed getting to know you a little better. Some of you are now real world friends (imagine that). If one of us had made a shitty comment to the other online, we'd both be less inclined to want to meet in the first place.
If there's a poster you don't like, put them on ignore. Have a snide comment typed out that is guaranteed to lower the level of discourse/add nothing? Feel free to delete it. If someone's really out of line, trust that the other mods and I will gladly swing the banhammer.
Thanks.

BUMP.
Re-reading this thread and then reading several recent threads made me realize that the level of discourse has fallen around here. I didn't start this site, but I've been here since the beginning, and everything that @SacramentoDan said in this thread's first post is what I loved/still love about it. If you wanna find strangers being rude to each other on the Internet, go to literally any other forum. LST is different, and as a moderator, I'll ask that you respect and help to maintain that difference. I've met several of you in real life and have really enjoyed getting to know you a little better. Some of you are now real world friends (imagine that). If one of us had made a shitty comment to the other online, we'd both be less inclined to want to meet in the first place.
If there's a poster you don't like, put them on ignore. Have a snide comment typed out that is guaranteed to lower the level of discourse/add nothing? Feel free to delete it. If someone's really out of line, trust that the other mods and I will gladly swing the banhammer.
Thanks.

Ha! I saw the original post, too, @BrianH. That's good internetting.

Best part of being on LST, and one of the best parts of being a human actually, has been meeting some of you in real life. I adore everyone of you I communicate with (past and present). Believe it it or not, we talk about LST in our conversations via text, via Facebook, and in person. I know I have not been active in a while (life son!) but I intend to try harder. Thank you LST for being there in so many major moments I've experienced.

@daveborjes,
I can totally appreciate that question! I have a sleeve, and a second one half finished. I also have tattoos on my leg that I let an apprentice do along with 4 tattoos I did I my thigh my self when I was an apprentice. As for the association NAPSA, it is a prerequisite to have tattoos. We are all tattooed and we are doing our best as tattoo artists and tattoo enthusiasts to stay true to the industry. If you check out the site savemyink.com you will see that our artist profiles all need to be verified before we even let them go up. We check for scratchers, art thieves, and apprentices before we will allow anything to show up on our site. Also we have over 80,000 images of tattoos on our site and they are all of quality. Along with all of this, all of our images and artist profiles have links that goes back to the original artists social media/website etc. so they are getting the proper credit they deserve. We also have built in personalized watermarks that can be applied to photos in the artist section so people can't easily steal your work. All of this is in the community section of the website.
I think by what I have written above you can agree that we put a lot of thought into this subject and since we are all tattooers and enthusiasts we are doing our best to make a site that is a true tattoo industry site that can help protect the trade while still supporting it.
- - - Updated - - -
@pidjones, To each his own! haha Have you seen the finished product? The beauty of it is we spent the last two years developing a process where it is the real thing but it comes out looking like a piece of art. Not much different from art on canvas! We are here to preserve the art and that was the main cause. Of course we didn't want it looking like a hunk of skin in formeldahide. The end product has no morbidity to it at all.
Cheers!
- - - Updated - - -
Thank you for the welcome @Graeme!
I assure you that every one of them is 100% real with no printing or recoloring. We spent 2 long years developing a process specifically designed to preserve tattoos while taking in mind to preserve the art and have it look the least morbid as possible. I believe we accomplished that by your skepticism in it. Tattooing truly is an art form and we want people to recognize and save it as art. We truly believe people can have their stories and legacies passed on for generations to come while also allowing their tattooists art to live on. If you have any further questions please feel free to ask. Cheers!

I also have not been here much recently, but decided to cruise on by and say hiiiii guys! I'm super busy and kicking ass at my new gig and stoked to be doing something I enjoy that fits my lifestyle so well. Stoked to be getting tattooed by Shad in two weeks and then who knows what else is going to get done in October! I'll be back in SF for Halloween and Convention fun. :)))
Miss you, LST, and think of you often. (I'm on my work computer all the time now and *alarmingly* focused, so I never think to make it over here because who wants to be on another computer AFTER work? but truly.)

started studying History at the University of Leiden, the netherlands, this year. This grands me acces to their library. Just found out they have about 2000 books about tattoos from one quick search. Everything from tribal studies to russian prison tattoo research. My life is now complete, holy shitballsmctitfuck this is awesooome!

I got a horror short story published in a collection by female horror writers. Not been around much, as have been concentrating a lot on my writing.

I haven't really been an active poster lately, but I just wanted to check in and say hello and hope all is well.
I've been super busy since my mentor and I decided to start up our own shop in downtown Roanoke, Virginia. I'm currently working 12-16 hour days balancing a job and tattooing. I've been able to tattoo super consistently since we opened up though and I've seen some improvements (albeit nowhere near anything I'd hope to be) in my technical ability. My pal Cody works with us as well, and yeah, it's been good. I'll try to check in more regularly, but I still peruse the board.
Miss y'all.

FaceTime'd with the granddaughters and watched them blow out birthday candles from 250 miles away. How awesome is technology?

BUMP.
Re-reading this thread and then reading several recent threads made me realize that the level of discourse has fallen around here. I didn't start this site, but I've been here since the beginning, and everything that @SacramentoDan said in this thread's first post is what I loved/still love about it. If you wanna find strangers being rude to each other on the Internet, go to literally any other forum. LST is different, and as a moderator, I'll ask that you respect and help to maintain that difference. I've met several of you in real life and have really enjoyed getting to know you a little better. Some of you are now real world friends (imagine that). If one of us had made a shitty comment to the other online, we'd both be less inclined to want to meet in the first place.
If there's a poster you don't like, put them on ignore. Have a snide comment typed out that is guaranteed to lower the level of discourse/add nothing? Feel free to delete it. If someone's really out of line, trust that the other mods and I will gladly swing the banhammer.
Thanks.

BUMP.
Re-reading this thread and then reading several recent threads made me realize that the level of discourse has fallen around here. I didn't start this site, but I've been here since the beginning, and everything that @SacramentoDan said in this thread's first post is what I loved/still love about it. If you wanna find strangers being rude to each other on the Internet, go to literally any other forum. LST is different, and as a moderator, I'll ask that you respect and help to maintain that difference. I've met several of you in real life and have really enjoyed getting to know you a little better. Some of you are now real world friends (imagine that). If one of us had made a shitty comment to the other online, we'd both be less inclined to want to meet in the first place.
If there's a poster you don't like, put them on ignore. Have a snide comment typed out that is guaranteed to lower the level of discourse/add nothing? Feel free to delete it. If someone's really out of line, trust that the other mods and I will gladly swing the banhammer.
Thanks.

BUMP.
Re-reading this thread and then reading several recent threads made me realize that the level of discourse has fallen around here. I didn't start this site, but I've been here since the beginning, and everything that @SacramentoDan said in this thread's first post is what I loved/still love about it. If you wanna find strangers being rude to each other on the Internet, go to literally any other forum. LST is different, and as a moderator, I'll ask that you respect and help to maintain that difference. I've met several of you in real life and have really enjoyed getting to know you a little better. Some of you are now real world friends (imagine that). If one of us had made a shitty comment to the other online, we'd both be less inclined to want to meet in the first place.
If there's a poster you don't like, put them on ignore. Have a snide comment typed out that is guaranteed to lower the level of discourse/add nothing? Feel free to delete it. If someone's really out of line, trust that the other mods and I will gladly swing the banhammer.
Thanks.