Cork

So... not been on to post anything in a little while. I had to miss a session last month for medical reasons. I would absolutely have preferred being tattooed for 3 hours compared to going to the doctors. Anyway I made up for the missed session yesterday. We did the blue on the back of the left leg and then started to put some green in the leaves around the blossoms. I have another session in a couple of weeks time which will complete the scales. We talked about maybe slowly fading the blue towards the tail so that it ends up super pale, almost white, which I think could look amazing. We are then definitely going to be on the home stretch. After 45 hours it is really coming to life and I am incredibly happy with it.

Not a bad idea for a thread. I could see this getting out of hand, in a good way.
My jaw hits the floor with every single Jondix backpiece. And I've only seen pictures of them on the internet. I'm sure my eyes would explode if I saw one in person.

In business and in life.

This O'Donnell back piece is still mind blowing in my eyes

Not a bad idea for a thread. I could see this getting out of hand, in a good way.
My jaw hits the floor with every single Jondix backpiece. And I've only seen pictures of them on the internet. I'm sure my eyes would explode if I saw one in person.

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 have two Star Wars tattoos. A really crappy Boba Fett near my ankle and this cool jammer. The quality of the tattoo isn't amazing because it was an apprentice tattoo a friend did. I think it was her 5th tattoo ever, so it's not too bad for that. I'm still stoked to have it though!

I have never seen a thread for this anywhere on the forums, but sometimes I see a tattoo somewhere and it makes me go OH MY GOD THAT IS SO AMAZING and I want to share it with you guys, but since it isn't mine, I can't put it in the Lowdown thread. So, I thought I would make a thread for posting pictures of killer tattoos that don't belong to us, just to share them and 'oooooh, ahhhhh' over them.
...As I type this I'm realizing that probably 6 out of 10 rad tattoos I see on instagram turn out to belong to somebody here, so maybe this is redundant, but oh well! If it dies, it dies. :)
And I'm going to contribute something, because my regular tattooer just did a thing that made my eyeballs pop out of my head, and inspired me to make the thread in the first place, because I needed people to squee about it with.
Picture on greggletron's instagram
and, video: And here's a video.

I'll admit that when I got in to tattooing, I was directed to Richard Stell without knowing a damn thing about him. The guest spot news was broken on this website, and I was pushed by several members to take the plunge and get something.
Should I feel dirty about that by going to a big name and not knowing his legacy? Maybe. I put my trust in the knowledge here on LST, and I never had a doubt I was making a poor decision. I wanted to be part of a community, and experience the things that other people were experiencing, so I just went with it. Was asking him to do something uncharacteristic of his style wrong? Some people may think so. Asking an artist to do a different style could be considered sacrilege to some. In my naivete I asked for something he doesn't generally do, but damn if he wasn't excited to do it.
I have no regrets, and I also learned that you don't really understand someone until you meet them. You could follow artists on Instagram, and hear about them in other shops from other people's experiences, but until you sit with Stell and hear him, first hand, talk about his old biker days and how he had pet alligators and all the other crazy stuff, you can't fully understand.
I would hope that people who seek out big names, solely for the name, have a better respect for that person afterwards instead of just, "Yeah I got XX to do this."

meh ok here is a pic :)
from the amazing Steve Boltz
totally good time talking mostly golf
turns out Steve is an avid golfer and pretty good
I'm neither but I love stogies and beer with friends
and lets face it - thats more important than a decent backswing ;)
anyway - funky fish on my bicep...

So I went for my appointment with Tomas Tomas today.
Trying some different styles :)
Had me toes done lol, wasnt a lot we could do really with just toes but I think once it settles down and its the same colour as the snake, should fit in great.
He showed me a vid and said this pattern is from some tribe from the Amazon. Now all I need is some animal skin leather pants ;p
Hes a fucking awesome crack :)

Session 6 done, just the shark mouth, some more detail in the shark itself and dropping lower down my ass to go...hopefully be wrapped up in one more session.
Photos not as flash this time sorry folks...

Session two with Dave C. Got a lot done in about 2 1/2 hours. I was nervous going into this sitting as we had just done the outline last week. I was a little worried my psych wouldn't be there, but in the end it went pretty well. Glad not to have more ribs after this though.

Been ages since I posted on this forum, don't really know why since I have been lurking every now and then. Guess i've been more into real life outside world thingies and started university again.
Anyway a friend of mine put this on my leg. Just to get some panties in a twist: this was not done in a shop, but in a bedroom.

edit: It's about 2 months healed

Yes you can and should tattoo yourself directly after tattooing pig skin. Don't worry about cleaning the needles. Little known fun fact, pig skin is one of the best anti-microbials around!

Yes you can and should tattoo yourself directly after tattooing pig skin. Don't worry about cleaning the needles. Little known fun fact, pig skin is one of the best anti-microbials around!

reactivating this thread with my Thomas Hooper piece:

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This is the best I can do right now, both upper arms by Horimatsu from Osaka, done at Stockholm Classic Tattoo (except for the lines on the left arm, they were done at Tatuata in Helsinki). The left arm is not finished.
I actually tried to post two different photos but I'm too stupid to manage that task...

That's what happens when you speed read! Woops. It's funny though, someone did have a similar experience to you, but with Horimitsu.

If someone is interested in some powerful bold irezumi, lines made with machine and all shading with tebori, I can warmly recommend Horimatsu (@bunshin_horimatsu on instagram). He travels a lot, especially in Europe.
My first experience of getting tebori done was a juzu bead around my ankle, by said Horimatsu, and it pretty much felt the same as a machine tattoo feels. Then a few months after that he visited Stockholm again and did a half sleeve on me, with some cover ups in it, in five consecutive days . He did all lines and also background (because of the cover up situation...) with machine. That took three days. Then he shaded all colour in two 3-4 hour sessions. The arm felt pretty bad after three days. I think the tattooer stretches the skin with more pressure when doing tebori tattoos, so the last two days were kinda rough. I think what I'm trying to say is it doesn't hurt more than machine tattooing, unless you have huge areas of freshly made tattoos around the areas being worked on with tebori tools. The healing was a bit different on the tebori bits, it kind of flaked off faster than the areas made with machine.
Also, maybe ot, I know it may sound stupid for someone to get tattooed five days in a row, but I really wanted the arm finished. And it was a pretty cool experience:)

Awesome weekend at the London Convention. There were some awesome tattoos walking around and being created, not least on some LSTers. Congratulations to everyone that got some work. Everything I have seen so far looks great. I didn't get anything big or dramatic this weekend. Just this little guy by Len Leye at Clan of Tusk in Belgium. Really nice guy and fun time getting tattooed. It you don't know his work then check out his instagram.

Here's mine from Friday at the London convention, done by Tony Hundahl. So unbelievably happy with this one!

Nicked the picture from Tony's instagram as my camera is broken

Got this Shishi Lion from Alix Ge at the London convention yesterday (pic nicked from her instagram):

When I arrived, Alix was still drawing. She told me we couldn't put the tattoo on the side of my thigh like I had asked for because for that I would have to lie down and she only had a chair. Well, alright then. When I came back from a short tour around the convention she had obviously done another drawing which was much bigger than the first. She thought the animal had to be rather large to be nice, good with me. But she didn't think we could fit peonies as well, would I be happy with cherry blossoms instead...? Bummer...what? Noooo...! Oh well, so we agreed to put on the lion stencil and see then. Stencil went on, peonies were added freehand. No problem, all fitted on there nicely....but...that was gonna be a looong session. If I was a strong woman, she asked. Ermmmmm, well, I bl**dy hoped so...what else could I say? She looked at me particularly sceptical after she found out it was only my second tattoo....
Obviously, we made it, yippie!!!
Six hours on a folding chair with two breaks. Even though I got some odd looks and remarks for running around with a pillow under my arm, I was well glad I had brought it because it made the chair way more comfortable! Apart from that, getting tattooed at the convention was actually surprisingly good as there was so much to watch and get distracted by. I could openly stare at all the tattoos walking by and quite a few people gave me encouraging smiles and words. That was really cool.
Alix is super lovely and I kinda felt a little bad for her having to sit on her small suitcase for hours. Towards the end she told me that she wouldn't be able to do what I did and that she'd never get a tattoo that takes more than one hour herself. I doubt that's actually true, but it was a sweet thing to say anyway.
Suffice to say I'm super chuffed but also glad it's over!
And this morning my 3 1/2 year old greeted me excitedly with "Mummy, I have a tattoo, too!". Turns out the entire family has tattoos now, some of them of the temporary type, some rather not ;-)