Valerie Vargas

Haha. Too good!!

sweet! didnt realise it was public indeed, just read on it that they will know more by end of the month. thanks guys!

probably, im on a mission today to get all my travels etc booked for the rest of the year but i guess i shall have to be patient :) alas, if only i was not a stuck up twat who refuses to join facebook, it'd probably make my life easier haha

i vaguely remember a way to get cheap room rates if you were going to the convention at the hyatt itself, is that happening again this year? if so, how do i get in on it?

i've had comments like this get back to me concerning the desk guys at my shop and they only make me wonder about the customer. i highly respect our staff at frith st and like them very much as friends, they are trustworthy and take care of me and my appts and if they were useless, they wouldnt be employed for sure. I could easily say this applies to most good tattoo shops. i'm not sure how well your encounter went, just saying be careful what you call people online, it can come across much more harshly :) good luck with your tattoo :)

30th... woah. haha, i already have them but would be great to have a collector's edition

so excited for this, cant wait to get my copy!

Haha. Sticking a pair of tits on a tattoo when they ask it to look more feminine. That thought proper tickled me.

i read that earlier today and yup, here's the shape of things to come.

your post mentioned a lot of tweaking @Stewart Robson everyone's different, if i'm busy with custom work i would probably turn that down to concentrate on the stuff i have to draw up, but it also depends on the painting itself and whether the tattooer likes it and thinks can work as a tattoo

depends on the tattoo. ive seen black and grey tattoos on hands heal in under a week with almost no swelling and then ive seen traditional color ones stay swollen for days. if i were you i would get the hand tattooed on the very last day and even better last thing on the last day. my partner, when he got his tattooed, kept them super clean and put some bounty paper (sturdy kitchen paper towels over in the UK) between the tattoos and the gloves to absorb sweat and plasma. this meant he had to wash them between tattoos and reapply clean tissue. this helped a lot and they healed in no time. I had to actually take time off to heal mine, they are bright red traditional roses on both hands and i suffered during the days after, everyone is different. ps. i'd also take anti inflammatories if possible to help with the swelling.

i remember during the full length of my apprenticeship i had to draw pretty much all designs for the shop i was at, so that got me up to speed on the basics of initials, tribal, traditional and japanese style stuff, none of it awesome by any stretch of the imagination but it helped me understand reference and how to use it

haha, that woman also has the butterfly i did on El Wood's arm. i remember seeing this a while ago, think a customer pointed me to it over twitter. i dont really know what to say on the matter other than i think the biggest shame is for the owner of the original tattoo, they put their trust and money on that piece to have someone else get a nastier cheaper version. ive had a couple of customers bring up this point after seeing a bad copy of their own tattoo online and the only thing to say on this matter is that at least you got the original and best. i havent crossed words with customers that pass through frith st who wear bad copies of my work, i stay away from it and leave them to get tattooed by the other guys. i assume that when i open up my book at some point the people who wish to get work by me will, and the ones that keep getting cheap copies wont. a while a go i finished a black and grey girl/tiger head backpiece and i remember stumbling across another artists website with a tshirt they designed and selling with a near enough tracing of the original design i did for my customers back with a tweak or two. ive since had the fortune to speak to said artist face to face and tell them how unhappy i was about it but they didnt apologise and instead chose to lie about it. but whatever, i told the owner of the backpiece and he was at first upset then kinda laughed about it thankfully. I def post less and less work online, not purely through these type of happenings but they certainly do not help. my newest funnest work is now printed in photograph form and added to my physical portfolio at work/conventions. it is sadly a very much double edged sword, i just try to toe the line and not disappear entirely.

the whole 'do what you want' fills me with dread, mostly cos every time it crops up bar once they never really mean it. it usually involves me having to think about ideas, since they arent giving me anything to go on and taking time to develop them into a design. the few times it's been requested of me, ive mentioned skulls or animals and i could see them shrug ever so slightly and then the words come out, 'i'm not really a fan of skulls...' or 'i was thinking more of a girl with a pocketwatch/magpie/victorian artefact...' my thing is, that if you just want something, ask for it, dont tell me to go crazy then say youre not into what i just said, specially when im not even pushing the boat out. it's not doing me a favour letting me do what i want, its giving me a headache, i much prefer some direction or a seed of an idea. the combination is much better than starting out cold. also, one week i might really wanna do a blood thirsty warrior and maybe i wanna do a 2 headed medieval dragon the next, my reference and influences change from week to week, i dont keep a list of things i wanna do, maybe some tattooers do but i dont. my conclusion on this is, only ask your tattooer for whatever they wanna tattoo if you are 100% sure you can live with yourself wearing whatever they come up with on your skin forever, and if you can't, then give them a couple of ideas or ask if theres something theyve been thinking theyd like to do recently and keep it open.

huh, thats interesting. you hear a lot about 'adults' tattooing underagers in their houses but i guess we're moving into newspapers mentioning kids themselves tattooing other kids.... can the young scratchers get punished? will they go unpunished? man, i'd be so pissed if that was my kid.

very nice!

Roryq. Hawksmoor is daaaaamn good. Say hello to the guys at the shop if you get a chance to pop by

I can't check it out cos I don't have a Facebook but since my name got used I'm assuming it's the same guy some people hve already messaged me about.

tried to watch the flghter but lost my way and got bored of the overacting. the help however looks like a great feel good movie, would like to see it

SACSIS.org.za » News » The World » Why Iceland Should Be in the News, But Is Not i read and this and i felt pride for iceland and it's people. such strentgh, it's really inspiring. makes me feel bad for not giving enough of a crap about what's going on around me....

we will @Jake, we barely got a look in at the japanese tea garden last time, doh! ps, i'll make sure my iphone is safely tucked into my zipped jacket pocket!

roses, girls, demons, skulls, big cats, eagles, daggers, reapers, warriors, witches, usually the most basic traditional subjects in general