daveborjes

All right. For those who've seen it all ready, for those who've been waiting, for those who don't know what the fuck I talking about, for those who don't care: here is my back now.

Finished this Saturday at the annual Scottish tattoo convention in Edinburgh. Iain Mullen and Rudy Fritsch converged for the first time since we did the lines in June, to do some two machine shading on the lower part and add some extra detail. One more touch up session with Iain in Stockholm and then this experience is over. It's been a great ride on so many levels and if I were to explain how happy I am about the result I would have to invent some new words. Both Iain and Rudy rules and everybody who has the chance to get the chance should really consider getting something from them.
I will post a longer write up on this thread full-back-piece-experience-thread.html shortly, perhaps tomorrow. Right now I have a bad fever to pull through. One good thing about getting tattooed is that, if you do it right, it teaches you how tough you really are. Peace!

got this panther a couple weeks ago from curtis pettigrove and the pilot lady about a month ago from harriet heath

Hi all, I figure I'd plug this here. I've been helping my pal Dave Regan put together a reference book for the last, hell, almost a year. It's 300 plus pages of all sorts of different elements: Traditional, Big Cats, Japanese, Lettering, Floral, Etc. They are $80 and come delivered on a USB stick. You can learn more on his instagram account @dutchraven or email him at [email protected].
Word!

here's a devil I got last summer from the bowery book

done by jason ochoa at greenpoint tattoo

Have we given up on the Latest Tattoo Lowdown thread? Because I like a thread where everybody posts their new tattoos instead of these individual threads that will be forgotten about within days.

It looks good to me - who's doing the criticizing and how trustworthy are they?:confused:

in all seriousness - maybe the idea would be to leave this tattoo alone for awhile - put some ink somewhere else

My first lady head, Plan on getting more. So sad Kim Ann has no space to tattoo me this week while shes in NYC. -cries

Dude, you want a Fujin/Raijin tattoo, which totally rules.

don't make it complicated by adding too much.
do you want a shark or a snake? having a bunch of snakes and a shark together is going to scale down the proportion of the shark on the upper arm which will look small and unbalanced against the proportion of the octopus.
$0.02
go for a shark on the top and fill the rest w/ black and grey water and wave background. the background is what is going to tie it all together. less is more.

The lady and I went down to Dedication Tattoo for their 2 year anniversary party yesterday, they had a huge sheet of designs to choose from drawn up by them and their guests for the day and we had a lot of fun just getting spontaneous tattoos and hanging out at the shop.
Bryce Operandi put a rose on my elbow, and she got a butterfly girl head from CJ Fishburn. CJ talked her into doing black and gray and I think it looks rad. Elbow wasn't as miserable as I expected either so that's a bonus.

Like @exume said above, neither of those pictures you posted initially look like an ocean to me. I can see how they're supposed to represent an ocean, but they could equally be a desert, some kind of topographical map, a visual representation of radio pulses, probably many other things. That kind of abstraction and ambiguity is maybe fine for some things, I don't personally believe that it belongs in tattoos, but if you want something that is clearly and unmistakably an ocean, those ideas won't work.
The thing about tattoos is that they tend to look a certain way for a reason. I'm not saying that you need to go out and get Western traditional or Japanese tattoos if those kinds of tattoos don't fundamentally move you and get you excited, but there are very fundamental design principles in those kinds of tattoos (and in other kinds as well, but we don't tend to talk that much about, say, tribal or black and grey here) that should be respected if you want a tattoo that is going to last. A couple that are relevant here is that 1) lines will thicken over time so if you have a lot of dense linework like in the reference images above chances are that they're going to bleed together over the course of your life; 2) the nature of skin is that it is going to age, your muscles will slacken, your skin will sag, etc., etc., and this is all going to impact how your tattoo will look. A well-designed tattoo is going to be drawn and placed in a way that will, to an extent, take this into account. I am not convinced that a design based only on very precise linework is going to age well.
Stubbornness is your enemy when it comes to tattoos.
We all get the tattoos we deserve.

Do you have any tattoos? Which artists are you currently looking at?

I can kinda see what you're going for with those pictures but honestly if you didn't say ocean I would have thought desert, and this is on a screen, not a round, moving piece of skin. If I wanted a big rib piece that reminded me of the ocean I would get a big sea creature surrounded by fingerwaves. You said you aren't really into traditional american tattoos so maybe look at some japanese artwork and go from there.

In Qld, Australia now, it's common to be refused from venues for having hand, neck and face tattoos. Especially on the Gold Coast.
The way I see it is that these venues are mainstream. Fuck mainstream. Never wanted to mix with them fuckers anyway. Give me a dingy blues club any day of the week.

this is a great quote:
"I have two cats. I'm the furthest thing from a gang member."

Met with Carlos Torres in Paris after the convention to finish this little side piece.
Fuck me this did really really hurt!

Bowling pin eagle.

panther

Name your kid dragon or tiger or panther or rose . Those words would look beautiful as a script tattoo.

Lady head on my upper arm by Garret Egles in Calgary.

Can I suggest finding a tattooer who does really nice script and just getting their names done simply and beautifully? I don't really understand all the posts above suggesting the necessity of finding a representative image here: it's your child's name, it has way more potent symbolism on its own than any design you could think of.

Thanks everyone! My current work is all from Mike Pain (gave me my first, second and third, great guy), Shanghai Kate Hellenbrand, and Chelsea Kotzur.
My future collection desires and wants so far are a ribcage wolf's head with arrows from Tony Hundahl, a full back work from Kelly Edwards. I also love love love Katja Ramirez and Steve Byrne's work.
I REALLY would like to someday travel to Modern Classic and get a girl head from Valerie Vargas.
But alas, despite what Fox news tells ya, they don't pay us much, so each work is a long time coming

Finally got around to taking decent pics. Sorry if this is posted in the wrong section.

Hi all!
I'm a research scientist who studies paleoclimate, climate change, oceanography, and archeology/anthropology through stable isotope geochemistry.
Stuff about me. My grandfathers pretty much raised me. Both were WWII veterans.
My grandfather on my dad's side was a BAR-man in the USMC with the Pacific from 1942-1944. He was the embodiment of the Greatest Generation, I loved the man to death. He essentially raised me: he taught me how to shoot a rifle, how to fish, and gave me my moral compass and innumerable life skills. I miss him every day. He fought on Rennell, Bougainville, then was assigned to the First Provisional Marine Brigade, where he fought in the Second Battle of Guam, losing sight in in his right eye to a Japanese Grenade, sending him home. The Brigade would go on to Iwo Jima. The grenade probably saved his life. Yes, he was tattooed.
My other grandfather was a total badass, as well. Field Artillery in the battle of Kasserine Pass. He was captured by Rommel's troops, and was a POW at Stalag III-B in Furstenburg. From which he escaped. Twice. Ratted out both times by refugees. They used to trade red cross cigarettes to the guards by making them give a salute and yell "Heil Roosevelt!"
My dad was a 3rd generation Marine, of the Full Metal Jacket era. He was also a real POS of a human, and being in the Corps did that part of him no favors. He told me, to quote, that if I tried to carry on the family tradition, he'd kill me himself first.
So, having grown up in Florida, I pursued what interested me. I'm not the kind of person who could ever have a job just to pay the bills. I get totally enrapt in whatever has my attention and interest. So science was a natural fit. I went to school for way too long. I paid my way through undergrad (chemistry/marine science) working in a boatyard, at a public aquarium and TAing/tutoring. I did research and taught more to survive through getting an MS in Oceanography and a PhD in Geoscience. Now I wake up and get to do what I love every day.
So my main fascinations are the history of tattooing insofar as to be tattooed is to be human. Then, secondarily, American Traditional. As a scientist and person who tries to be an autodidact (and has sailed in the South Pacific, and was raised by Veterans), it's impossible for me not to be fascinated by and deeply respect Sailor Jerry. And as a general person who loves tattoo history, Paul Rogers, Cap Coleman, Amund Dietzel, Thom DeVita, etc. etc. etc.
I am not a tattooer or artist. I don't have a visually creative bone in my body. To me, good tattooing is an ultimate and purely human art form. As human as paintings of mammoths and ungulates on cave walls. It's a truly special, endemic form of tool use that pushes the human brain out to the max.
As a final note, the university I work at has a very conservative student body and is in a very conservative town. It's also too hot for long sleeves all year, so all of my past and future work is necessarily coverable by short sleeves, and preferably shorts as well.
Thanks!