CultExciter

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

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

I can't explain why this one had such an impact, but it really struck me. By Troy Trujillo

Equally stoked for you!! Very glad to see how well the move and shop came together. Congrats and keep up the damn good work! Looking forward to showing off Shad + mystery-to-me-cuz-i-haven't-decided-yet H'ween piece, that's for sure :)))

@beez I'm glad you've been crushing it! Hope you've been well. Stoked to see what Shad pulls together for you.

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.

Lynch mob on the way. Eddy Deutsche is in my top 5 favorite tattooers of all time.
I'm getting to the point where I don't care who has a bigger name or the most Instagram followers. People like Mike Adams and Amanda Wachob have thousands upon thousands of followers but I could care less about their work. (YES, I AM PUBLICLY SHIT TALKING.)
I'll take Mike Roper over just about anyone everyday.
Edit; I'll also take Joel Long, Mike Dorsey, Andrew Conner, Mike Rennie, Will Lollie, Virginia Elwood, Bart Bingham, John Henry Gloyne, Josh Arment, Dave Regan, Matt Brotka, Katie Davis, Ishmael Johnson, John Rippey, Eric Brooks, Jason Phillips, Carolyn LeBourgeois, Sean Perkinson, Chuck Kuhler, Aaron Coleman, Josh Brown, and a gazillion other people who are well known or completely unknown that kill it constantly.
Tattooing is a rich community. There are so many people that do good things that it is impossible to narrow things down like people were able to 20-30-40 years ago. There used to be like 2 conventions a year, and now there is one every weekend.
I suppose what I am saying echoes what @CABS had to say. The experience and the radness of the person will trump just about everything. I'm a young tattooer, and I fully realize I'm not very good at this right now, so I will do my best to make sure my friends get a cool experience and can always look at those blownout lines and holidays and smile saying "That was a good day."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Not to interrupt your "keeping it real" moment, but you are missing the principle reason, admitted or not, that most 'artists' sign up for this contest. It is not because they have hopes of winning it; win, lose or get laughed off, I bet you their business goes through the roof (at least in the short term) because every chump with no clue wants a sweet-tatty from "that guy from the TV". They can now forever scrawl those magic words "as seen on season xxxx of...." which all the rubes will eat up from now until forever.
That's the real shame of these shit-shows, IMO.

I'm just saying y'all, between this and Instagram, we've got some nice gams.
Sorry, moving day glare.

A few are not pictured.

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.

My grandmother and I were chatting yesterday. She's 90 years old and is one of the most important people in the world to me. Well, we were talking about life, work, and how my apprenticeship is going. She looks at me and asks "Would you tattoo me? Right here, a big butterfly, and you can use this mole as the head of the butterfly."
I'm still grinning over 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.