abees

I was 20 when I walked into Temple Tattoo in Oakland. It was recommended to me by a friend who had some great tattoos by Chris Conn that were done at Temple. I remember first stopping by the marijuana dispensary across the street to pick up my daily smoke bag (I was a heavy smoker) and smoked some in front of the shop. I had no intention of getting tattooed anytime soon, and especially not that day. Suddenly, when the smoke hit me, I became very inspired and excited, almost antsy and anxious (in a good way). I walked into the shop and heard some heavy doom metal, I believe it was Electric Wizard, though it may have been Sleep. I smiled, and became a little more inspired. I then began looking at the flash on the walls and saw Jason McAfee's flash. I have never seen this sort of flash before, it was colorful and evil at the same time. At that moment Jason I guess saw me checking at this flash exclusively and approached me and asked if I wanted any help. Not knowing he was Jason, I asked to speak with Jason, ha. He introduced himself and asked me what I was thinking about getting. And without any previous thought about what I wanted, from the depths of my unconscious mind I said "A Viking Ship". He then said "Where do you want to put it?" And again with out any previous thought I pulled up my jean leg and showed him the whole left side of my left leg. He then asked "When do you want to do this?" I said whenever you can, thinking maybe next month or possibly next week. He then asked if I wanted to do it today. I was so thrill of thought of leaving with a Viking ship on my leg that day, I jumped on the opportunity. He told me to come back in about a half hour, so I went to smoke some more. When I got back he had the coolest Drakkar drawn up with crashing Japanese style water. I smiled and said lets do it! The whole experience was great. Jason is very personable and "too cool" towards me at all, even though I was a 20 year old kid who looked about 16. We talked about doom metal, and he told me some stories about his doomy trip to London and meeting some doom legends. He even showed me some pictures. Great experience, and I felt very appreciated and respected. Because I liked the guy so much I went back to get a few more from him. And the rest is history.

Fuck it, I'm digging out the troll food...
Are you insinuating that we are acting tough because we are hiding behind keyboards?
I use my real name and I make it clear where I work and what conventions and other shops I attend. My opinions here are my professional opinions. I say the same things face-to-face where I work all the time. I don't use any tough-guy posturing to do that either. This isn't a hobby for me. I'm not hiding behind anything - which is why I don't insult people directly and I try to treat people with respect, unless they show no respect.
Maybe that's the fucking problem here. It's clear that you want to help your wife learn to tattoo. Her mentor should be doing that. It's also blatantly clear that you have no respect for tattooing. You don't even think it deserves respect. You think that because you know tattooers and have spent money on tattoo products you are entitled to respect.
You didn't piss anyone off, that's not why people keep disagreeing with you. It's because -by your own admission- you didn't care enough to think before you post. You want everyone here to feed information to you, just because you ask, before you search google, before you even think about the matter in hand for a couple of minutes.
I'm responding to you because this issue and the responses to it will hopefully be useful to someone else later on. I have no desire to engage in discussion with you directly.
If you really think you have pumped so much money into tattooing? why not just buy the dvd anyway? Did you really expect a positive response from anyone here?
Why not be active and buy the dvd and post a review? Contribute to LST with something positive or creative. Instead of expecting free help and information. Everything has a price.
Thanks.

I got this Baphomet head from Tim Lehi last month. Why? Easily my favorite tattooist, and I think he understands what I am going for. He has tattooed me a few times and always gives me suitable tattoos for me, like he knows me, ha.

No green soap and the lighting is bad?

some totally moronic girl i used to know, and her friend, decided it was a great idea to tattoo their fingers whilst drunk - with a kitchen knife.

yeah, that's not exactly the only thing wrong with those pictures :eek:

yeah, that's not exactly the only thing wrong with those pictures :eek:

some totally moronic girl i used to know, and her friend, decided it was a great idea to tattoo their fingers whilst drunk - with a kitchen knife.

Finally got A Bob Wicks girl head from Eli three weeks ago. Will post a healed soon.

Like bigjoe said, Tattoo Life/Energy are good magazines. Tattoowier seems ok, although I can't vouch for the writing quality, as I can only read English.
The only magazine from the UK worth looking at is Total Tattoo. Sally, Perry and the gang are a rarity in tattoo magazines (along with Mikki Vialetto's Tattoo Life crew) because they can (mostly) tell what a good tattoo looks like. But most of all, they actually like tattoos and get tattoos by some great tattooers. If your favourite tattooers write articles and send photos to a magazine, it's probably worth taking a look.
My rules of thumb for a magazine being shit are:
Poor quality control, including spelling.
Photos of shitty tattoos.
Interviews with shitty tattooers.
Repeated articles about 'women in tattooing' or 'women with tattoos'.
Mis-spelling tattooers names, especially well-known people like Filip Leu, Ed Hardy, Freddy Corbin etc.
If more than 10-20% of the content is colour realistic tattoos.
If more than 50% of the content is any one style/school of tattooing.
If there is an abundance of fetish-style photography.
Interviews with freaky people with shitty facial tattoos.
An editorial lean toward controversy, smut or celebrity.
Re-prints or articles with content just cribbed from the internet.
There are many more things that I personally dislike, but I think that these things are too common in tattoo magazines.
I'm guessing that none of this will help you decide which magazines you want to work with, just my 2p.
But as your question was more toward which magazines to avoid outside of the uk, we (Frith Street) had a bad experience with Skin & Ink, but i think they have a different editor these days and they did have a cool article about Chicago Tattoo Co a couple of months ago.
Tattoo Savage used to fulfil almost all of my crappy criteria above but I haven't looked at it for years.
International Tattoo Art has gone through periods of being cool and being crappy but I don't know what it's like now.
You probably know this already, but very few tattoo magazines have full-time writers. They mostly use freelance contributors. I'm friends with a few magazine contributors and most of them are photographers/writers, rather than specialise in just one. This works out cheaper for magazines. The best ones conduct interviews face-to-face and visit shops and conventions. Some tattooers and shops are hesitant to allow strangers to interview them so it would help if you are likeable in person and seem to care about tattooing.
Expect it to be very different from blogging or writing for an online magazine as you will be creating content rather than commenting on existing content.
Good luck.
This was supposed to be a quick post, but it almost turned into a rant. Hopefully there is something useful here.

http://imageshack.us/f/402/20561810150157626803724.jpg/

life would be much simpler if i wanted black work, as Curly's about half an hour away from me, and one of the best. -
Curly Tattoomonger

I'm like a scout when I get tattooed- be prepared! I don't drink a week beforehand, make sure I've eaten well, moisturised my crappy dry skin.. all of that crap. One thing I think you might find useful is paying attention to what you're eating- David Bruehl wrote something recently about this which you might like- if you click here, you'll get to that (hope you don't mind me linking to my site, haha).

This is my latest. Done by Chad Koeplinger last Thursday at Frith Street, London.

I agree with Stewart. I check out this kid's blog, and I enjoy it, but this tattoo really bugs me. I will say that since the kid that has this has a face full of tattoos, the tiresome explanation of tattoos is already a big part of his life.

Thanks. Although I'm a little embarrassed that my mane came up with the whole forcefields thing, I'm on Mario's side of the fence with this one. I stole that from the old photos of Bob Shaw by Bert Grimm. It's pretty much the only way to cap an arm with web and not fuck up the silhouette.
Those legs by Cripwell are an amazing example of how great well-placed traditional tattoos can look. Great design choices, placement and rhythm of negative space. A lesson to us all (especially me!)
I like some of Simon Erl's work, but the photo above has to be the ultimate hipster tattoo. Avoiding criticism through irony while embracing the thing you are being ironic about. It's the finger-moustache of the tattoo bloggers.
He could have got a "pigs is pigs" tattoo in that space instead. that would have been funny for the rest of his life, without a tiresome explanation of an internet trend.

1-3 - Chad Koeplinger.
4 - Bert Krak.
5 - Steve Byrne.

1-3 - Chad Koeplinger.
4 - Bert Krak.
5 - Steve Byrne.

walking to the shower, the tattoo was on the inside of my upper arm, so i had my arm pressed against my side trying to hide it, but just a little bit was still visible, my mum with a look of extreme horror on her face said "WHAT'S THAT?!", i said "a tattoo", we just kind of looked at each other in silence for about 10 seconds, i walked into the room with the shower in and she *slammed* the door behind me. she soon calmed down thankfully.
tattoo's are still now refered to as "things", such as, when they're still healing.. it will be "how's your... thing..?"..

TATTOO CLUB - British Pathe
TATTOO SOLDIERS - British Pathe
WOMAN TATTOOIST - British Pathe