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broke in my new dragon fist and finished backpiece for the Year of the Monkey lunar new year celebration with my Shaolin crew at good ol West Edmonton Mall. Also performed my broadsword form in public for the first time which I was jacked on. Some old chinese lady was loving all my tattoos, gave me her number and said to call her if i want her to sing for me LOL aw shucks shout out to all my 1980s Iron Monkeys SOOOOOOOO W

i posted a few times already about the stressful heal of my new dragon fist. well it healed very smoothly! until. i go to a dance workshop with my lovely wife. she really loves dance so we had date to go to her regular class together. it was super fun. and then on the break she's like "OMG youre bleeding!" i'm like wtf? "you've got blood all over your shirt" well, i guess the class was getting a lil buck and this chick and I had collided hands. it would appear her big ass diamond ring scratched my dragon's nose. meh, just a scratch it will be fine but now a new scabby on my fresh tatt. kinda funny actually, just got my ass whooped at my first experience in a dance studio. just want this damn thing healed already !!

thank you @kimkong :) I had this weird gap between my chest and stomach and then I was reminded of the image during a vinyl crate dig when the tattoo-lightbulb went off. The reference is from Bunny Wailer's Solomonic record label and I'm a pretty big reggae-head so I was pretty drawn to the imagery. A bit of a spin on the classic traditional tattoo eyes or the buddha eyes. I'm pretty happy with the outcome - different, gritty, hypnotizing and goes with the different dragons on my hands and ribs. I may go get them re-lined to pop them a bit.

just go to the bahamas and have a vacation! then you don't have to worry about sketchy tourist trap tattoo studios, being a vampire hiding from the sun or uncomfortable on the plane ride home. go enjoy the holiday, worry-free. there is more to life than tattoo. and there are likely way more cool spots to get tattooed back home ;)

be prepared for casual nudity at the convention. it's a tattoo convention...so there will be all sorts of disrobing and dropping trough going down - from people receiving tattoos or just showing them off. talk to the kids and be prepared to explain the context, "like mom and dad why is the checker man in a thong?" (ps don't let the kids see matt gones armpit tattoo)

bad mojo to get someone else to colour in a tattoo that was initiated by someone already. i think it is lazy when I hear people get a tattoo lined in then just jump on the next table of whomever to finish it. of course there are odd circumstances like buddy moved far away, went to jail or died, yeah sure. make the effort to get intouch with the original person that lined it in.

"running out of space but mi ave plenty more to go" i think at this point my love for tattoo gives me so much joy and excitement that i can't ever see myself being done. There will always be a crack in the body canvas to fill! I can see myself getting tattoos piled on tattoos piled on tattoos until I die !

A bit amusing...I'm reading my lengthy post above from 18 months ago...now I've got tattoos creeping the cuff and onto the hands. Things change, tattooing is fluid! here's my newish dragon fist: and here's a an artsy selfie of my dragon fist - dragon fly and dragon eyes ! for your viewing pleasure see guys! i got lots of space left...maybe squinch in some tudor roses on the hands in the future

hey there @thesinki93 i'd agree with the above comments, leave it as-is (for now). Focus on getting your chest coloured in and starting your sleeve. Your tattooer could likely tile the background from the top part of the arm sleeve in behind the chest piece to connect. I have a big bird across my chest. Roses filling out the pecs tiled underneath, and the sky/clouds from the tops of my sleeves extended into the sides of the chest to connect everything.

30 days of healing. This thing was full thick scabs, cracking and bleeding for 2 weeks. I can't wrap my head around how nothing fell out. The tattoo gods have watched over me and blessed me with the masterful tattooing of Steve Batt. (lo fi filter on instagram)

I've thought about this too @pidjones but moreso at the 10 year mark. Then I hit the 10 year mark and my tattoos look better now that they have aged (and been lived in) than fresh! I asked my tattooer about recolouring parts of my sleeve eventually. He said, well yeah but then parts will look fresh and the rest old, so where do you draw the line and just rework the whole thing? The body can only hold so much ink before it over saturates and turns to mush. Part of what makes a good tattoo is design, placement and execution to age gracefully. There are some cats that are starting to laser off 10 year old sleeves just to get new sleeves made. That being said in the coming years I will probably be going for 2nd layer pile ons with parts of my bodysuit. I have no regrets. People always comment I have no space left but I keep finding little nooks and crannies to insert fun little momentos ;) Enjoy your pieces for now, new ideas and placement will keep coming to ya!

Hello and welcome! Wow that's a pretty personal first post, sorry to hear about your hardships. For your consideration, sometimes a random tattoo will develop meaning for you over time. One of my most meaningful tattoos is one that i picked out of a book on a whim. Pictures are worth a thousand words, I would suggest not limiting yourself to a motivational speech on your arm. Wait a bit before you jump into tattooing, heal yourself first. The wait can add to the reward and meaning of the tattoo and give you time to find something symbolic where the meaning will stick if that's what you're after. good luck :)

I was thinking back to first hitting the double digit age, we used to tape the Pepsi Power Hour off Muchmusic when we were getting into the heavy metal and skate punk. I remember seeing an Agnostic Front video and then seeing Roger Miret in Metal Maniacs magazine...his crucifixion front was one of the first tattoos I saw and could not let it go. It blew my teenage mind.

hi james, welcome, here's to another 50 hours for ya :)

welcome Jack, cheers from Canada :)

@Bnettleton awesome pic ! my good friend got tattooed by Jimmy Ho a couple months ago. it's a pretty legit sailor tattoo of a dragon and boat. he wasn't sure what was more painful, the tattoo or the healing. but i was pretty excited to hear him recount his experience.

update...hand/wrist tattoo has been the most stressful heal to date. only one big scabby left over the wrist bone and the friggin lines are still there, showing underneath the scab. I cannot believe it! didn't lose any of the fine detail or colour underneath multiple layers of scabs. defies logic. still gonna need several weeks to let the white ink settle in.

hi erica...just leave it alone. the tattoo is a day old. and it looks like a fresh tattoo the day-after. there is nothing you can do for weeks, so don't worry about it and let your body do its thing healing itself. it will be fine. and don't put too much ointment on it. you shouldn't need more than a pea drop twice a day for a tattoo that size. good luck.

Contractor "What is all that shit? Spilling out of the collar eh. What did you get drunk a few times since we finished that last project?" it was all jokes...but I get this often - equating tattoos to a foolish drunken mistake...yeah sure duh

oh Canada ! welcome eh

@jikkyo that is deadly ! I love monkey king tattoos. Are you going full colour or just blacks and greys? Your lucky year (and mine too), Year of the Monkey is just around the corner. cheers !

edit / moved to backpiece thread

The hand or machine makes the line...the needle and grouping determines how thick or thin the lines are. A machine with a single needle can make a line just as thin, if not thinner and cleaner.

@Ponto Tattoo eh welcome to LST, from Western Canada Interested to see what kind of discussion this generates! I suppose why I am not drawn to this new age stick/poke style is that the tattoos are too soft for my taste. The lines appear thin, the designs empty and the shading isn't as full when compared to machine tattoo. But I guess that is also what appeals to some people. I had the opinion that these types of tattoos were a bit superficial, but my good friend (who I mentioned in the other thread with SlowerBlack tattoos) changed my opinion and his arms are looking quite full after many years. It's a good clean and simple look for him. I guess we will see in time how they age and hold up. I am the opposite and drawn to full, heavy, wild, and colourful tattoo. I like the loud noise. A quiet rotary that's turned down makes me uncomfortable. Tattoos are loud, heavy and scary, but that's just me. Lots of people are just tattoo tourists which perhaps get some of us heavy tattoo trekkers bent out of shape. I'm into tattoo for tattoos, not art. I disagree that stick/pokes heal more effectively. It's just the nature of the design and application. A machine doing simple clean lines with light shading will also heal very easily. That being said I just got my hand tattooed by the one of the heaviest tattooist in town and it continued to ooze and bleed for 2 weeks, heavy thick scabs always dry, cracking, almost like a deep wound. The scab is only slowly coming off only now (3 weeks later) and I've lost zero ink, the intricate design is still there which I am a bit perplexed by. But that's because my tattooist has fine tuned his application - technique and his machines - that tattoo ink is packed with precision below the skin and ain't going anywhere. We don't always have to agree to generate good discussion. I'd encourage you to get a machine tattoo, if only for the experience. It may give you some insight how to progress your hand technique if that's your focus. Anyway, good luck as you become a tattooed person. Cheers

I've also seen Jenna's work up close over the years, she's done several tattoos on one of my best friends and was a friend of my old bandmates (she's originally from our city). I will concur her work definately has that handmade look, but her stuff stands out as very professional in comparison to the hipster DIY tattoo-party crap you tend to see all over. I believe she's put in a lot of effort and heart travelling the world and learning the style/tech that she executes. I'd like to get a small tattoo from her one day if the opportunity comes, more for the collector element - both receiving a stick/poke and getting tattooed by a woman (which I haven't yet). She seems to get back to Edmonton every couple of years... This bud of mine with the stick/poke collection said he likes the silence of it, it's therapeutic for him. I am completely opposite, heavy hands and fucking loud machines are what get me off.