Unkempt27

About 36 hours into this. Just finished up the background and going to start working on Fudo next session. 

About 24 hours into this. Fully outlined to the bottom of my butt and the background is almost done. Moving into the flames soon! Enjoying the process.

And that's a wrap! 6 sessions over 6 months, around 16hrs total. Absolutely stoked!
 

Hey everyone, long time lurker here. Reading through this thread has always been really informative (and fear inducing) but now I'm midway through my own backpiece and figured I'd drop in a progress report. I'm getting it done by Jacob Redmond at Fourth Street Tattoo. We're roughly 20 hours in so far. The pain is no joke, but it was definitely front heavy with the linework. Shading overall has been bearable.

Next sessions should be a fun one, we'll be filling in that buttcrack and starting on the scales. 😬 The pressure is on to choose a color and I'm still waffling a lot. I love the classic look of black scales red belly, but something about this design says blue dragon to me. What do you all think? 

started the green!!

20 month after my first appointment, after 40h in 12 sessions, my back was finally finished a week ago. I'm so happy that I'm done for now but there are already some plans if and what possibly could be my next step towards an even more colorfull body....😋 Not sure if I'll first go for my right butt cheek and upper thights or if I'll start with my arms... But well, that's the future. Won't probably get anything new until end 2019 or even 2020. At least not until I was able to put some money aside to get it done in a foreseeable period of time.

 

My entire back itches like a lied down in a hammock over a cloud of mosquitos. It is the most itchy I have ever been during my healing of a tattoo.

Fifth (final) session on my back, the long story.
Photo
Link to my other post in this thread.
And here's picture from and what I wrote after the lining session
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Last session - booked for Sunday, March 29:th, at the Scottish Convention
On the friday I was supposed to take the night bus from London to Edinburgh where Iain Mullen and Rudy Fritsch were working the Scottish Convention and ready to finish my back on the Sunday. To make a long story short, I ended up not going on the bus due to having booked the wrong month (Second time this happens to me, damn you Victoria Coach Station!) and instead I found myself after a sleepless night (spent in a night open café in Soho) on the first train to Edinburgh in the morning. Finally I can sleep I thought. Wrong. Turns out scottish people likes to talk a lot and there is no silent compartment. After a few hours of trying, I get perhaps 20 minutes of sleep. When I wake up I have a text from Iain saying "Let's do the session today instead!" (Other clients could only get tattooed tomorrow)
This makes sleeping again very difficult due to being severely excited and also scared/psychologically unprepared of a brutal session that I thought I'd get tomorrow. Stupid as I am, I convince myself that it's going to be all right. I sleep maybe 20 more minutes before I arrive to Edinburgh, where the wind is blowing so hard people almost fall of the streets. I've all ready been practically awake for more than 24 hours. By text, me and Iain try to arrange someplace where I can at least get some sleeping hours before the session. His hotel room turns out not to be a good idea. But there is a emergency room at the venue where I could get some peace and quiet. Great.
I make my way over to the convention, after having bought pre- and post-tattoo food stuff. Choosing carefully to get a lot of nutrition and powerful stuff that will fend of the tattoo sickness I can all ready feel breathing down my neck. I've now been on a trip for 6 days, from Barcelona to Toulouse (where I got my lower belly/pubic area tattooed by Guy Le Tatooer, another wonderful horrible experience), a 32 hour bus ride from Toulouse to London, one much needed night in a proper bed, staying awake the night before in the café and now I am here. Last destination of the tattoo pilgrimage. Iain tells me to go to the big stage and look for a guy in a short mohawk named Tom/Tim and say "I'm the guy who's been travelling".
This code phrase opens up the gate to my quiet sanctuary. Actually, it turns out to be a very small, cold, brightly lit, room where a big scottish man (emergency crew) is hanging out waiting for the emergencies to happen. There is neither a shower, as I had thought, or a proper bed. There is just sort of a portable emergency bed, barely wide enough for one person. I explain who I am and he lets me lie on the bed. I am too tired to fall asleep. This whole situation seems absurd. I pull my jacket and a hoodie from my backpack over my body and turn my face towards the wall. I try to relax, to breath calmly and slow down everything. The anticipation of the last session, and the pain that goes along, is very distracting. Over the com-radio there are sparse messages, barely intelligible in scottish.
After a while two giggling girls come in. One of them has fainted ("This happened last year too!") and they are giving a routine check up and some good advice to eat and drink water. Meanwhile I'm this strange traveling, greasy haired, bum sleeping under jackets in the emergency room. After two hours or so I give up on trying to sleep and decide to go out, eat something and have a look around. Everything is like in a haze. I can not be bothered with all these people. I do not want to see the burlesque dancers doing whatever it is that they're doing. I sit outside and eat the big, ready chopped, stir fry with kale and edamame beans that I bought from the store. I eat some nuts, I drink some superberry juice. Must not get sick.
I hang out in the both with Iain and Rudy. Rudy is tattooing both of Joe Ellis' feet in some strange tribal architectural freehand style and we talk about him doing something similar on my left elbow since Iain did the right one. After a while I go to the handicap bathroom to have what few people would have called a shower. After cleaning myself up with the water from the sink and slipping into clean clothes I feel a bit more civilized again. It is time for finishing the back piece.
I would have much rather liked if the circumstances would have been different but after being awake for now nearly 34 hours I am lying face down at the Scottish convention, with my half covered ass pointing towards the small crowd that is starting to form, and one tattoo machine being tuned on either side of me. Memory of a lifetime moment, right there.
Considering probably being in the worst shape ever before getting tattooed, it was not as bad as I had braced myself for. It was certainly bad. Somewhere between terrible and outright nasty, if I had to specify. In the start they added on some liner details that I was not expecting. Then they added some very thick dots that felt like evil torture to my ribs. Then they went on with the shading and I could settle in to the groove of it somewhat. Knowing how bad the first two machine session was, when we did the lines in June, this was almost bearable. It never got worse than the lining session. When it's your back being worked on and two machines are moving from spot to spot, you have no way of anticipating where the pain is going to be and for how long. You just have to take it, so I did.
About 30 minutes before we were done I had to go to the bathroom. I was totally in my zone, something like what I imagine marathon runners go into to keep pushing, and was not ready to face a bunch of people watching me. Somebody said "hero" as I passed. I felt weird. The whole non-privacy of the event was strange. Both mind and body was in turmoil. As with the pain I can be amazed by states like this, the things you can experience when pushing hard. How it makes your head feel from the inside. I returned, back on the table, and we did the last bit. When I sat up in the end to have some more straight lines just below my neck I was trembling from exhaustion and emotionally shaken. It had been a profound journey.
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After the tattoo I hung around while the guys packed their stuff, we went with some other people by taxi to a pub but realized they had just stopped serving food at ten in the evening. We split up and I went with Iain and Rudy to have fish and chips at some hole in the wall. Veggie burger in dry bun for me. Finally the couchsurfer I was supposed to stay with showed up and we walked back to his apartment. We had a really good conversation on the way there. I chucked half of the burger in a trash bin. The apartment he shared with three other people felt very much like Trainspotting, except no visible drug related objects scattered around. I feel asleep in a windowless room and had no dreams, just blacked out for 12 hours.
Two days later I flew home to Stockholm, had take away-dinner with my girlfriend and took the night train towards the very north end of Sweden. I felt it really bad all ready and for the coming four days I was bedridden with a massive fever and accompanying headaches and cold. At least I could watch the whole second season of The Wire from start to finish.
///
I had planned to start my backpiece when I had turned 30. Now I am 28 and it's all ready finished. It's been a fantastic experience and left very warm memories. I am so happy that I asked them both to collaborate, that it worked out, and that I trusted them completely with the design. Since we started in June my personal life, a big portion of the things that happened, have been so good, enriching and developing that that whole time in my life feels very beautiful. Turns out that the biggest part of my body carries a piece of which I didn't even see the design until the hour when we started, yet now it holds so much significance and meaning. I really like the thought of tattoos like amulets imbued with qualities and forces. I'll always have power on my back. That's how I see it.

The alternative--not getting a backpiece--is just silly.

That is an amazing piece you have going and I sympathize with the agony of the heel. Those tender areas take a good 2 weeks to be 100% and back to normal. I do love when you are in the shop and everyone is talking about their back-piece experience. How they are so glad that it's behind them. They talk about how getting a back piece just sucked. I can't remember how many times I heard "man I'm glad that's over".......

Update on my back piece, 5 sessions over 5 months, one more to go we think, so should be complete this time next month.

Progress on this, 3 sessions (approx 9hrs) down, colour being added next time 
 

Progress on this, 3 sessions (approx 9hrs) down, colour being added next time 
 

Progress on this, 3 sessions (approx 9hrs) down, colour being added next time 
 

Progress on this, 3 sessions (approx 9hrs) down, colour being added next time 
 

Hey, new poster here. After years of planning (and saving!) I finally started my back piece this week, with Nick Mayes at North Sea Tattoo in Scarborough, UK. I asked for 'the Kraken thrashing around in the sea while a flying saucer tries to beam it up'. The design did not disappoint! 
As for the session itself, even at a relatively short 2 1/2 hours of actual tattooing, it was pretty tough. As others have said, your body doesn't get used to the pain like it does on a smaller piece. The needle is always on the move to somewhere fresh and so every line feels like the first. I'd say most of the back was an 8/10 pain, with one or two areas only a 7, but a couple were a good 9.5, namely the love handles, lower back and butt crack (that one is like some whole new type of pain!) We will be doing 2-3 hour sessions every month or so, which should keep progress moving well. As for now, I'll leave you with what we've done so far, and will keep you updated. It's an honour to join this legendary thread! 

Hey, new poster here. After years of planning (and saving!) I finally started my back piece this week, with Nick Mayes at North Sea Tattoo in Scarborough, UK. I asked for 'the Kraken thrashing around in the sea while a flying saucer tries to beam it up'. The design did not disappoint! 
As for the session itself, even at a relatively short 2 1/2 hours of actual tattooing, it was pretty tough. As others have said, your body doesn't get used to the pain like it does on a smaller piece. The needle is always on the move to somewhere fresh and so every line feels like the first. I'd say most of the back was an 8/10 pain, with one or two areas only a 7, but a couple were a good 9.5, namely the love handles, lower back and butt crack (that one is like some whole new type of pain!) We will be doing 2-3 hour sessions every month or so, which should keep progress moving well. As for now, I'll leave you with what we've done so far, and will keep you updated. It's an honour to join this legendary thread! 

Hey, new poster here. After years of planning (and saving!) I finally started my back piece this week, with Nick Mayes at North Sea Tattoo in Scarborough, UK. I asked for 'the Kraken thrashing around in the sea while a flying saucer tries to beam it up'. The design did not disappoint! 
As for the session itself, even at a relatively short 2 1/2 hours of actual tattooing, it was pretty tough. As others have said, your body doesn't get used to the pain like it does on a smaller piece. The needle is always on the move to somewhere fresh and so every line feels like the first. I'd say most of the back was an 8/10 pain, with one or two areas only a 7, but a couple were a good 9.5, namely the love handles, lower back and butt crack (that one is like some whole new type of pain!) We will be doing 2-3 hour sessions every month or so, which should keep progress moving well. As for now, I'll leave you with what we've done so far, and will keep you updated. It's an honour to join this legendary thread! 

Hey, new poster here. After years of planning (and saving!) I finally started my back piece this week, with Nick Mayes at North Sea Tattoo in Scarborough, UK. I asked for 'the Kraken thrashing around in the sea while a flying saucer tries to beam it up'. The design did not disappoint! 
As for the session itself, even at a relatively short 2 1/2 hours of actual tattooing, it was pretty tough. As others have said, your body doesn't get used to the pain like it does on a smaller piece. The needle is always on the move to somewhere fresh and so every line feels like the first. I'd say most of the back was an 8/10 pain, with one or two areas only a 7, but a couple were a good 9.5, namely the love handles, lower back and butt crack (that one is like some whole new type of pain!) We will be doing 2-3 hour sessions every month or so, which should keep progress moving well. As for now, I'll leave you with what we've done so far, and will keep you updated. It's an honour to join this legendary thread!