Just Alex

I think we do still need apprentices definitely. There may be a lot of tattooists out there right now, but I am noticing that a hell of a lot of my favourite artists are very young or at least new to tattooing. The guy working on me at the moment has only been tattooing for five years or so but I absolutely love his work. There are quality artists coming through all the time and without someone to offer them a "proper" way into the industry it would be our loss I think. As for artists being too busy or lazy to do the general day to day work around the shop - if they are good enough, then the word "lazy" seems a little unfair to me. I imagine that tattooing is pretty exhausting, spending hours at a time bent over someone's arm/leg/back or whatever else and laying down high quality art into a canvas which moves has got to be tiring. If they can have an apprentice and are sufficiently skilled to make a good mentor then good for them! As for being qualified to mentor apprentices...I have a piece that I am unhappy with that was done at a shop with 1 full time artist who had TWO apprentices - when he should probably have still been learning himself, so I definitely see an issue there. I think you need to be able to objectively assess both your own ability and your willingness and/or ability to teach others what you know. Given the humility of most tattooers I have had the pleasure of meeting or speaking with, I imagine that a lot of them are unwilling to believe they are good enough to do this!

I don't tend to go anywhere where there are blacklights, so would be a complete waste of time and money for me too. Even if that were not the case I can't say I would want a tattoo that only showed up when I was exposed to certain light. It seems that with the highly developed art that tattooers are producing now, to have simple work that is only visible at a rave is a waste of skin!

Looks like a way of getting something that "appears" to be a large tattoo without actually having all that much contact with a needle!

yeah it's abysmal but at least there isn't a great deal to cover. I do find it odd that they talk about £300 as if it is a staggering amount of money for a tattoo. As we all know, it is small change when it comes to getting good work. In fairness to her she is only 16. I got my first when I was 18 and whilst its much better than hers it is still pretty awful. My cover up will cost much more than £300 though! I just wish I hadn't read the comments... the "all tattoos are hideous" brigade make me so mad!

That tattoo seems like an even better idea now hey!

Ah that's awesome man, looking forward to seeing it in 2013! That is indeed an awesome tibetan skull! Filip Leu's work is obviously amazing... he is one of the few artists that I read about when I first started getting seriously interested in tattooing who is still talked about regularly today I think. I imagine that getting work from him is a serious challenge! I usually prefer colour tattoos but find his black and grey stuff insanely good. Thanks for this... that is the sort of size and placement I'm thinking I would like. Bet it stung! Not sure how long a sitting I could hack on my ribs, I was awful when I got my back done, I think the tattooer hated me a bit...arms and thighs seem alright to me...but I'm hella scared of the ribs! Here are a couple of drawings I like, first by a guy called Rodrigo Morbeck, second by Beppe Shiro - I know nothing about these artists, just found the images on an instagram search.

Awesome :) who is doing it for you? Where's it going and is it a stand alone piece or part of a body of work like a sleeve etc?

So...anyone on here got any? I fancy one somewhere, possibly a big one on my ribs when I: a) Man up enough to get my ribs done and b) Have finished my current ongoing piece and my next planned one! I've found some on google images and instagram that I like a lot, but I have found a lot more that look a bit ropey! Anybody got any good photos of this great image? and what kind of artist would you go for for this kind of style? Someone specialising in japanese style and similar presumably? I will post some of the ones I've found and like when I get a minute to play with google and photobucket! :D

I love this piece by Matt Hart at Inspirations Tattoo Studio, Leeds, UK I love the soft colours and full coverage of it, think it looks ace. When I get my chest done I would like a bit more symmetry personally, but still think this is the bomb!

I'm currently on four tattoos... with plans on getting one removed to be replaced with a piece of higher quality (young and ignorant tattoo decision making - "travel for a tattoo?! nah"). So far though I love the experience too much to even contemplate having it end. Everything from scouting out an artist to entering the shop, hearing the buzz and smelling the soap! My significant other doesn't like full coverage, she wants to see skin between the tattoos, so no sleeves and certainly no body suit in my future, but I do want to be significantly covered. I prefer big pieces to small ones though so am aiming to be very selective in who I choose to get work by... should keep me busy for several years yet! I'll be sad when I am "complete" I think. My biggest regret in getting tattoos is that the places I have them can't be tattooed by someone else!

Love the parrot Dan! When were the scans done? Do you still have it or was it covered/reworked when you got sleeved?

I have a variety of different stuff, including black and grey fineline (9yrs), crazy brightly coloured "new school" traditional (7yrs), black and grey traditional (4yrs) and colour hyper-realism (5 months). So far I have been really happy with how everything has aged, I know none of it is particularly old but I haven't experienced all that much fading or bleeding of lines. I know there are questions about the longevity of realism stuff but it's a risk I was willing to take. I got an awesome tattoo by a fantastic artist and I couldn't be happier with it. It is the tattoo that draws the most positive comments and has the biggest "wow factor" - not that that matters particularly to me personally, it just illustrates the talent of the guy who did it. I live in the grey and drizzly land of Northern England so sun damage isn't a major concern, if ever I have cause to expose my tattoos they are covered in enough high spf sunblock to make them appear hazy. If I feel my realistic piece sucks after a few years then I know it was a bad move in a time when realism was trendy...if not, well bonus for me! All this being said, the artist who did my tattoo recently put a recent photo of one of his early portraits on Instagram and it still looks as good as new at over 4 years old. I like traditional work (obviously, or I wouldn't be on this site), and I want to get a fair bit of it in future... but it seems to me like tattooers of all styles are constantly improving and making tattoos which look better for longer, there should be no reason why realism can't be a part of this too...

These are my grandfather's tattoos, done in Cape Town, circa 1956!

So glad Crispy got a nod on this thread, I love his lady faces. I want to get a pair of them, one on each forearm, but at the moment I'm not entirely sure I am ready to make the commitment to public skin so will probably have to visit him in Australia for them as I believe he is going back soon. This is one of my faves of his:

I can imagine that, when I worked at KFC I had to wear a blue plaster over a (now retired) eyebrow piercing. The bosses in their infinite wisdom felt this would be more subtle than just leaving it, and that it would help "keep it in". All it actually achieved was me getting shitloads of questions about what I had done to my face and eventually pulling the jewellery out/exacerbating the inevitable rejection.

I wouldn't mind wearing one of those if it was deemed necessary to cover up by my employer, I bet they get hot and itchy over the course of a whole days work though!

Being British I haven't had much exposure to pro-basketball so I had to look up these sleeve things to see what they were. While I think it a little sad that folks have to cover their art (unless it is outwardly and obviously offensive or inappropriate - i.e. 'hate' or pornographic tatts - I kinda love that the untattooed are buying those pantyhose style tattoo sleeves, people with actual tattoo sleeves are buying blank ones! classic weirdness of how the world works!

What's the story with this? seems pretty well known and like it causes a bit of a stir! Is it just because he has gone straight to the most uncoverable parts of his body or is there another reason?? EDIT: I just urban dictionaried it, is this a common thing?! Crazy, and heres me in real conflict about going below the elbow!

I'm happy that this is something that causes an internal conflict amongst other tattoo enthusiasts! In my current field of work my employers and colleagues couldn't care less whether or not I had sleeves right down to the backs of my hands, but I don't know how long I will be in this environment and I don't know how limiting tattoos like that could be to my progression in my career. Would they mean I could never teach at a university? Because that is something I would like to do one day. Do they mean I could be passed over for promotion? I doubt they would in this career path but what if I'm wrong? or get a boss who just doesn't like tattoos? I don't see myself ever working in a corporate environment again and I hope to hell that I never have to work in a McDonalds style environment again (having done my time in KFC and Subway I can say from experience that those jobs really do suck, both because of the bosses and the public) I really want to get my forearms done (not sleeved, but large, elbow to wrist tattoos on each arm). In fact I never really want to work with "customers" again, so bad has my experience of the general public been in my 10 years of working life to date. Having said all that, I'm not sure I am ready to take the step of ruling myself out of employment in these places should shit hit the fan and I really need a job. I'm a bit obsessed with tattoos at the moment and it makes me worry about making a bad decision because it feels so much like the right one right now. I look at portfolios from awesome artists and see a staggering amount of people younger than me getting their hands, necks and even faces tattooed and part of me admires their commitment and bravery whilst the other part wonders if they have truly thought this through. A lot of it seems to be a 'scene' thing either with guys like some of those in the hipster thread or perhaps more dangerously with the dotwork tattoos that incorporate quite extensive use of swastikas (I know that the true meaning of the symbol is very different from the one the Nazi's gave it, but only through my enthusiasm for tattoos - I doubt most of the general public or employers would). I just wonder how it would affect the longterm prospects of people, whether they have thought about it and whether they even care. Obviously that's all very different from the simple step to getting sleeved...sorry, I just got on a bit of a rant. To the OP, I clearly have no answer for you as I keep asking myself exactly the same question. In the meantime, I am still a relatively blank canvas though, lots of space to work with as and when funds and inspiration allow!

I've been admiring this one on the Black Garden FB feed, very nice work indeed!!

I don't have any ink that you can see when I'm in a t-shirt really, just the bottom of a wishy-washy black and grey half sleeve. However, I do have stretched lobes and keep my head closely shaven, and feel I get some stares for this at times. My partner and I were eating in a restaurant in Italy and a middle aged woman was openly staring at me for the majority of the time we were there, not even bothering to hide her expression of disdain/disgust/disapproval. It was probably the most uncomfortable I have felt in a social situation. She didn't speak English and I don't speak Italian so I knew of no way to tell her how rude she was being without coming across as a typical "Brit Abroad"... a big part of me wanted to give her a slap and a short, sharp "NO!", just to get my point across but somehow I'm not sure that would have been helpful!! Apart from that I get curiosity and interest from time to time but generally I don't think my 'look' is that interesting or different these days, I blend in with the public majority pretty much. I do think that the more heavily tattooed you become, the more you are inviting stares, but that's cool and to be expected, you are after all making yourself into a walking art gallery, and art is there to be appreciated. I think in the case of the "your body is a temple" brigade I would be more affronted that they thought I gave a fuck what their god thought of what I did to myself. I consider myself a man of science, but I don't go to every crucifix wearing person I see and tell them there is no evidence for religious deities and it causes more problems than it solves (in my opinion). Likewise I feel that we deserve the right to similar courtesy and have an entitlement to NOT have ill informed religious doctrine shoved down our throats.

My latest piece, started on 9th May by Mr Matt 'Oddboy' Barrat-Jones of Real Art in Leicester, UK. This is the start of a tokay gecko/rainforest half sleeve, a tribute to my adoration of all things scaley and and graduation present to myself. Can't wait for it to be finished at some point in 2013, in the meantime I have hopes to get tattooed by Crispy Lennox before he returns to Australia :)

When I first started getting tattooed somebody suggested that it was odd that someone so skinny should get tattooed (I'm 5'10" and 140lb soaking wet). Go figure... I say your body size and shape shouldn't matter whatsoever in your decision as to whether or not to adorn your body with art. At the end of the day there are fat trashy people with trashy tattoos, just as there are skinny trashy people with trashy tattoos. The subject matter, artist, choice of placement and how you present yourself are ultimately what matter, not how much you weigh.

Had the first session on a half sleeve started at the beginning of May...the artist in question won't book more than 6 months in advance and fills that diary in minutes - I missed out on getting into his books this time, but have been assured that next time round he will be opening the books to customers with work in progress only, so will be guaranteed to get in next time. Some time between January and July 2013 I will have my next session! Yeeeeah!