bugxjuice

Has anyone else seen that Science Tattoos book? Tons of geeky tattoos in there, nearly all of them are bad though. Some are good ideas executed poorly, some are just straight up bad ideas.

I have a black and grey trilobite tattoo, I suppose that qualifies.

welcome!

Who have you been tattooed by? Feel free to post some of your tattoos in this thread or in your gallery, we generally like looking at tattoos around here.

Every shop/artist recommended here does good quality work. If you don't like any of them, maybe you could give an example of what you're looking for, since you mentioned before that you've seen a lot of good work?

The sheer amount of art was overwhelming, I had to pace myself. Luckily I went Friday afternoon and it was pretty slow. I also couldn't afford to pick up anything, but the man is so prolific it's not like I won't have another chance.

I barely heard enough new records this year to make a top 10 list, so I'll just post what stuck out the most:

Milk Music - Cruise Your Illusion LP

After Dark 2 3xLP (Italians Do It Better compilation)

You're certainly free not to take her seriously, but I'm still interested in the question of whether or not this is copying. Anyway, I think the notion of someone else doing her style of tattooing is, at least, stupid, since I imagine part of the appeal for people who have her tattoos is the name/fame...

If someone reproduces one of her tattoos, then it's copying. If someone does an entirely new brush stroke tattoo, then who cares? She might be one of the most well known for the style but it's not that original anyway... brush stroke/watercolor/painterly style tattoos are pretty popular overseas right now anyway

Who have you been tattooed by? Which contemporary tattooers do you like these days? Which tattooers from the past do you look up to?

It's 2013. There is no reason to tattoo out of your home. If you can't get an apprenticeship from a respectable shop and learn to tattoo the right way, from the start, you shouldn't do it, period.

I took a little trip to LA a few weeks back, mostly planned around an appointment with Tomas Garcia at Sid's in Santa Ana. Couldn't be more pleased with the experience and the result:

http://instagram.com/p/gRp00EkhUV/

http://instagram.com/p/gRqNqGkhU5/

Ended up getting something from DJ Rose yesterday. I gave him a fairly vague idea (and no descriptive imagery whatsoever) and he came up with the perfect tattoo. Like @hogg above, I was in a pretty great vantage point: I had Henning (doing a dragon head on some fellow's hand) and Rubendall (tattooing a fellow's head, I didn't see the design) on one side, and Grez on the other (working on a big squid on a girl's thigh).

Instagram

is there really a need for dickish comments like this?

i could talk about all the medicore lady heads and roses people get all the time but i choose to have a little more class than that.

pretty sure the comment wasn't aimed at the tattoo, rather that the inspiration for it was the movie adaptation and not the book...

I don't like filler I like space or if the skin is covered its part of the art . Filler is such a shit word for a lot of effort and hard work by an artist. Id hate to ask an artist who's work I respect for "Filler"

I don't know, I think a lot of artists enjoy doing little filler pieces and don't mind calling it that. I also think the patchwork style of American traditional tends toward leaving little spaces that look weird empty, and it's fun to put little filler pieces in there. Obviously you wouldn't ask Rubendall or whoever to do something like that, but from my experience there are plenty of people out there who would enjoy the work and wouldn't feel disrespected if someone came to them asking for "filler"

What shop/ who are you working with there? I lived south of Alb. for a few years and got tattooed at a couple shops up there.

Depending on how long you're in town you could try Zach Taylor at Electric 13, I stopped at the shop on a Friday and he was gracious enough to tattoo me on his day off on Monday. He does some pretty strange stuff, it's great.

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I never get tired of bug tattoos. I have a little shield bug on my foot, and a sort of anthropomorphic beetle on my thigh. I also have a trilobite, which isn't a bug but pretty bug-like.

Bugs make great fillers, I'd like to get a centipede or a stick bug (or both!) as filler at some point.

I typically think kickstarter and "clothing companies" are stupid, and this is no exception.

Also, what @Graeme said - I'll take shop shirts and shirts designed by tattooers (e.g. Shirts and Destroy) over some corny t-shirt brand that's just trying to cash in on tattooing any day.

Don't get it facing you. Try to get some nice hand drawn script (e.g. BJ Betts) and not something that looks like a fancy computer font

I am mildly confused, does painting flash not fall into trade secret turf?

Apparently not? Since the thread was started and responded to by quite a few well respected tattooers, I (a non-tattooer) imagine it's not that big a deal. Maybe I'm wrong, what's your take on it?

I love Flipper and have thought about getting the Flipper fish tattooed...

...but I am a dick who actually started getting tattoos in my 30s so I kind of missed out on the crappy punk rock tattoo period of my life, which on the one hand is great because I didn't fill my body up with shitty tattoos, but also sucks because I think I missed out on something important by not getting those tattoos. I think I'll get some eventually...the bars almost for sure...but I'll wait until I'm a little more covered and use them as gap fillers.

That's a great way to do it - I just got the germs burn as a little filler on my thigh, and I plan on using the COC logo as filler at some point too. Some of my earliest tattoos were the crimson ghost and the bars, thankfully they are well done and in decent spots so they're not a waste of prime real estate.

I wouldn't get tattooed in an environment that wasn't chill. Devil or uber-gangster music and id just leave. But I realize that there are different atmospheres for different clientele. I have over 30+ hours of grind-house very cool yet old school American street shop work and 20+ hours of super custom 2 customer a day shop work. Need to ask which hurt less and had the chillest of atmospheres? I am willing to bet most non inner city shops will eventually follow the boutique model. That or I have become a hipster and need help.

I have no idea what any of this means.

Chill, non-chill, as long as it's good, I probably won't mind or care much. Like JAllen said above, it's not a day spa, it's a tattoo shop.

However I would be pissed if I had to listen to Alanis Morissette while getting tattooed, and would heavily question the taste and values of the tattooer/shop that put it on.

I'm pretty sure I'll be around on at least Saturday, I'd certainly be down to meet people and see some of your killer tattoos in person!

I got some Higgs flash put on me the other day. It's the little flaming sword, I'm not gonna bother with a picture since most of you have probably seen it before. It's on the back of my knee, a little off center so it's not quite in the ditch, but it was still pretty tender.

There may be a better place to post this, but since a lot of the Bay Area LSTers are tuned into this thread, I'm posting here anyway:

Is anyone here going to the Death in June gig this Friday? I'm new to the area so I don't know a ton of people, and it would be cool to meet some like minded people off of here.

I've only been tattooed by one old timer, Eric Inksmith. I'm certainly open to getting more work from the old timey set, but I don't have any plans at the moment.

TV show and movie tattoos can be just as good or bad as anything else, really. I'm probably not alone in this, in that a huge amount of interest and influence in my life comes from mass media in the form of music, books, film, tv, etc. So why not get that stuff tattooed? I have two book/film inspired tattoos, a handful of band tattoos, and plan on plenty more, including some tv show references.