tacitapproval

Congrats and welcome! Glad to hear you're finally getting to it. Who are you getting them done by?

As for containing excitement, I tend to go the opposite way. I just look at more tattoos and stoke my pre-appointment fires. Containment be damned!

"Hi! This is my daughter, Bendy Skull-Shaped Lady."

It's been a while, but I just recently got back to reading the forum and looking at what other people are posting as far as new work. By way of jumping back in, it seemed like posting what I've been up to since I last participated in this thread is the right way to go.

This might be a bit of a long one. Sorry.

Sometimes you're in New Orleans. Sometimes you end up with a butterfly. Brent at Uptown Tattoo did this one:

Jake Miller from Cathedral Tattoo in Salt Lake did this little ditch guy for me:

I did a bit of a run of appointments at Great Lakes Tattoo. Erik did this one:

Nick did this one:

And Matt did this one on my calf:

Javier Rodriguez at LTW in Barcelona made this crazy tiger head for me:

John Raftery, who is also at Cathedral in Salt Lake now, did this snake while he was still in New York at Fun City:

Ben Haft at Fun City did the tops of both of my thighs with a sinking ship and a rose of no man's land:

And finally, Mike Suarez at Hand of Glory in Brooklyn was able to squeeze me in on Saturday and do this on my shin:

I picked up a few little bits of filler here and there, too.

Next up is getting my left knee done, I think. All of this has really just motivated me to start thinking about back/chestpieces.

Further down the rabbit hole.

The "Rats Get Fat" tattoo is fantastic. Never gets old. Nicely done and welcome!

I haven't been lurking around here as much over the last month or so, so I have a ton of backlog that I'm looking forward to reading and seeing...but it has been a pretty awesome week.

Got this lady from Bert Krak on Thursday:

And then adopted this lady from the shelter on Sunday:

Both are mending well.

@el twe That's pretty much the plan. There are just so many options....

That good kind of problem, I guess.

I'm booked in with Bert Krak at Smith Street for this coming Thursday (7/25).

I imagine I'll get some flash, but I'm going in with a pretty open mind as to what I get put on me.

I was planning on just going in a bit early and staring at the books and walls until something jumped out at me. That said, I really love his roses. So clean and classic. And I've seen some really nice lady heads he's done. Some pretty great moths/butterflies as well. And some great cat heads and apes...actually, there isn't much I've seen that I don't dig.

All of which is to say that I'm pretty indecisive with five days to go.

Any suggestions? (Aside from a hatchet man.)

More than a little nerdily excited.

I'm not sure there's any way round it. Getting tattoos hurts, more or less, depending on whereabouts it's going.

If you really, genuinely want that tattoo though, it doesn't hurt enough that it should put you off.

(Sometimes I find the whole "washing a slightly scabby wound for a week or so" aspect more unpleasant than the actual needlework.) ;)

I could not agree more.

I hate healing a tattoo 1,000% more than being tattooed.

I actually kind of enjoy the being tattooed part (that said, I've only sat for about 2.5 hours at a clip, so I have no concept of what a longer sitting is like).

I have a friend who wants to get this painting of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza tattooed.

He wants to do it black and grey (nothing remaining of the color background), and I think he's leaning toward his back or a shoulder.

That said, I'd like to steer him toward a tattooer in the NYC area who can do something with this that would be rad and make a good tattoo. I've been preparing my friend for the fact that he'll need to be flexible with the image and that it might need to go through some translation in order to make a good tattoo, but I also want to make sure I suggest some really solid people to do the work.

My tastes lean much more toward the American traditional end of things, so I don't want to point him in the wrong direction due to my lack of knowledge.

Any help at all would be fantastic. Thanks!

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Wow. That image is gigantic. Oops.

This is in no way helpful with regard to your laser needs, but I'd never read the term "roundel" before, so I googled "BMW roundel" and found this:

BMW Roundel: Not Born From Planes - NYTimes.com

...which I thought was a cool little bit of esoteric knowledge.

Sorry for the (somewhat) off-topic post, and good luck with your removal/badass new tattoo.

As far as flash, there's never anything wrong with starting with some of the Sailor Jerry stuff. If the tattooer you end up working with has copies of the three books of Sailor Jerry flash that Ed Hardy published, there are some great examples of daggers going through a heart, like you described, in the second volume I think.

I don't own it personally, but I've paged through it a ton of times in various shops.

I just watched this documentary, David Bowie-The Story of Ziggy Stardust. Any other Bowie fans here?

http://youtu.be/S_hZ-Z_4ZVg

Well, now I know what I'll be watching this evening. Thanks!

Now I'm sad that I didn't make my username "Total Boner Fuel"

Fair enough. But you still have the chance to make your last post your signature.

I'm not saying I'm to be trusted...but it seems like the right call.

First, Welcome!

Second, that's a lot to fit on an arm. With that much stuff involved you might need a whole back for it. That said, maybe distill your intended meaning(s) into a concise sentence (5 words or fewer) and then drop any component that doesn't directly speak to that theme.

Also talk to a good tattooer. Nothing better than someone who really knows what they're doing as far as advice. You're likely to get a better tattoo that better fits the space and still carries the intended meaning.

There are definitely folks here who can point you in the direction of someone who will do right by you...and your wee arms.

Cheers.

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@CultExciter and @youthcrewalex beat me to it. And said it better.

Best of luck, @wolfcub696 !

@Gnawa, I've always been partial to:

“There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust.”

Might be too much text though.

What can I say I am a sucker for tattoos that look like tattoos.

A thousand times, this.

@AriTattoos, I think I'm right in assuming that the tattoos in your gallery are by you rather than on you, since there are clearly some different people there.

That said--and I'm not a tattooer, just someone who likes looking at and wearing them--there are some shaky bits there that you might want to look to. Maybe better off with a real apprenticeship.

Certainly best not to just tattoo whoever will have one in the meantime. Even you said that you were doing well enough in graphic design. We don't all need to tattoo. Enough just to be really into them and get good ones.

Like @SacramentoDan wrote, no offense intended.

The first episode in a series written and performed by a good friend of mine from college. Maybe a bit dark, but pretty funny.

Welcome!

That is one mean looking ass-shark. Nice.

Yeah, this scrimshaw looking dagger and heart is pretty slick: Heart and Daggers | DANNY REED

Good call.

@el twe - Yeah, I've already talked to someone about making the swallow into something presentable. I've already gone a pretty long way to filling up that arm with better stuff, so as to distract until I get the bird worked out.

And as for the bands, once I'm done with the right arm, the left is next. There are too many great tattooers in New York to not pack good work around my questionable first steps.

although not true television, I'd like to take this moment to mention The Gypsy Gentleman (Marcus Kuhn's - The Gypsy Gentlemen - Home) and Vice's Tattoo Age (Tattoo Age | VICE). Both very educational shows, and a true testament to how tv and tattoos ought to come together.

True love is also pretty fantastic...although not entirely in English. Most of it is, but there is some narration in Italian.

I'm also on my third time going back through the interviews on this site, which have been invaluable as far as consciousness raising about good tattooing and how to be respectful of it as craft and art from a client's perspective.

Watched Looper yesterday, it was better than I thought it would be even though Bruce Willis is in it.

Yeah, I really dug Looper. The scene in the diner where Bruce Willis basically just says "if we tried to make sense out of time travel we'd be here all day" and just moves the plot forward is particularly funny.

The guy who wrote and directed Looper also did Brick and The Brothers Bloom, both of which are really good. Brick is essentially an ode to/satire of film noir set in a high school, and Brothers Bloom follows a pair of conmen.

Most certainly worth watching.