cltattooing

Cheers @Graeme, hope they're serving you well! Looking forward to more progress shots :)

I hung out with my dad yesterday. We took the train into the city and visited the Asian Art Museum for my first time. It was pretty insane, I must have taken a hundred pictures. Gold inlaid jade, hand carved armoirs, giant painted scrolls with dragons, tigers, roosters, hawks, bears. Samurai armor, wakizashi, Shinto statutes, netsuke, and many, many Buddha statutes. The collection is insane, I highly recommend that any tattoo enthusiast visiting SF should see the Asian Art Museum.

Also, I got to hang out with a very cool, VERY intense Fudo Myo-o statue that is almost 1000 years old. The energy coming from it was a lot to take in. It was a combined sense of undisturbed peacefulness and impending annihilation. Which makes sense for a guardian diety, eh.

I'll post this for your drooling pleasure and consolidate the rest of the photos to a blog as soon as I can.

That chick was nuts. I thought he did the right thing in not tattooing her.

I didn't.. I don't know, I didn't think she was that bad. The design was on par with a Lisa Frank sticker, I definitely wouldn't get that garbage put on me. While it's sometimes necessary to steer your clients in more functional directions, Tony was pretty inflexible with her requests as well. He should have put his ego aside during the consult and given her what she actually asked for. Also, completely valid to ask what's up when your artist is stressed out, shaking, and on edge!

good luck!

I really don't know, thought about adding some red here and there and also considered one blue and one green..

Just my own preference, but I think you should leave it be.

Mantis shrimp! Small, colorful, and deadly!

I think I love you...

I'll let you guys decide if I'm the giant or the shrimp

I was just walking past there yesterday afternoon. Nice piece.

That's nuts! Should have stopped in :)

and thank you, cheers

nice! seriously the best idea.

I think some of you may have seen that Waverly makes green soap air fresheners?

tats or gfto

Lol, but seriously, welcome!

I chuckled at this

Looks much better than my first. Tattooing is hard, eh! Is that on you?

Apologies for the crappy picture, I screenshotted this from IG. I'll post a better picture tomorrow, but check it out! By Sean Perkinson at FTW in Oakland. Steve Boltz flash.

Congratulations on your job and tattoo!

I'm just going to start saying permanent dermis pigment retention patterns.

Oh that's good. I kind of like transdermal polychromatism, sounds sort of like a skin condition or a genetic mutation.

When you can't keep your nose out of your arm because a fresh tattoo is the best smell in the world.

Go for it! One of my arms has color pieces and the other is black and red, I think it's a neat look.

I don't think it would look funny to have both, as long as there is enough black in your tattoos to tie it all together. Feasibly you could add color to black and grey tattoos, but they would probably come out really dark, as b&g tattoos are usually designed with black to negative gradients throughout the whole piece. I'm sure there are tattooers who could do a good job of it if they had to. Honestly, I'd just pick one or the other. For what it's worth, I do love black tattoos with one or two colors in them. Super bold and striking.

I think my opinions are too political to comment on that, haha.

the whole concept of hood rich is some crazy shit.

@cltattooing - I'll see if I can find the user on Instagram who had a tattoo artist open up her tattoo with a machine that had no ink in it, then packed seat salt onto the wound or 10 minutes, then rinsed a few hours later and did a saline soak following that.

I'm very aware that tattoo pigment isn't FDA regulated. My malpractice waiver form indicates that, and lists some of the possible ingredients to it. I've also been fortunate enough to know a few people in the industry, and they've told me off the record some ingredients. A lot of people have a negative reaction to red pigment, you wouldn't be surprised why if I told you what a primary ingredient is.

From what I understand about Tat2away is that they don't disclose anything, so we can all speculate about it. I've read some people claiming it's lactic acid.

Yes, I'm pro-laser because I do it for a living, but it's also been medically proven to work for over 15 years now. The side effects are well documented, the treatment process and aftercare have all been gone over, for years. Very little has changed with laser tattoo removal treatment in that time.

Please do, I'd like to know more about that too. Was the practicing artist performing the procedure as a professional service or as an experiment? I can't imagine that anyone in a medically-related profession who is worth their salt (see what I did :P) would put a handful of sea salt directly onto an open wound. That is total madness. Also, most tattooers who have some knowledge about what is happening with their equipment will know why tattooing without a medium will bog down your machine and traumatize the skin.

Saline solution in itself, when mild, is completely harmless to humans. I'm not questioning your claim so much as the legitimacy of who was doing it. I think is counterproductive to set standards to subpar practices.

Also, I am not coming from a place of trying to delegitimize or replace laser removal. I don't think it has to be one or the other. I want to know more about saline removal because I think it would be nice to have viable options and alternatives with tattoo removal. For me personally, I would prefer to do something like saline removal on smaller tattoos because it would be easy to sit for, and less painful than laser removal. For larger pieces, I'd probably go the laser route because you can cover more ground in less time.

My grandmother and I were chatting yesterday. She's 90 years old and is one of the most important people in the world to me. Well, we were talking about life, work, and how my apprenticeship is going. She looks at me and asks "Would you tattoo me? Right here, a big butterfly, and you can use this mole as the head of the butterfly."

I'm still grinning over that.

Ahhh, that's amazing!!! I am so jealous!! You guys should totally do it, tattooing family is such a bonding thing. Your OG rocks :)

Welcome! Can we see some art?

My opinion, avoid this. It looks similar to Tatt2Away® by Rejuvatek Medical, Inc. (Official Site) | Tatt2Away® Natural Non Laser Tattoo Removal System, which I also don't trust.

Here's the thing. Who out there thinks it makes sense to open up a tattoo (create an open wound) via tattoo machine with no ink in it, then pour salt in it, or use saline (salt water) instead of tattoo pigment? No one. Ask your family doctor what they think about this, and they will tell you the possible side effects, you'll walk away.

It's non-FDA regulated. There's no governing body on how this is to be done, or instructional information. There's nothing saying who is and who isn't doing it right. It's also invasive. Whenever you open up the skin, you are opening yourself up to long term negative effects.

Whoa, buddy. Pour salt in it? That's a bit extreme, even for a hypothetical example. I think I will ask a doctor, actually. With proper cross-contamination practices, I can't imagine that the side-effects would be too different from those possible with getting tattooed.

Also would like to note that tattoo pigment isn't FDA regulated either, and that any body of information regarding tattoo pigment is regarded as trade secret so it's not really like customers can educate themselves on that front without speaking directly to their artist.

Also, from what I understand, Tat2Away induces local necrosis so that's also much more extreme than pushing saline into the skin.