JBHoren

This is one of those threads that ends up costing me a small fortune on Amazon or ABE.

I agree, the lines look so solid and clean. I love all the black.
As for me, I have black & gray, but my black & gray left arm incorporates a little "dotwork" type stuff in the background. I don't think I put this pic on LST... This is my inner arm after the 4th session w/a Spencer Briggs Style mandala. It's not finished yet and my iphone takes crappy/grainy pics but here it is:

It is certainly interesting. I don't think I would want to have something like that done, but I can appreciate the art.

Oh, yes, with it being cream lace on a black background I can totally see how you'd read it like that - the cream as negative space. Would be lovely - I see it myself only now you say it. But, no, beautiful as I find much of Jondix's work it's really not what I'm after.
It was actual, physical needle lace I gave him - quite a few pieces of varying complexity. I guess the stuff just gives a totally different impression in real life. It's just, erm, well, lace.
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Also gave photos of circus girls with cuffs - this is the only image I have that I can zoom in well enough for it to be worth posting. Jean Furella Carroll by Charlie Wagner, natch.

So, yeah, I'm looking at something more along the lines of this from Saira Hunjan:

It's a bit fussy and flowery for my taste and based on venetian lace rather than needle lace. It also manages to look quite crude. But still, much more along these lines than a Yondix style interpretation.
I prefer the relative simplicity of @Mike Bennett 's piece on Kendra (also venetian lace, I think) but it's still a bit too fussy for my personal taste, also dotty, as you see.
I really don't think we'll be going with the dotty thang and certainly nothing based on venetian lace (also, it's a cuff rather than a chest piece). Will have to see what Willem comes up with.
@Graeme Hope that clarifies a bit!

Yup... but I only got "mildly" infected.

I got my first tattoo on my 21st birthday -- late-January 1972 -- while on leave after finishing USArmy AIT, before reporting to my first duty station: Fort Richardson, AK. I didn't get any more ink until I'd finished my military service and drifted back to the Ft. Benning, GA area, where I met Louie Lombi, who'd recently opened a branch of his mentor's shop -- "Big Joe" Kaplan, from Mount Vernon, NY. Louie began sleeving me between July 1976 and December 1979; then I emigrated to Israel (!) and fell out of contact with him. We got back in touch in 2001, when I was in South Florida for a computer course (sent from Israel), and found that Louie had relocated to Greenacres/Lake Worth, FL, where my mother lived, and opened a shop of his own: Louie Lombi's Tattoo Paradise. Small world. I finally left Israel summer of 2004, and returned to South Florida. Louie finished my sleeves, and another artist in his employ, "Painless Jimmy" Hankins. Jimmy eventually did my chest, shoulders and "sleeved" my lower legs, ankles-to-knees.
I need a new photo -- this one's missing the bluebirds (PS: the women's heads were done in Columbus, GA by the late Jack Armstrong, in 1977... sponge-in-a-jar)

My shins and calves (missing the wrap-around sides) (Statue of Liberty outline done on July 4th, 2006, and all work on both legs was finished in late 2008)

And feet... (summer of 2009)

I definitely agree with this. My girlfriend works as a bartender/server in an Outback restaurant, she ALWAYS gets comments from people. A lot of people will flat out tell her that "tattoos are ugly, why would you do that to yourself?". I, on the other hand have not ever once received a comment from someone being rude. I get the "where do you get your ink?" questions a lot and "doesn't that hurt?" but other than nice comments I've never come across anybody being rude. I'm not even sure how I would react to a rude comment about them.

Moon phase moth by Brian Thomas Wilson. http://instagram.com/p/f7HEcXRQxE/

^ very cool design!

Here is my bleeding moon. I posted this a long time ago. Matt Brotka in Richmond, Virginia, but that fine gentleman is now at Left Hand Black in sunny San Diego.

mine doesn't have a lady head or anything with it but here's my little moon man from Justin Hyde

This seems to be a current thing I have been seeing in a lot of tattoos recently, my most recent tattoo included. Lots of lady heads with moons, or animals and moons, etc.
Is it just me or is this popular right now? I didnt even really notice it until I got my moon lady on my leg, then while browsing online saw quite a bit of moons recently.
Also, as a side note, if you can find any good examples of it, post to this thread. I'll start with mine

Colorful, traditional American tattoos -- some would call them "Old School" -- with a very reluctant, but wholly-satisfied, nod to black-and-gray.

Any respectable artist will give you a solid tattoo regardless of the subject matter. The application of the tattoos is wjat determines longevity and they should be things your artist knows how to do; not because you ask for it but because thats what makes a good tattoo. I think the only things you need to worry about is picking an artist and telling him/her your ideas. Leave the artistic and technical sides to them cause that's their job. No decent artist would give you a tattoo that didnt last on purpose, unless they didn't know what they were doing.
As far as portrait tattoos, i think they can last well enough just keep it out of the sun.

That's funny. My dad was an infantryman in the second cavalry in Vietnam, too.

My father was in the 199th Light Infantry Brigade '69-'70 in Xuan Loc.

Yes let's have fun and talk politics,wheeeee!

I can relate to this so well working in emergency medicine and being a woman. Though most of my ink is hidden, occasionally I have to change in the shower or something like that happens. 98% of people think it's interesting. 2% think it's a license to say something obnoxious.
Staring is fine. Commentary is unheeded and unneeded.

When I began getting inked, I had only two weeks before separated from the US Army (honorable discharge) after five years service in the Infantry. My last duty station had been Coleman Barracks, just outside of Mannheim, West Germany. It sucked, and the (albeit, shortened) tour ate it. So, "how do you react to stares, JB?" Nowadays, just fine; 37 years ago? Like you wouldn't believe. I'd give people "hard eyes" and a "get super-aggressive real fast" attitude. Back then, ink had a secondary (primary?) role of non-verbally "giving someone the bird". For some reason, that was important to me. Thankfully, times have changed; people, too; and so have I. Since coming back to the US, summer of 2004, I've had nothing but pleasant, polite interest from people in my tattoos, if they respond to them at all. Maybe it's that the tattoos, themselves, have always been classic, traditional American designs -- with the exception of a few places, all my work is "sewn-together" flash, designs from sheets on the wall. Nothing anybody gets angry about. I especially like the stares -- and the conversations that follow -- from age-appropriate women of a certain type.

Sucks. The double-standard of training/employing people to kill (or to support those who do), but rule-and-regulating how they can decorate their bodies, is part of the American schizophrenia. Glad my service (USArmy, Infantry) was Vietnam-era.

Sucks. The double-standard of training/employing people to kill (or to support those who do), but rule-and-regulating how they can decorate their bodies, is part of the American schizophrenia. Glad my service (USArmy, Infantry) was Vietnam-era.

Sucks. The double-standard of training/employing people to kill (or to support those who do), but rule-and-regulating how they can decorate their bodies, is part of the American schizophrenia. Glad my service (USArmy, Infantry) was Vietnam-era.

You know, the first time I go to a new artist, I get a piece that's smaller than my hand. Why? Photos don't tell the whole story, and while they may have fabulous reputations and their tattoos look amazing in photos, it may not be something I want taking up so much room I don't have more room later.
I think the world of the young man who does most of my tattooing now, and the first tattoo he did for me was a classic rose tattoo in pink. Since then, he's done some big, detailed pieces on me, but I really like having a relationship where we can talk openly and there's a degree of trust. I still plan on work with other artists, but I wouldn't go huge with someone I didn't have a good relationship with.

After going big, I go home; I prefer to shower there.

Never believed in the whole "small starter tattoo" deal. How about those people getting full bodysuits by Horiyoshi III? I am sure some of those people had no work to begin with and commited to heavy coverage from the get go. If I could do it all over again, thats what I do. Have one tattoo and one only!