KBeee

Congratulations @graybones! It's beeeyoootifull! I love it!

Time for another contest folks!
We thought it would be fair to let the t-shirt prize go the second runner up if the winner has already won a shirt in a previous contest. Sound good? Please don't let this discourage you from entering your new tattoo though!
The rules:
The tattoo picture that gets posted in this thread for February 2015 with the most 'likes' for the month wins! The contest starts on the first of the month and ends on the last day of the month.

Your tattoo picture must be posted in this thread (both tattooers and tattoo customers can win) in order to qualify.
Include with your photo/post...tattoo artist name & tattoo shop.
You MUST be the one who has the tattoo or did the tattoo.
You can 'like' as many tattoos as you want.
It can be a finished or in progress tattoo.
You cannot enter the same tattoo in more than one contest.

I love this contest. Have been to busy looking at amazing stuff, but now i figured it´s time to show something off. This is my backpiece by my favourite Norwegian tattooer, Marius Meyer.

ok ok - now I know this is the heavyweight division - the best of the best - major league back pieces - epic sleeves from legendary artists from around the globe - tattooing black belts - you get the picture - but I figure - you only live once - so here is my first ever entry into one of my favorite monthly threads....
Whatever...by Jamie Sawyer outta Immortal Ink in Clinton, NJ

Thank you!! I'm honored and excited to wear my LST shirt! :D

The winner of Tattoo of the month January 2015 is @graybones with this fantastic Seth Wood piece. Congratulations!!

Please PM @steve1461686340 with your shirt info (size and male or female) along with your address.
New contest will be up shortly!

Bae = Danish word for poop. That's what I found when I had to look it up. lol
I'm turning 40 this Sunday and I am an 80's/90's kid, if you consider an 18 year old, still a kid.

Welllllllll....if it makes you happy get another one, right?! Went and saw Paul Dobleman at Spider Murphy's last week...please excuse the inflammation


Hope everyone is having a great New Year so far!

Yeah, it's crazy what a difference it can make...Scott Sylvia and Paul Dobleman are the guys who do this for me. I have very little recollection of any "gettin' tattooed" sensation with either of them because they keep such good company.
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YEEEEESSSSSSSS!!! Lotsssaaaa tattoooooos!!!

Ooooh they are all so cool but that Horse!!! I love myself a good horse head! It's really great! <3
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I love "bae". Second only to my love for "boo". I'm not kidding.
What exactly does everyone mean by 90's kid...like born in the 90's or old like me?

East Coast!!!
Venues | Perseverance | Japanese American National Museum
Traveling Exhibition Sites
Current/Upcoming Venues
Towson University
February 5 – May 2, 2015
Asian Arts Gallery
Center for the Arts
Towson, MD 21252
Web: towson.edu
Phone: 410.704.2787
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
May 30 – September 27, 2015
200 N. Boulevard
Richmond, VA 23220
Web: vmfa.museum
Phone: 804.340.1405
Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens
February 23 – May 22, 2016
4000 Morikami Park Rd.
Delray Beach, FL 33446
Web: morikami.org
Phone: 561.495.0233

I hear lots of people around my age (29) refer to themselves as '80s/'90s kids. I usually take it to mean "the decade of my earliest pop culture-related memories" or something like that. It means that people 5 years younger than me are in grunge-retro bands even though they were infants in 1991.
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Can we bring back "totally tubular?"

Man, everybody already used my smart-ass answers but the Greg Irons quip was funnier than I could have come up with.
But back to the original question.
This is one of the newer approaches to tattooing that makes me slightly uncomfortable to be honest. Myself and a few tattooers I know and work with have noticed the trend of customers finding a sense of pride in how long they had to wait for their tattoo. As if that makes the tattoo more worthwhile.
With some of the currently living/working tattooers mentioned in this thread, I personally know people (not even on the internet) that have tattoos from all of them. Filip, Horiyoshi III, Shige and Mike Rubendall. Yeah, they had to wait a little while for some of them but not as long as you'd think for others. Mike Roper is a different situation because he makes it deliberately difficult to get in touch with him, which answers the question posed above. But that wasn't really the question that was asked and it's rarely the question that gets asked. The question, or at least the implication, is "who has the longest waiting list' or "who has appointments booked furthest into the future". If I were to be snarky "who gives me the most bragging rights".
For me the hardest people to get a tattoo from are the tattooers who are located furthest away from me. The ones where I have to get off my ass and do something about it. Time is easier to overcome than distance although patience is a different matter. It astonishes me that people call our shop from the outskirts of the city expecting us to change the way we work because they are catching a train to get here. On the other hand, we are humbled and honoured by the people who cross seas and continents to get tattooed regularly with us.
But that's aside from the issue.
Why is it a trend that makes me uncomfortable?
Because I've heard people brag about how long they had to wait for 'x' artist and wear that information like a badge of honour. It feels almost as distasteful as bragging about who charges the most. Yeah, tattoos are for tough guys and tough buys like to brag and maybe that seems harmless, but it makes me uncomfortable and I have trouble clearly explaining why.
Maybe it's because it's a phenomenon spurred on by the internet and the gossipy world of hearsay. Nobody calls and checks with the artists or shops they want to get tattooed at. Nobody travels down to the shop to ask the question. They just ask random strangers on the internet who have a lot of time on their hands and like to talk about something they know nothing about. Then the reality gets lost or twisted and in the end the real information is lost. I see this a lot with regards to the shop I work at. Forums are (or certainly used to be) bursting with 'facts' about how much we charge, how long we take, how far 'x' and 'y' are booked or how long their waiting lists are. Nobody calls the shop to ask and nobody suggests that the person calls to ask.
I know that happens with a lot of things but it seems like this is starting to have a real-world effect, however small. People who wanted tattoos that we would love to do heard that we wouldn't tattoo them at our shop because we were so cool and busy and booked up for decades and rolling around in money 'n' bitches or something. We've heard of this a few times and it seems to be happening more. Yeah, we're busy, you may have to wait a little, maybe not. If someone has contact information, especially a phone number on their website it means that they want you to call.
I'm not really going to touch on the tone of the "are they a fad or are they really worth it?" comment, except to say that if you have to ask, the answer is "no".
Sorry to jump on this fun thread with a rant. I look forward to more witty quips.

The subject matter for your tattoo is awesome! Skulls and fire make for great tattoos, but I would suggest skipping the google image searches for now, and instead concentrate on finding the right man or woman for the job. When you find a tattooer whose work you like, get in touch, present your idea, try to have an open mind and be a little flexible if they have any advice or input on your design, then let him or her do their thing. That's usually a good recipe for an awesome tattoo.
If you like the look of bold, traditional tattoos, this looks like a nice shop with a solid team of tattooers: HERO TATTOO - Home
Good luck!

Done, 2d sleeve by Shige :
View image: IMG 5047
Next is back in November (or maybe earlier) to complete my mandala.
Cheers

Here are some recent ones for me...

Got this guy from Alan Berg

Started this with Mat Welch

and snagged this Bert Grimm horse from Miguel Olascuaga

Brought a drawing to Sacred Tattoo today with plans for getting a walk-in, after meeting the shop owner a week or so back. Niño was kind enough to redraw my doodle an this is what we came up with. Great way to celebrate the last few months of living in Oakland. Pic lifted from Nino's Instagram.
Also, I visited Umami Mart and saw @CABS and that Felix and lady head in person. Great to meet you, Chris. Thanks for the directions to The Trappist!

simple solution...get both!

Ha! I remember the first step in clearing a shop (for friends or what not) use to be the smell. Perfection Tattoo had a certain smell (looking back, I think it may have been Green Soap?) and if a shop did not have that certain smell I would tell my friends "Noooo WAAAY! Don't go there" :p ...But really, there is a "good tattoo shop" version of the hospital smell and it indicates rightness. I don't know how to explain it...anyone?
Also, I remember the good old days of xeroxing reference material at the university libraries to take with me to my consultation. Two copies...one for my folder and one for the tattooer's :D

Ahh, gotcha! So then maybe what we are really talking about is placement and design. Placement is where/how the design settles into the flow of the body. To me it is one of the more subtle hallmarks of REALLY good tattoo design. I don't know how to explain seeing good placement in a forum post but I CAN stress to you how very important it is.
Maybe what your eye is registering as "masculine" is clunky tattoo design and placement? And wanting something "feminine" has something to do with more harmonious body/tattoo flow? Idk...shot in the dark...

It seems to me like there'll probably always be both, now that both types exist. There are people who will always be more comfortable on one side of that fence than the other...people who feel uneasy about upscale interiors and courtesy salon fruit-infused water, and people who are intimidated as hell by tattoo shops full of tough guys, or who've managed to make mental divides for themselves over different kinds of tattoos, who may be interested in getting a tattoo 'but not that kind' of tattoo. For some people, that's probably part of the experience they're shopping for, in both directions -- the salon feeling, or the classic grit.
This is additional speculation on my part, totally based on my own anecdotal observations, but there also seem to be weird overlaps between people who don't like the idea of getting something from flash and want something 'custom' instead, and people who want the upscale experience (and people who got their tattoo concept off of Pinterest, which is totally ironic).
I read here all the time about how there's been a huge upswing in the number of tattoo shops out there -- shops that come and go with excess apprentices and artists that don't last long, people trying to reinvent the wheel, this whole glut of shops in any given place -- and I suppose catering to this demographic probably provides them with a whole lot of business. Trends seeking trends, or something. But, if I had to wager a guess, I'd say that the street-shop mentality you guys were talking about -- artists with a style who can still turn out solid walk-in work, who are willing to do that, who are dedicated to the craft/labor of tattooing as well as the art of it -- will probably always be more successful in the long-term. Places like that will endure. And maybe there are lots of high-end salon-style shops that employ this ethic, too; hell if I know. I think it's probably the at the heart of what's most important, beyond interior design.
...I listened a lot of lectures growing up about artists who forget that art is not just art, but also a business. Haha.

Great story, @Colored Guy, and cool idea for a thread, @cltattooing.
I love the feel of a shop crushed with flash. I've been in a few shops that have next to no flash on the walls, and it always feels very odd to me--even elitist at times. Plus, there's something about seeing artists deal with walk-ins that I really like. The negotiation, the hustle (on both sides of the dummy rail), and the end result.

AMEN!
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I will also add...tattoo shops that SOUND like tattoo shops.
I once walked into a shop and was like "WTF is anybody working", well they all were with rotary machines dialed down. Too friggin quiet for a tattoo shop, let those coil machines roar !
IMO there is only a select few tattoo shops that look/sound/smell tattoo shop in my city. There is an oversaturation of shops however...maybe better to call them "tattoo studios" or "tattoo salons" by the look of these places, the look of the artists, the look of the fresh tattoos that leave. I think of them as boutique studios and are much more accessible, less intimidating to the average customer. Very sterile, fashionable artwork on the walls, each room has a big screen tv...I personally think it's kinda wack, missing out on part of the experience. But hey, everyone has there own reasons for booking appointments at any tattoo shop or studio,,, there is even a couple headshop-tattoostudio places around that popped up...lol...definately would recommend those if you want to get a hatchet man tattoo (jokes)!
I like the open space, barbershop feel of the street shop. Bunch of tables crammed in the space, everyone is hanging in close quarters with shared misery and having a good time, bullshitting, dirty jokes, talking tattoos. Every square inch of the walls is covered in flash and artwork that looks tattoo-able. Tattoo shops that look like tattoo shops!

Not a street shop, per say, but last weekend I was in Kings Avenue getting tattooed, and Zac Scheinbaum was cranking out walk in after walk in while I was there. It was nice to see someone that you'd think of as kinda having a style and typically be booked in advance just doing names and script and Stars of David and treating it just as importantly as the bigger/custom one he was doing when I left.

I have little shoulder caps too, (which may be one of my favorite parts) and both of my sleeves end organically. I didn't want any abrupt lines where tattoos begin or end. It's about what appeals to you as feminine.