polliwog

Excellent!! And jealous!

@Gingerninja Virginia Elwood just posted something about having a couple spots open up due to cancellations on her Instagram account.

I met some Canadians a while ago. I don't want to make them feel self-conscious or anything, but I heard an "eh?" within the first five minutes of conversation. Much to my delight. They may have been less charmed by the public inebriation on display in my fair city.

@Kurgana There is an interview with Beppe Strambini on this site, and a lot of international guest artists seem to pass through Ink Addiction. I know Verona is a long ways away from Sicily, though! Not sure what style you're into, either. But it sounds like an awesome shop, and one that I'd like to visit.

This: https://www.facebook.com/curlytattoo66/

Hahaha. My friend had a "tattoo shop" at her birthday party when she turned 4...I think I may have been a bit of a bad influence there. This is a great picture for him to look back on when he's older.

I compulsively edit EVERYTHING. Good on you for not doing that. Re birds, it would be a full back, butt included. Probably a long ways off but I sort of accidentally got a tattooer excited about it. And thank you! I am such a fan of your ongoing Diamond Club back and everything else tattoo!

I also really relate to everything you said there.

@beez I didn't mean "bad" in the sense of, oh, I hate my back fat (though I can roll with the best of 'em). It's more that picking begets picking, because compulsive pickers tend to worry away at the same flaws in their skin, which picking will obviously create more of. (Except that your fucked-up brain tells you that you're fixing the skin while you pick at it, plus it feels good in the moment.) So it's really a challenge to let the skin heal for long enough that it can then be tattooed. It also feels somehow lamer to have to explain than maybe self-healing scars, though I guess it is a variety of that. "Hi, my back looks like shit because I should probably be on Prozac."

@omeletta your son is the coolest!

Have you ever been to Blue Ribbon BBQ in MA? Curious if it meets your standards. I like the burnt ends and the brisket there.

No central AC yet. Apartment feels like the underside of a ballsac. Sorry.

I can't comment on inks etc. because I'm not a tattooer. But, regardless of whether modern inks are more colorfast than old ones or whatever, skin is still skin. The matrix of tissue that holds ink particles in place doesn't stay static forever. http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/07/the-real-reason-tattoos-are-permanent/374825/

Justin Bieber head on the butt crack

Some of the visual impact of that tattoo has to do just with knowledge of color theory, i.e. putting complementary colors, like orange and turquoise, next to each other. But yes, that's a fresh tattoo. A lot of styles that are popular on the Internet right now (like virtually everything featured on Buzzfeed) really depend upon the tattoos being fresh in the photographs. We don't know what that tattoo will look like in 10 years; certainly the colors will be much more muted, and some might fade faster than others. If you look at an actual bound portfolio in a shop, look for healed examples of an artist's work. I've gone back to local shops a couple times now so that the tattooer can take a photograph of a tattoo that I've healed. The livedinttattoos Instagram account is also great in terms of giving you an idea of the variety of ways a tattoo might age. I do sympathize with anyone who feels like they don't have access to a lot of healed examples of good tattoos in person because virtually nobody I hang out with regularly is interested in tattoos. Another good option might be to go to a convention; you'll certainly see all kinds of lived-in tattoos there...

Thinking of putting some badass fighting birds on my back, which is my other bad spot.

@HettyKet no tattoo over the area yet... but I hope to have Marie Sena put one of her ladies there next spring. I'm currently using @Fala's healing balm on that arm and it's making the roughness and discoloration look a lot better. (If any of you have some unloved, scabbed-up skin, it's pretty great.)

Okay.

I don't think we're going to save every single person who sees this board from what we perceive to be a bad idea. People who want simple walk-in or street shop tattoos can still get a tattoo that is more or less well done, even if it's an infinity symbol or a phrase that we might think is dumb. For that matter, I'm going to guess that plenty of tattooers who have posted here have spent many hours making tattoos like this one at various points in their careers. And learning from it.

Guys. How about we be kinder and humbler on the newbie threads? This is really tedious and frankly not fun to read at all.

I don't think that getting a small script tattoo that isn't to the taste of people on this board is such a terrible thing. Just go to someone who will tattoo it well and solicit his or her ideas on placement so that it's the appropriate size for the body part it's on.

Plenty of us are familiar with conceptual art. This is just a lousy concept.

You can go to an established artist (or an apprentice who works with an established tattooer) and pay them for this. Though.

I was just reading this thread and realized that I don't think I've ever put a picture of my little snake on here. It is very different from the rest of what's on this thread, but I love how it sits on my arm. Ron Wells did it a year ago. Both tattoos I have from him feature a lot of solid black and are sort of stealth tribal. Sorry about the bathroom photo.

@marley mission @Graeme I'll talk so much it will make you forget your pain! That sounds like an ambitious plan for the evening, but both of my appointments with Todd have finished on time, so hopefully you will be OK. Redemption is pretty close to Charlie's Kitchen in Harvard Square, which has a nice beer garden and alcohol-absorbing food!