sophistre

My arm isn't done, and I've only really started on one, but I can actually contribute! So I shall. :) Taking pictures of my own arm is hard, and I suck at it. There are individual pictures of these in my gallery, though, anyway!

I was really late in coming to an appreciation of traditional designs (aside from traditional Japanese, which I have always loved). What sold me on traditional sleeves was the interesting way in which individual pieces become more than the sum of each individual tattoo...it becomes this collective aesthetic that I find so fascinating, in addition to being a very cool collection of individual images.
I mention this because I have similar feelings about 'masculine' and 'feminine' aesthetics. (I'm also one of those people who thinks a man or woman can wear whatever the hell they want and still be masculine and feminine if they want to be, but that's a discussion of a slightly different variety. For the purposes of this post, I'm just using the generally accepted definitions of those words.) I think whether something reads as 'masculine' or 'feminine' in the traditional sense depends mostly on general presentation. There are tons of pictures out there of women wearing tough, aggressive traditional work, but they dress or present themselves in a way that's still super-girly and feminine. I think this look is amazing.
Of course, there'll always be people out there who just find tattoos in general 'unfeminine' or whatever, buuut. That's really more about them, imo.

I had a poetry prof in university a million years ago who said something on the first day of class that I think applies to so many other things in life, and maybe it's relevant here, I dunno. He was addressing the perception of many freshmen that learning how to scan poetry, learning the rules of it, didn't matter, when so many of them took a shine to poetry after discovering e.e. cummings or Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock -- in the case of the latter, mistakenly believing that it was free verse, which it actually isn't. But that mistake underlined his point, which is this: until you're familiar with the rules of a thing, until you understand the hows and whys of that thing, which often entails becoming familiar with its major players through history...you can't really meaningfully deviate from those rules.
He said that he thinks it's important to break rules, but it's even more important to understand why you're breaking them when you do it. You start with the foundations, and then your choices have context and meaning, whatever choices you make afterward.
Maybe this doesn't apply to tattooing, I don't know; I'm still learning...but I find that most people with knowledge of a subject will assume that a new person discarding the fundamentals of any given thing are doing themselves or the thing a disservice, for lack of having the knowledge to know any better. Maybe that's not always true; maybe a new person can just intuit those things and make excellent choices blindly. It does seem rather more unlikely, though.

Thank you!! We actually just finished an unplanned second day of color. I would've posted something yesterday, but I figured I'd wait for today. Suppose I oughta crosspost it to the Lowdown, but here you go:


To be honest, the pictures just don't do the actual colors any justice at all...they get yellowed out. The blue with the red/orange is so amazingly vibrant.

Personally, even though I'm totally wrecked right now, I'm so glad that we powered through it, because the absolute worst spots for me have been the upper back between my shoulderblades, and also just below the nape of my neck. And now they're done! Probably worth the shocky-tattoo-flu feeling I'll have for a few hours tonight. I'll be right as rain again tomorrow, though. :)

Here frands:
Feeling pretty tattoo-flu-y, but I have a steak on the way, and then it's time to drink every water and sleep every sleep. So happy that we finished the areas that were the most painful for me during lining, though.

Couldn't be happier.

I think for most people this won't look like much has been done, but oh well! All of the black/shading, with the exception of some clouds we're going to add, is now done. All of the lining, too. We had to line two more dragon feet and I thought I was going to die. If I never see another liner that size again, it'll be too soon! So now we get to start color after this, and I can't wait. 

Greg Whitehead and all that.
 

Well, now that PAX is over and I've had two days to sleep it off, I can get around to doing internet stuff.
@beez and I had a super fun time hanging out at Liberty a bit ago, because we decided we should probably go and get tattoos. Here is mine, by Christopher Ayalin:

Good times! Spent PAX wandering around the exhibition hall feeling like the leg of my jeans on that side was full of mosquitoes, though. Ha.

Hokay, cross-posting by request, cos SeeSea is such a flatterer. I was going to wait until Greg posted the pictures he took of the new stuff, but he may not. Sun came out today when I was about to head to the gym, so I tried to get some myself.
I got a diving girl, and we started a cobra, though we didn't finish it. They're looking a little bit foggy/chalky because I peel fast; they'll probably start flaking by tomorrow. It makes it hard to see the blue details in the diving girl, sadly. Sorry for the terrible angles!


These links are just an overview of the whole thing, before we added the cobra.
https://instagram.com/p/1gugZ7TBPK/
https://instagram.com/p/1guZOxTBO-/

Upper inside of the arm tonight. Feels like burning. With Greg Whitehead, as usual! A fun panther-leopard with a Tibetan shell.

Starting to close in on it with this arm. Room for two modest/smallish pieces and then just filler after that. Crazy.

Congrats, Bunny! I imagine finally getting that tattoo after seven years of waiting is a very satisfying feeling.
Greg and I didn't get to two tattoos last night, since we got an unavoidable late start. We did go with the creepy Lo Pan hand holding a dragon that we were joking about the last time I was there. It's pretty much all a result of talking about Big Trouble in Little China with he and his coworker when I was the last one in the shop on my last appointment.

The people who said they didn't think the elbow was too bad are all insane. Or they have magical elbows.

More fun stuff on the arm with Greg. Took the photo from his instagram. Feels weird to include something this little this week when there's so much crazy stuff on my instagram from the Bay Area convention, but oh well!
The trend of 'never actually doing what we previously planned on' continues. At this point I kinda hope it always does. And now I am done until the end of November!

Tattoo number two today! With Greg Whitehead again, photo from his instagram...not a great shot but it's good enough!

Sounds like I'm coming back in a week to put a rose on my elbow, too. I'm guessing that one's gonna be fun.*
*not fun

I got a thing today. Hard to believe it too me almost 33 years to finally start. A fun Percy Waters bird from Greggletron/Greg Whitehead at Scapegoat Tattoo. I stole the picture from his instagram.

Side note: I really appreciate this forum. I went to my appointment totally prepared and actually knowing more than the average bear (which is still only a very little, admittedly), and he kept asking me 'are you sure this is your first tattoo?' He kept talking about how pumped he was to work on somebody who'd give him creative license, who knew about Good Tattoos and what makes them good, and...yeah. It made me feel really good. I'm pretty sure I learned all of that here. He would probably thank the forum too if he could. Haha.
Booked my next appointment for October. IT BEGINS.

“A dog can never tell you what she knows from the
smells of the world, but you know, watching her,
that you know
almost nothing.” 
― Mary Oliver, Dog Songs
With all of the craziness going on in the world right now, I swear this tiny fat is all that keeps me sane sometimes.

 

 

I have a tattoo that I still don't love, but I don't hate it anymore, because someone here gave me the best possible advice. If you live with it for a while and your feelings never change (because sometimes it takes a while to get used to them, I suppose), then:
Get more tattoos.

I surrounded it with something by another tattooer that I love. He made his framing of it work with what it was, and now I don't hate it. I still wish I'd gotten something else there and listened to my gut instincts when I saw the stencil on, but I also learned a whole lot about a whole lot of things as a result of getting a tattoo I didn't like, so I guess it's as much a part of the experience as any of my other tattoos now. Maybe more. (Weirdly, a lot of people tell me it's their favorite of my tattoos. I cannot fathom why, but it just goes to show you -- you never know.)

FWIW, I think it's nice!

I said a similar thing on here about a year ago when my boss at the time made some comment about me being 'pretty heavily tattooed'. Sure, compared to him and other people in the office I had a lot of tattoos. But compared to people here or people I hung out with I was still pretty green. 
Now I've gotten something on my ribs and that was a personal landmark. May sound weird but now I feel like I've graduated a level in being tattooed. Soon  I too will go below the elbows. For some reason I felt that I needed to have some torso work done before I did that though. 
 

So, I'm in Atlanta for a software conference and it let out earlier than I expected and I found myself with an afternoon with nothing to do. Browsed the interwebs for shops close by and didn't see anything promising. Just as I was about to give up and found one that looked good and ran over and got this done. It is a really bad pic but you get the idea. It wraps a bit so I doubt I will ever rally get a good shot. 
Tattoo by Stenvik Moström @stenviking_libertytat2
 
 

Mr. Oliver Peck was visiting in Asheville yesterday at Hotstuff and i was able to get in for a quick oneshot. 

I snagged this from Benny Haft over at Allied last week. 
 
I finally finished my torso after five years, done by Ian Dana Camp (formerly of Good Faith in Boston) currently at Adventure Tattoo in Nashville. He was all booked up in Boston before his move, but I luckily caught him doing a guest spot in Philly right after he moved.
 

Sometimes they don't turn out how we plan it out and sometimes we set the expectation very high for how we want that tattoo to look. But I think you're tattoo turned out very nice. Simple and readable.
You could add some green in the leaves and re-colour in the lily to make the design look a bit more finished. Or pepper some black/shading/smoke to increase the contrast and make it look less like a sticker. Re-working a tattoo always carries risk of making it worse. Talk to your tattooer, most will be happy to help you go from :\ to :)
"The tattoo is done now" - I'd leave it, accept and live with it, enjoy it for what it is. Use the experience to inform your next tattoo. 

Right foot nearly superficially healed. Ready for more tattoos, but it'll be a while. Had to replace my vehicle since it was totaled. Oh, surprise life expenses, how I dislike you!

This was done late last night, still needs a little finish work. The reaper is clutching a human heart, homage to my close call last October.
 

I am by no stretch of the imagination even half as tattooed as most of the people here, but even my personal experience has taught me that all of these things are really individual and there just aren't any rules about it. Examples:

The tops of my thighs didn't hurt, really, but the outside, over the IT band, hurt like a sonofabitch. All of them healed REALLY well, though -- no scabbing, not really any pain, and they barely even peeled. Contrarily, most people's complaints about where they've been tattooed on their backs, the worst spots, were not the worst spot for me; mine was in a weird spot between my shoulderblades -- not even the bit in the crease of my butt/thigh could compare with it, and that was no picnic either! My back has also taken a shockingly long time to get to a 'settled' heal state, where the lines aren't super raised, too...it's all just depends on the person. Trying to predict what anybody else is gonna feel seems like a fool's game to me. Plus, some people just do not feel pain like other people do, and that is science fact.

Anyway, this thread is about thigh tattoos, so here are mine! I'm including a healed pic of the one that @cltattooing did on me, too, since I don't think I ever sent her one!
It's very difficult to take pictures of your own thigh tattoos without warping them.
 
 
 

Got back from a holiday in Jamaica and upgraded my tan.
Dragon Ball by Scott Rusnak at Lucky Strike Tattoo, Edmonton, AB. 
FYAH BUN
came pretty close to passing out on this one, stressful spot for both me and Scott, but we did it !

I haven't posted in a while, but I got this done by Topper in Philly earlier today. So happy with it. This is my first highly visible tattoo on my forearm, too.