ThatGuy

Thanks for the tips @Graeme and @kylegrey. I'll have a look at those and try to reach them.

Thanks bud. Have emailed the Smith Street guys, but not holding my breath. Will continue looking for some others to contact. Hope all the good ones aren't booked up yet - would be fun to get one there.

So who else is getting tattooed at this convention? I want to get a traditional style palm-sized one on my leg, but as a fairly tattoo noob I'm struck with almost too much choice between the artists. Gonna go through them all and start checking who got slots still, but any recommendations would be highly appreciated.

Thought that Amy deserves a post. My 1.5 year old frenchie.

Yeah, funny that... The deeper you get into the tattoo world, the smaller it gets. Your back-piece definitely solidified my decision on getting a battle tattoo from Stewart.

I've only just started to get some big work done. Will aim to look fairly balanced as far as arms and legs go. Most likely won't do anything other than classic traditional, but who knows...

Valerie does fantastic eagles. The photo has got some yellow distortion in the eagle heads, they're actually white-blueish.

Back-piece finished a few weeks ago. Valerie Vargas, Frith Street Tattoo, London

Don't worry too much about the problem with applying cream. I completely dry-healed my backpiece, never once applied anything to it. 2-3 showers per day and washing it with Dr Bronner's soap did the trick.

3-4 hour sessions, and they haven't been too bad. Some painful moments in this last one, but still surprised how much my body reacted a few hours after getting home. 24 hours in bed sorted me out though... Now just to endure the final healing.

Anyone else suffered from nausea and muscle-aches after a session? I had a couple of bad ones after having work done on my backpiece. First I thought it had something to do with not eating enough food beforehand, but it seems to be more in relation to how painful the session was. Something to do with the release of adrenaline I'm guessing? Would be interesting to hear about other experiences.

Valerie finished my backpiece yesterday. Had some serious post-tattoo nausea after this one. Glad it's finally done, but will miss the process.

I believe that most of that colour is from an eagle. I've actually never thought about it before, but now when I did, I realised that you can see it quite clearly.

I made the mistake of wearing a brand new white t-shirt to bed the night after getting lots of colouring done on my backpiece. Glad to say that it all came out in the wash.

Must. Not. Scratch. Back.

No doing sleeves, but have decided to include the background anyway because I like the coverage.

I'm currently in the process of finishing a backpiece and have decided to continue with my arms straight away. As the same artist will be doing the work I am considering joining the backpiece with the arm tattoos. Any thoughts on this? The alternative would of course be to do the arms separately and have a space in between, but I quite like the idea of full coverage around the shoulder area. So, you guys who have both back and arms covered, have you joined everything together or kept it separate? All thoughts welcome.