A detailed description of what’s happening at the Amsterdam Tattoo museum - donate, get involved!
This is important, if you love tattooing…not just profess too. This is our history and a truly incredible collection of objects.
(via ourendlessdays)
New ink 😄
Kat Von D is responsible for yet another tattoo tragedy.
I need to change my name from tattooedtruth y to tattooedtragedy.
Or surly-whiskey-drunk-old-school-tattoo-collector-and-get-off-my-goddamn-lawn-you-meddling-kids.
Seriously though, this is awful. And who the ever living fuck is Demi Lovato? Did Bieber have some asexual budding that spawned her or something? Because all the children on Tumblr are spazzing about this SHIT
You know how this blog is called (sleep wake hope and then)?
I got that tattooed on my foot back in August. It came out looking really shitty and now my hope is that it will completely fade away.
It’s on your foot. It obviously wouldn’t stay there forever.
And this, dear followers, is why you don’t tattoo the sides and bottoms of your feet or the palms and fingers of your hands.
I’m an absolutely MASSIVE Harry Potter fan, and it seemed fitting to get a reminder of my favourite ever quote from the books.
Done by Abz Mills at Pagan Ink Tattoo in Dunfermline, Scotland
I needed that laugh. Thank you SorryYouRuinedYourself. Best laugh I’ve had in a long time. Now I think my laughing scared my cat, so I’m going to go coax him out from under the church pew. (Yes, I have a church pew in my basement). But I wanted to say thank you for your incredible dose of humor.
adamsramblings asked: What's your favorite tattoo style and why? And which artist do you think does this style the best?
Oh, very tricky. I am so in love with realism and neo-traditional it’s not even funny. But having to choose… ah. Probably neo-traditional. It holds up better over time I suppose.
And it’s also a tie for my favorite neo-traditional tattooist. Probably Stefan Johnsson at the moment, but Dave Tevenal just needs to mentioned too.
huevoconchorizo asked: hello partner i was wondering if i could get some advice from you? see, i have been saving my money to upgrade my equipment and i finally have enough to get a new shader but at the shop i work im getting different opinions from everyone one of the artist told me to try a bishop rotary and another one said to stick to coils and get another soba, what do you think
I’d go with the SOBA. Rotary has it’s die-hard fans, but nothing in this world beats a SOBA machine.
The set up I’ll recommend to you is what Jeff Gogue uses. SOBA machines: a super tight 3 liner, a bugpin 7 liner, a #12 5 round shader, a bugpin 9 or 11 (curved), and a 17 curved bugpin (#10 for color and 08 for black and grey). Gogue also makes his own needles from Eikon. The .30 needles (#10) but he also uses the eikon #12 rounds.
the-dandy-cowboy asked: how can you do roses so that they are both classic, but don't look like flash? how would (or who would) you recommend doing a fox so it looks part-traditional american, and part the little prince illustration? would you recommend doing small or large for first tattoo? color or black and white? traditional style or watercolor/stippling/more modern?
To do roses that are both classic, but don’t look like flash, try pairing them with another element or subject matter that isn’t classic and is more unique to yourself. Also, different styles of art can help you in this regards too. More traditional tattoos can look like flash because they are drawn in that style and there are “rules” about how the style is drawn in order to give it that distinctive appearance (like heavy black, thick lines, classic color palette, and simplified style of rendering the shapes). Try neo-traditional. It has many of the good things about traditional, while incorporating different more flashy colors and illustrative techniques.
As for mixing traditional Americana and The Little Prince I wouldn’t, the two have an extreme discrepancy. The Little Prince is based on simple thin lines and pastel color scheme while traditional needs solid black lines and dark bold colors.
For a first tattoo I’d recommend something less on size than on placement and quality. Most first-tattoo people make the mistake of just walking into any old shop with no research and getting a tattoo on a whim or because they turned 18 and who are they to miss out on big kid stuff? Ergo, shitty tattoos. But a first tattoo in which you extensively research artists, art styles, and subject matters will remove those hazards, in which case the only thing I’d say to do is put your first tattoo somewhere where it’s not visible if you’re wearing pants and a short sleeved shirt. That way you can still enjoy your tattoo, but it doesn’t impact your work opportunities/how strangers treat you. After getting a first tattoo and getting hooked, then it’s okay to say “yes I want that half sleeve now because I am more informed and I know I can sit still during a tattoo”. (Because a lot of first timers are those goddamn giggly wiggly people who bitch and flinch and whine about how much it “hurts”. The more you move the more frustrated your artist gets and the more you fuck up your tattoo, so getting a tattoo out of the public’s eye is a better place to find out that you can’t sit still while a needle is punched into you.)
Oh I should mention though, that with size have the size fit that space of the body. No teeny tattoos on your back sort of deal. Nor would you want a pectoral tattoo that just sort of engulfs an odd amount of your chest that is too much to simply be a pec tattoo and not enough to be a chestpiece. Fitting the tattoo to the natural contours and form of your body works best.
As for styles or colors, that’s a personal taste thing. Get what you want and what you like.
abominablethings asked: I've heard a lot of varying opinions on this, and I'm new to being tattooed. Some of my friends feel like they're cheating on their artists if they get work done by another one. Is there some sort of etiquette to that? Or are my friends being overly cautious?
God no. You can have a favorite artist, but getting work done by multiple artists is fun, adds artistic variety to your skin, and can lead to great experiences. You build a relationship with your artist, they spend hours hunched over your skin, often seeing more of your skin than most people ever do, and stabbing into it with needles. Tattooing is very intimate in that fashion, and it takes a lot of trust. You are trusting this person with permanently marking your body, that’s pretty deep. So some people are wary about giving that trust to other artists so freely and I think that along with their built relationships is why they go back to the same artists so often.
But for me, I love getting tattooed by lots of different artists. Instead of always going back to the same artist I show my appreciation and my gratitude by wearing their work with pride and tipping heavily. You can’t really over tip a good artist. And if they are a favorite of yours, I’ve found it can be quite fun to tip or send small tokens of thanks. For instance on a trip to one of my favorite artists I brought him a 55 year old bottle of whiskey and a few animal skulls out of my collection. I’ve heard of people mailing their artists everything from international chocolates to new SOBA tattoo machines.
The only thing to keep in mind when you are getting tattooed by many different artists is to plan your skin extensively. I bear the artwork of dozens of my favorite artists, but all of it was very carefully planned and I did a lot of research and really talked to my artists to make sure they knew exactly what I was after. Each sleeve is done by one artist, but the rest of me is a very planned out patchwork. I pick similarly styled artists to tattoo next to each other. For instance one leg is realism and one leg is neo-traditional (which those two styles are about 95% of my tattoos, the other 5% being blackwork/black and grey realism). It’s a growing, living art collection for me that I can carry wherever I go. Ask yourself: if your body is an art gallery, do you want it showcasing one artist, or many?
Anonymous asked: Things in picture frames - fad? Timeless? What about when it's an almost-matching pair on feet/arms/legs?
Frames can be nice to, well, frame things. They can be nice ways to tie a composition into itself and make it very singular. When you have a frame surrounding an image you don’t really have to think about how the edges will blur, or contort, or flow into the body/other tattoos. In that manner it can often be a cop-out for lazy artists who don’t want to get creative in integrating the art of the tattoo to the human form or your existing tattoos/planned future tattoos. But frames, when done nicely, can pull things together in an aesthetically pleasing way.
As for a matching pair, I don’t really care for it. One frame on your body is enough right? The other compositions should stand for themselves I think, but then again, I am loathe to have the same thing tattooed on myself multiple times. Skin is a finite resource, limited and sacred, why waste it getting doubles of tattoos you already have? But then again, I’ve never been ultra crazy about symmetry, and to some people symmetry is more important than anything else.
Keep me preoccupied.
Anonymous asked: I was wondering what you thought of Adam Barton's work. I love his unique color palette but will certain colors he uses age well
I love a lot of Adam Barton’s work. His notorious color palette really works for certain tattoos, giving them a bit more flair and originality. But then some of it I think is hindered by his color choices, those colors if applied wrong can be just downright obnoxious. Lime green, red, teal, and yellow just don’t work for everything I think. And I think limiting your color palettes can really cripple any artist. A limited palette can be a fun challenge, or even a throwback to historical tattoos, or a way of unifying multiple tattoos around a person’s body. So it depends on how the colors are used, which colors, what imagery, and more. For instance, with the colors he is known for, extra red, yellow, and lime green with black shading can just look sickly. Which might just be the effect he was going for in some of his work.
As for his colors aging well, I’m not truly certain. Those yellows and greens will be the first to go, but the reds and blacks typically hold up well.
One of the pieces I did today
Oh god, I love your detail in the glass. Those extra little scattered highlights and shadows are fantastic and really give it more elegance and presence. Too often the hourglasses I see are nice, but very flat, this hourglass could never be called flat. Very well done.
design and tattoo by me
Have you ever bothered looking at a deer before? Because that might help when designing a tattoo of a deer.
Edit: I’m being an asshole. I’ve had a terrible day but that shouldn’t mean I’m completely without regard to proper critique form.
Your tattoo looks like very strange deer. The neck is too thick (and you’ve given it human neck muscles, deer have different connection of their muscles and a different shape). The muzzle is funky. And foreshortening is hard, I know, I know. But no tears over how hard art is. There is no crying in baseball, nor in art. Suck it up and work on it. Your deer also looks confused about what species it is. The antlers are red deer, but the ears and thick neck with short hair are more of a white tail deer. Red deer have very shaggy necks. If you’re going to tattoo a deer, pick a species and don’t Dr.Frankenstein them together. Red deer also have longer skinnier faces, white tails are the fat fucks of the deer world.
When in doubt, REFERENCE OUT! References are your friends. Don’t copy a reference, but use multiple references as guides for how something should look. Study your references, and work from them using the visual information.
Like below are two references that if used would have made your tattoo better:
See the details in the nose in the first one? A deer’s nose isn’t a solid triangle, it’s more of a black skin overtop of two giant nostrils.
And cheek bones/brow bones. Yes, deer have eyes on the sides of their heads, but those eyes are inside of sockets, and tattooing the shape of the face (like the sockets) is important for getting the likeness correct. The lines are lazy. To see what I mean about “lazy lines” please read this article “Lazy Lines: Notes from Walt Stanchfield’s Disney Drawing Classes”.
Such amazing talent to his artist and planning on his part
OH MY ODIN!!! this is a good buddy of mine Adam (not gonna drop his last name) and his torso was done by Mike Cole, and bio sleeve by Don McDonald! :D he also has a full leg sleeve by Adrian Dominic and Nate Kostechko and his other leg is by Dan Hazelton.
SO much tattoo envy. Go Adam, go!
