Original Permanent Tattoo: October 2008

TRADITIONAL LOS ANGELES

HERE IS A CLIENT THAT WANTED TO GET SOME OF MY TRADITIONAL WORK. BROADS,ANGELS AND CLOWNS ARE NOT ONLY ICONS THAT I'M KNOW FOR, THEY ARE TRADITIONAL ICONS THRU LOS ANGELES.

I have featured a lot of Jessica's work before. The previous post here will link you back to earlier posts.

This seemed an appropriate piece for Halloween. It is on the other side of the leg that features Beetlejuice holding a pumpkin. You can see the pumpkin in the photo.

The image is of a child in a ghost costume holding a rock and a paper sack. It's based on a scene from "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown". A bunch of kids are comparing their goodies and Charlie reaches into his bag and sadly proclaims "I got a rock."

Happy Halloween everyone! And thanks to Jessica for sharing her ink!!

Here's a little "I got a rock" bonus:

HERE IS A PROGRESS FLIK.. STAY ToONed FOR THE LATEST SESSION, JUST WAITING FOR IT TO HEAL.

A cold and dreary day drove me underground on Tuesday, as I spent some of my lunch hour inkspotting, and meeting some new tattoos.

Since it was Tat-Tuesday, it only seemed fitting that I met a father and son, Amtrakking from Florida up to Boston, who had four tattoos apiece.

I met Charlie first, who had a tiger on his forearm. However, he offered up this piece on his right bicep instead:

As a parent with child-inspired ink, I certainly appreciated this tattoo which honors the birth of his youngest son, Derry.

He wanted to do a tribute, but didn't want to do a portrait, which is a popular method for doing so. Instead, he went for the footprints, name and birth date.

Whereas a portrait is a snapshot in time, footprints and/or hand prints are a record of your child's beginning, and a literal imprint of part of their flesh on one's own. There's something remarkable about the historical record contained therein, like the door jamb in the family home that displays the height-marks of the child, growing over the years.

This piece was inked by "Old School" at AK's N Chevrolets in Hollywood, Florida.

I can't find an active link for the shop, and it appears as it was renamed Almost Famous 2 Tattoos (not to be confused with Almost Famous Tattoos in Miami).

Check back in the coming days to see the tattoo offered up by Charlie's older son Jason, that ties in to this piece as well.

Thanks to Charlie for sharing his little piece of family history here on Tattoosday!

EYE OF THE TIGER!!

HERE IS A BACK PIECE I DID A WHILE BACK. HE WANTED TO PUSH THE ENVELOPE BY GETTING A BIG ASS TIGER. BACKPIECES ARE ALWAYS A PROCESS. DANIEL ALSO WENT ON TO GET TWO SLEEVES. HE IS MY HERO...

LIFESTYLE C.C. COTTON CADI

CHECK OUT PART OF THE MURAL I JUST DID FOR ONE OF MY CLUB BROTHERS ON THE FAN SHROWD OF HIS 1979 COUPE DE VILLE. I MURALED ALL THE JAMS OVER 7 YEARS AGO. LOOK OUT FOR FLIKS OF THE PROGRESS ON THE REST OF THE CAR.

I technically didn't meet Ryan, but he did respond to a flier I passed out. I gave it to his girlfriend, we're guessing around 34th Street in Manhattan, she passed it to him, and he e-mailed me the following photo:

Initially, all he told me was "It's a Derek Hess piece. It's my blood around it in the ... photo. It was done by Nick [Males] @ Silk City Tattoos".

Of course, I know inquiring minds would want to know more, so I asked him for more specifics.

"It's a piece of art that Derek Hess did [it's entitled "Hemorrhage"].
I have the print on my wall in my room, among others by him...this is just my favorite one. My girlfriend was getting her garter done on her leg and I had asked [Nick] if he could do it. He said yeah, so when she went for her second sitting, I got mine done. I think it took about 3 hours, theres a lot of detail in it. The black didn't hurt much but the blood was the worst part, non-stop pain with little to no breaks. A lot of fun."

Work by Nick at Silk City Tattoo has appeared on the blog previously here.

Thanks to Ryan for sharing his body art here with us on Tattoosday!

Gods N Gangsters!

THE FIRST TIME HOMIE CAME THRU HE WANTED TO GET SOMTHING ABOUT HIS CULTURE. THIS TIME HE WANTED TO SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THE STREETS.

I had seen Eryn before in the vicinity of 39th and Broadway and wanted to ask her about her tattoos. When I finally got the opportunity, she rolled up her right sleeve to reveal this incredible tattoo:

Eryn is a professional knitter and works with yarn on a daily basis (see some of her artsy stuff here). A friend of her designed this piece for as an homage to her vocation, although Eryn admits it exemplifies her "dorkitude".

This skull, capped with yarn, boasts knitting needle crossbones:

It's a brilliant piece and was inked by Alex Vidaud at Nautilus Tattoo in Hartford, Connecticut.

Thanks to Eryn for sharing her awesome ink with us here at Tattoosday!

CHECK OUT ALBA AND HER NEW BACKPIECE. SHE WANTED TO START OUT WITH THE WINGS ON THE LOWER PART OF HER BACK THEN MOVE ON TO THE WARRIOR AND FAIRY. SHE IS SO DOPE AND ALWAYS BRINGS A FAT BAG A CANDY FOR EVERYONE HERE AT THE SHOP.

An Interlude: Third Time's a Charm

Last week I had a bizarre lunchtime walk on Thursday. I met a woman outside of Macy*s who had an interesting neck tattoo. She seemed like a willing participant until the older woman standing with her kept repeating that what I was doing was "weird". The tattooed woman began to appear uncomfortable, so I bowed out gracefully, handing her a flier and moving on.

A while later I stopped another woman with a really cool pin-up on her arm. She said I'd stopped her before and thanked me, but wasn't interested. I vaguely remembered her after the fact, but couldn't pinpoint when or where I may have met her before.

Inkspotting can be streaky, and I considered quitting for the day, but I was determined to give it one more try. It was then that I met Melanie. In fairness to her, and to give her tattoo the spotlight it deserves, her ink is posted below (here).

As I mentioned above (here), Melanie crossed my path on a day last week when I had been having some bad luck with inkspotting.

However, when I saw her on 34th Street across from Macy*s, I had to talk to her about her tattoos.

What caught my eye first was her chest piece, two traditional Sailor Jerry designs, including a near replica of the neck piece sported by Buddy Nielsen of Senses Fail.

She told me an artist named Kenny up in Kingston, New York had inked the chest piece, but instead of photographing that, she offered up her stomach piece instead:

The reason for her offering this other piece is that it was tattooed by the artist she is currently working with, Cookie, at Pop's Tattoo Emporium in Kingston.

Melanie got her first tattoo at sixteen and fell in love with the traditional style. When I asked her how many she had, she had the typical response of the heavily-inked: she wasn't sure.

The guns and roses along the waistline are a traditional motif and part of her desire for ink is to fill in space, to keep working with the body's canvas. The sheriff's badge exemplifies this, as she noted it was added as an afterthought.

The "City of Sin" identification on the badge is consistent with the piece's theme, and it artistically brings the whole tattoo together, centering the focus at the ends of the gun barrels, and providing a stronger sense of balance in the design.

Thanks so much to Melanie for sharing her traditional holsters with us here on Tattoosday!

Vasantham Central

Hello Everyone !!

Immortal Tattoos, Singapore will be featured on Vasantham Central on the 23rd October 2008 @ 10PM

This is the first ever appearance on the media (Locally) by Immortal Tattoos, Singapore.

Do check it out !!

L.A. BAGGER

CHECK OUT THE HOMIE JON KRASH STREET GLIDE. HE IS ALSO A MEMBER OF LIFESTYLE C.C. THESE FLIKS WERE TAKEN FOR A MASS APPEAL MAGAZINE IN THE RIDES AND RIMS SECTION. I DID THE MURAL A FEW MONTHS AGO THE HOMIE LET ME DO WHAT I WANTED TO DO. DANNY D DID THE PINSTRIPING AND THE Foto:estevanoriol.com

HERE IS A CLOSER LOOK AT RUBEN WHO ROLLS IN SLEEPER MODE. HE ALWAYS KNOWS WHAT HE WANTS AND LOCKS DOWN HIS APPOINTMENT...

THE EXPERIENCE 3

Round 2 from SkidRow Tattoo on Vimeo.
THIS IS THE HOMIE RUBEN B. YOUNG RUBEN IS A BEAST WHEN IT COMES TO GETTING INK DONE. EVERYTIME HE COMES THRU HE LOCKS DOWN THE WHOLE DAY. NOTE: A TATTOO THIS SIZE DOES NOT GET DONE IN ONE SESSION. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!!

Jessica's Back, Sharing Tattoos 51 and 52

I met Jessica back in June, prior to a Pearl Jam concert, in front of Madison Square Garden. She is an artist in her own right, doing a lot of the work her self, using her own kit and mirrors. Check out the original post here. I followed up with a post of more of her work here. I had a third post planned, as she had sent me some more photos of new work at the end of July.

I recently reconnected with her via e-mail and she responded with follow-up photos of the July pics, plus a whole bunch of others she has worked on since.

I am easily overloaded by too much information so I am going to try and space Jessica's work out over time and give her work the attention it deserves.

I'm going to start looking at the two pieces Jessica sent me back in July:

At the time, she advised me that she had "just finished starting [tattoo] #51 (Beetlejuice holding a jack o' lantern which I've wanted a really long time." She had just had "session one of a dragon started by Joe Matisa from il Bacio Tattoo in Trenton...he'll finish coloring it in after i get back from my vacation...".

So that was then, this is now.....

Jessica expanded a little more:

Beetlejuice is on my right leg. [I] always loved the movie and show. I've said if I ever got married, it would be awesome to wear Lydia's red dress, dress as Lydia and find me a Beetlejuice groom! and to have a big Tim Burton-style costume ball reception. Fall is my favorite time of the year. The leaves. The weather. All the spooky hayrides and haunted houses... Halloween!!!

[As mentioned above,] Joe Matisa of il Bacio Tattoo in Trenton, NJ did my dragon. That's on the left leg. It's a total custom freehand design he came up with. All I came up with was the awesome color scheme. The rest was the amazing Joe's work. I plan to put an Ed Hardy dragon next to it myself, which shall be my most ambitious idea to tackle so far....

Thanks again to Jessica for sharing her awesome work with us here on Tattoosday!

FaceBook Group !!

Hello all !!

Immortal Tattoos, Singapore has now launched a group on Facebook.com

Do join in the fun !!

Click here : Immortal Tattoos, Singapore

This isn't the first Long Island tattoo here on this blog (see Ian Jones' post here), but it is the first specifically marking one place on Long Island.

This tattoo belongs to Dave, who told me that he and about 8 or 9 friends share the exact same piece, "geographically correct".

There's not much to this piece other than that it is an homage to his home in Levittown, a hamlet in the Town of Hempstead located on Long Island in Nassau County, New York. If one is not familiar with the place, it's worth a perusal of their wikipedia page here. The historical significance of Levittown as one of the first planned suburbs is generally undisputed.

Dave's friends had their hometown tribute inked at Skin Deep Tattoo in Levittown itself. Dave's piece was done at East Coast Tattoo & Body Piercing in Bethpage which, he informed me, has relocated to Reno, Nevada.

I have a deep respect for geographic tattoos, as they say much about a person, and their permanent presence on the body means that the place journeys with the individual, even after that person has moved on to other locales.

Thanks to Dave for sharing his Levittown tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

X-BOX/ V.I.P EVENT

SINCE THE FIRST X-BOX EVENT WE HOSTED ITS BEEN CRAZY HERE IN THE WAITING ROOM OF MY TATTOO SHOP. THERE HAS BEEN SOME SERIOUS SESSIONS OF HALO 3, NINJA GAIDEN, SKATE... AND A GANG OF OTHERS. IF YOU GOT ONE OF THESE IN YOUR SPOT THEN YOU KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT. IF YOU KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT THEN YOU NEED TO CHECK OUT THE LATEST X-BOX EVENT WE ARE HOSTING. CLICK ON THE FLYER BELOW TO VIEW DETAILS.

I spotted Jerome at the corner of 31st and 7th Avenue talking with a friend.

He offered up the piece above (one of his nine tattoos) with the disclaimer that the top end had to be redone, due to some unfortunate ink running.

Regardless of the small imperfection, it's a pretty sweet tattoo.

The piece is based on the artwork featured on the spines of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series.

Jerome was quick to point out, it is not a Guns N' Roses tattoo, which it often is mistaken for. The artwork in question, for example, it is seen at the base of the spine of the sixth book in the series, below:

I have not read the books in which The Gunslinger is a major character, but I know that fans of the series are fierce in their love of the novels.

This was inked by Jon Jon at Cutting Edge Body Arts in Manhattan. Work from Cutting Edge has appeared before on Tattoosday here.

Thanks again to Jerome for sharing his ink with us here on Tattoosday!

MR. CARTOON x THE LAST LAUGH

THIS IS A SNEAK PREVIEW AT ONE OF THE DESIGNS THAT IS ABOUT TO BE AT THE LAST LAUGH. ALL MY DESIGNS ARE MADE EXCLUSIVE FOR THE LAST LAUGH AND A COUPLE ARE AVAILABLE ON MY WEBSITE. www.mistercartoon.com
BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR A SICK NEW LINE UP OF DESIGNS TO DROP REAL SOON.

THE LAST LAUGH
129 E 6TH ST
L.A. CA 90014
213.488.0313

Religious imagery is among the most popular of themes in tattoo art. There is, to the shrinking minority of people who don't like tattoos, a greater level of acceptance of Christian-themed body art.

[Jewish tattoos are coming along, but the majority of Jews have fundamental issues with ink on Jews. Islamic tattoos are less common, and I can't speak to their acceptance. Eastern religious tattoos may be the most popular of religious ink, but there is a greater understang of body art when it comes to Hindu and Buddhist themes. But I digress.]

I generally avoid talking to people about full sleeves, but when I started talking to Jesse while we were browsing the books at the Chelsea Salvation Army store, it was clear that his right sleeve, which continued onto his chest, was the most important work he had.

Jesse's ink is a reflection of his faith. It is inspired by religious images that he has come across while visiting churches in Europe. He couldn't give me the specific locations of the art which inspired his work (Rome, Paris), but I'd be happy to hear from readers who may recognize the
work.

Aside from the obvious depictions of the Virgin Mary and Jesus, Jesse also pulled up his shirt to show me the most recent of his ten tattoos, which was the extension of his sleeve into his chest:

All of this work was done by Mike Pastore at Masterpiece Tattoo in Staten Island, New York. Work from Masterpiece has appeared previously here.

Thanks to Jesse for sharing his tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

Original Permanent Tattoo

Laman

TRADITIONAL LOS ANGELES

More of Jessica's Ink: Halloween Post

PROGRESS!

Charlie Honors The Birth of His Youngest Son

EYE OF THE TIGER!!

LIFESTYLE C.C. COTTON CADI

Hemorrhage: Ryan's Derek Hess Piece is Bloody Awesome

ARCHIVES

Gods N Gangsters!

Eryn's Yarn Skull

SPREADING HER WINGS!

An Interlude: Third Time's a Charm

Melanie's Traditional Revolvers

Vasantham Central

L.A. BAGGER

A CLOSER LOOK!!

THE EXPERIENCE 3

Jessica's Back, Sharing Tattoos 51 and 52

FaceBook Group !!

Representing Levittown

X-BOX/ V.I.P EVENT

Jerome Sports a Dark Tower Tattoo

MR. CARTOON x THE LAST LAUGH

Jesse's Religious Experience

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