#40817
    poxphobia
    Participant
    @poxphobia

    I’m curious! Where do you find your ideas for ink?
    Today, it seems everything has been done. One quick google search and you’ll see someone has already done your idea.
    or maybe you stumble upon something amazing and breathtaking that’s so perfect for you, but.. someone already has it.
    How do you go about your ideas?

    I find myself stumbling upon mine – Sometimes I see something amazing, and think “I want -almost- that”, and go ahead and switch up the idea and come up with something new. Sometimes, like with my gasmask arm, the idea just came to me because of a song and a band, I drew it up and fell in love. And gave it to my artist, and he drew it again, and then I re-did it once more, and we agreed on something and it’s awesome.
    And tomorrow I’m getting a tattoo from a book, remakes of old school designs by the old classic artists. With fresh colors and all, and I can’t wait.
    Flash tattoos are generally a no-no, but with old school designs it seems okay for some reason… This time, for me, it sure is.

    But this is something I’m fascinated by – What’s your ink, and how did you end up with it? Not just meaningful, sad stories. Did you get the idea at a drunktard moment maybe? How did you go about it? 🙂

    #145289
    GrayCatLove
    Participant
    @graycatlove

    I’m lucky my primary artist is also a professional artist so he does a lot of the brain work.

    I guess I’ve always had a love of fine art since childhood. Originally, I just liked cherry blossoms and wanted a tattoo before I died. Beyond that, it’s been fueled mostly by the things I love: art, animals, culture.

    Tattoos have also served a second purpose for me, much like plastic surgery, they disguised severe and unwanted scars that might hinder my personal life. It’s a lot easier to say, “Ahhh, I’m a rebel,” then to discuss the personal. Or it is for me. 😉

    #145292
    KnightHawk
    Participant
    @knighthawk

    Random interesting phrases with no further direction tossed at my artist, The Almighty Troy Coe.

    For example, my two squids. My nickname used to be Squid. When I got my first squid, I had just read “The Zombie Survival Guide”, back before this huge zombie craze got into full swing, so I threw the phrase “Zombie Squid” at my man Troy to see what he’d come up with. It only covered the front of my arm, so I decided I needed another squid to balance it out, but it needed to be radically different. The steam punk aesthetic has always appealed to me, so I said “Steam Punk Cyborg Squid”, and damn did Troy deliver. It’s easily my most intense tattoo.

    Then there’s my wrist gauntlet. I asked for a bracelet of skulls about the size of a quarter each. When I showed up, Troy had drawn up this massive thing and I said “Fuck it. We’re doing THAT instead.

    Random interesting phrases thrown at Troy are my way of getting awesome ink.

    There are exceptions though. A few have stories. Like the one on my thigh. I met a girl….here actually. On this forum. Went by the screen name Peachiepoo. We fell in love. An intense, burning love. Our relationship was rocky as shit, but it didn’t matter. She was my girl. Then she died. On her thigh, she had a tattoo of the loony toon Gossamer laughing. After she passed, before me and her mother took care of her final business, I got a tattoo in the exact same spot of Gossamer crying. For the rest of my life, he’s going to be there mourning for my lovely girl, just like part of me always will be.

    Been 26 months. I’m engaged to another girl who’s helped to carry me through the loss, but damn I still miss her.

    Another one with a story is the Zombie Kermit the Frog on my ass. Yes. You read that correctly. See, I had been making cracks about getting a Kermit the Frog tattoo on my ass for years. YEARS. It always got a chuckle. But one day, a switch just flipped in my buddy Aaron’s head. He started screaming at me, “JUST GET THE DAMN FROG, OR SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY!”

    “If you’ll pay for it, I’ll get it.”

    He yanked out his wallet and put $300 into my hand right there on the spot. I forgot that Aaron was a self-made rich bastard by the age of 24. But I don’t back down, so I threw the phrase “Zombie Kermit the Frog” at Troy, and the rest is ass history.

    Love. Peace. Metallica.

    #145294
    buttwheat
    Participant
    @buttwheat

    I smoke a shitload of dope

    #145296
    KnightHawk
    Participant
    @knighthawk

    @buttwheat 133774 wrote:

    I smoke a shitload of dope

    I have no trouble believing this.

    Love. Peace. Metallica.

    #145297
    Sam-I-Am
    Participant
    @sam-i-am

    All my life I’ve been a doodler. All through school, most of the inside jobs I’ve had, I do it all the time. I must have sketched myself over a hundred times throughout planning for tattoo work. I had to draw nude women for a coworker as he thought it was strange that I was so good at drawing nude men. (I think hands are the hardest) He was pleased that I captured the “pie” so well.
    The ideas started out random. A lizard. Then that reminded me of our honeymoon in St. Thomas with thousands of lizards, flowers, and vegetation. I’ve always loved flowers thus my schooling in horticulture.
    The raptor idea was Lindsay Wilson’s. While doing my Rainbow lizard she casually mentioned that she would love to do a raptor. My son is definitely not into tattoos so I asked his girlfriend to draw up a few ideas. (she has a bachelor’s degree in comic art) I presented those to Lindsay, and she created her version using the drawings as references. The VW beetle was Anthony’s idea. The hippie dude was mine. Lindsay made him look like Anthony.
    As far as my leg, I specified only a few things. He’s done the rest. In three days I have five hours booked with Anthony, and Lindsay will be stopping in. Anthony suggested an ocean setting on my back with a giant octopus. That brought 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to mind. Now I’ll hand them a half dozen pictures and let them divide up my back and side. It will all tie together. Special meaning? No. I just like to see these creative minds go wild.
    I provide snacks, and actually dinner for Anthony and his young family. I have tons of electric trains from 40 years ago that I no longer use. I made up a set for his kids last Christmas, and I have one ready for this year too.

    Oh, we go to strip clubs on occasion.

    #145300
    jerryatrophy
    Participant
    @jerryatrophy

    I have a local appointment to fill in the test of my right ditch with my usual guy. No preconcieved ideas. I’ll go in an hour early and pull all his old sailor jerry books off the wall and see what I’m in the mood for. I don’t have much room on my left arm so its all just little stuff and filler really so I’m not very critical on it. Last time I did this I walked out with a choking cock (rooster sickos) on my knee. Well see what happens. I have zero problem looking thru the classic flash books and asking him what he can do with “this”. Maybe a kid slug. I dunno. Couple hours in the chair tomorrow.

    #145308
    GrayCatLove
    Participant
    @graycatlove

    @Sam-I-Am 133778 wrote:

    All my life I’ve been a doodler. All through school, most of the inside jobs I’ve had, I do it all the time. I must have sketched myself over a hundred times throughout planning for tattoo work. I had to draw nude women for a coworker as he thought it was strange that I was so good at drawing nude men. (I think hands are the hardest) He was pleased that I captured the “pie” so well.
    The ideas started out random. A lizard. Then that reminded me of our honeymoon in St. Thomas with thousands of lizards, flowers, and vegetation. I’ve always loved flowers thus my schooling in horticulture.
    The raptor idea was Lindsay Wilson’s. While doing my Rainbow lizard she casually mentioned that she would love to do a raptor. My son is definitely not into tattoos so I asked his girlfriend to draw up a few ideas. (she has a bachelor’s degree in comic art) I presented those to Lindsay, and she created her version using the drawings as references. The VW beetle was Anthony’s idea. The hippie dude was mine. Lindsay made him look like Anthony.
    As far as my leg, I specified only a few things. He’s done the rest. In three days I have five hours booked with Anthony, and Lindsay will be stopping in. Anthony suggested an ocean setting on my back with a giant octopus. That brought 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to mind. Now I’ll hand them a half dozen pictures and let them divide up my back and side. It will all tie together. Special meaning? No. I just like to see these creative minds go wild.
    I provide snacks, and actually dinner for Anthony and his young family. I have tons of electric trains from 40 years ago that I no longer use. I made up a set for his kids last Christmas, and I have one ready for this year too.

    Oh, we go to strip clubs on occasion.

    Usually at work when people are drug-seeking, I go, “Yes… Yes…. That sounds serious. Perhaps I should make you a referral,” and just doodle on a fucking clip board.

    #145382
    #145386
    Mistress_Of_Pain
    Participant
    @mistress_of_pain

    Wow, I’ve never actually thought about this!

    As far as my Ankh goes, it was something I always loved symbol wise. The Egyptian Symbol for Life, perfect right? So it was easy for that inspiration considering I didn’t want a normal, every day cross and the ankh always appealed to me.

    Now, you can see the original image that helped inspired my first piece on my left arm sleeve on my blog but it was an image I had loved and had saved for as long as I can remember. When I brought it to my artist he asked me if we could tweak it, make it our own and I told him “Go for it!” Of course the ending result was sooo much better than I had anticipated! The inspiration for my memorial piece is obvious. I had lost my grandpa January 13th, 2012. I needed something to memorialize him with. I always loved Lilies and they were present at the funeral itself. Originally I wanted something to combine my memorial piece with my cancer ribbon but my artist talked me out of it and instead I got two tattoos out of the deal. I looked up the meaning behind why lilies were present at funerals and what I found worked out perfectly. Plus adding the lyric from Alan Jackson’s song “Remember When..” that was also played at his funeral just made it perfect. As far as the cancer ribbon goes, we had played with this idea a little bit. I have an aunt who has been battling multiple cancers over her lifetime and I didn’t want to focus on just one color for one specific cancer. I looked it up and found that Lavender actually stood for “All Cancers” or “General Cancer Awareness”. My original idea with this was actually a butterfly’s wings with the cancer ribbon being right in the middle but I liked the idea he had better.

    The bellflower and hummingbird I actually randomly thought up. I needed something that would fit in with the rest of what I had going on and I always loved hummingbirds. Where we go camping a lot you always see them and the bellflower just helped bring the piece together. As for the ladybugs, simple. A symbol of luck and then the background we continued from my original piece.

    Now my other sleeve, the sleeve I call “Life After Death” was actually based off an image I had found. After my left arm was done, I thought it would be cool to have a different theme on the other arm. I wanted something darker, a bit more sinister and when I found the image of the skull with the butterflies coming out of the head, I knew that was it! I played around with different ideas in terms of what I wanted on my inner arm and when I told my artist about it he really liked my hourglass idea. He’s pretty much had full reign on all of my tattoos besides my ankh even though he made it better, at least in terms of designs. I give him my ideas and he makes them reality. I had other ideas for my more current sleeve but he definitely helped change my mind after seeing the finished drawings!

    So yea I guess you could say my inspiration comes from times in my life or people in my life as well as art and things I love in general.

    #145389
    peterpoose
    Participant
    @peterpoose

    My goldfish died and they al stemmed from that:)

    #145397
    Call_me_Lola
    Participant
    @call_me_lola

    My hummingbird and hibiscus came from me saying that having a Yorkshire terrier is like living with a hummingbird. So instead of her furry little face I got a beautiful bird tattoo. The peacock came from an image I found and couldn’t stop going back to look at, so I had my local artist do up her own awesome version of it.

    My newer pieces came from finding great artists and letting them find inspiration. I only gave them the subject matter, masquerade type masks. It has worked out pretty well for me so far. 🙂

    And the next appointment will be a little different. While searching out masquerade mask examples I found some amazing photography by Kimberly Joanne Sinclair. Her art just speaks to me. So I got her permission to have a piece tattooed, but couldn’t choose only one image so I sent the artist five different pictures (two are masks the other three aren’t) and told him to pick one and surprise me. He is very excited to do the piece, and I’m dying to see which one he chose. I find out in 24 days. And counting.

    It will truly be an international tattoo. Original photo by a British girl in her 20s tattooed by an American fellow in his 30s onto me, a Canadian in my 40s.

    #145399
    GrayCatLove
    Participant
    @graycatlove

    @peterpoose 133877 wrote:

    My goldfish died and they al stemmed from that:)

    Oh sure, make me the insensitive person who just wants tattoos because they look cool. :p

    P.S. The “thanks” was for NOTHING! :p Geddit? Geddit?

    #145405
    peterpoose
    Participant
    @peterpoose

    @GrayCatLove 133888 wrote:

    Oh sure, make me the insensitive person who just wants tattoos because they look cool. :p

    P.S. The “thanks” was for NOTHING! :p Geddit? Geddit?

    Lol yes the shallow person that you are!

    #145416
    GrayCatLove
    Participant
    @graycatlove

    @peterpoose 133894 wrote:

    Lol yes the shallow person that you are!

    I’m, like, American, and stuff. It’s totally not my fault.

    Well, shallow isn’t the worst thing I’ve been called tonight … Or.called someone. Good.times at work. Three more days.

    Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 16 total)

    You must be logged in to create new topics.