Met with the county health inspector at the shop today. I took my test, did my interview, and demonstrated my knowledge of clean and sterile tattooing practices. Guess who got a perfect score? As of 1 pm eastern time, April 29th, I am a certified tattoo artist!

Tattoos hurt. Everywhere. It’s not a big deal. You’ll live through it.

Looks ok to me. Your skin moves more around the elbow than the upper part of the arm. You’re bound to take longer to heal close to the elbow joint in your arm. Give it a week. It’ll look fine. Nice tattoo by the way.

Jeff Gogue
His painterly style, can’t explain any better than that.
Chest piece (so I can see it, I thought maybe on my back, but I’ll never look at it there)

How about a portrait of Dio? That is metal in it’s most natural form.

Why not have a tattoo celebrating his life instead of a reminder of his death? I would run with the fishing idea and less with the death date and RIP. Did he have a favorite fish to catch? A favorite bait or lure? Even just a sign that says “gone fishin'” would be awesome. Just my two cents.

…not to mention kind of silly. Your arm is conical in shape. Unless someone is looking at you from a profile view there will always be visible areas of your tattoo. The theory works in 2D but not in real life. It will also limit what you can do as far as layout and execution.

Aaaaand….. flowers.

Your artist shouldn’t be using tap water for grey-washes. There is a much higher risk of bad foreign stuff lurking in tap water to be completely safe. I won’t go into further detail for fear of having my reply removed by the mods. Suffice it to say there are standard ways to make grey-wash and tap water isn’t the best way.

It’s still a bit dry and scabby. The red has faded a bit. Most of the red in thie picture is because it was just finished. I’ll post healed pics.

Love the “Buddy Buddha” idea. Clean up the lines and it’ll look great either color or black and grey.

Watercolors started.

The best software for designing tattoos is a tattoo artist that you talk to and give reference material to. That’s one of the things they get paid to do. Just go talk to one.

Newest idea. It’s going to be a painting soon.

It was a drawing my mentor did that I’ve been eyeballing for a while. Pun intended. My mentor wanted to try out this new ink, he walks me through the process, and I get to learn. I don’t see a negative. I have plans for most of my body. I don’t have any real plans for my left leg though, other than to just get neat looking tattoos or to let…[Read more]

Hand job

Nice blending in regards to your shading. I like that you are varying your line weight more as well. Let’s see some fairies and hearts too though. When you’re first tattooing expect to be designing a lot of smaller stuff that you wouldn’t normally draw.

When you do some color pieces I would suggest using Liquitex acrylic inks. They aren’t very…[Read more]

Some quick drawings done for people on this message board

My day job while apprenticing is remodeling homes for a guy that in turn flips them for profit. It’s a pretty messy sweaty physical job but I’ve been able to heal my tattoos just fine. Just try to keep them as free from dirt as you can. Wash it lightly with warm water if it does get dirty. Be sure to pat it dry with a clean paper towel and…[Read more]

I’ve had my ribs done. Not too bad. The worst spot for me was my wrist when I got my sleeve done. I’m not looking forward to my chest getting done. That’s not going to be for a while though.