Tattoos
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Got 3 more bits done to fill in the major gap on the inner bicep of the Stoic sleeve, as I’ve taken to calling it:
#1
Marcus Aurelius had very cosmopolitan attitudes for his time, believing that all rational creatures were made for one another’s mutual benefit and for the common good. He said “that which is not good for the bee hive cannot be good for the bees”. So we riffed on Sailor Jerry’s Sea Bees tattoo to have our bee construct the hive, rather than mow down the USA’s enemies with a Tommy gun:
#2
While the earlier Greek Stoics were quite partial to binary dichotomies- “he who is not wise is a fool”, etc - the Roman Stoics were more accepting of the fact that we are imperfect. They posited the Sage as the ultimate, but unattainable, wise man (according to their philosophy, natch) to whom we should aspire. But recognising that we will never reach that point, we should aim to always be a work in progress. Hence, a trad style butterfly, which is itself unfinished, a work in progress.
#3
A trad style tattoo of my dog in full flight, modelled after Jerry’s cartoons of animals running. The Stoics were more interested in a practical philosophy than mere words, excoriating those that are all talk: “On no occasion call yourself a philosopher, and do not speak much among the uninstructed about theorems, but do that which follows from them. For example, at a banquet, do not say how a man ought to eat, but eat as you ought to eat.”
No other dog has yet been able to catch my dog when he is in full flight. So he kinda represents to me the idea of leading by example. Plus he certainly lives his little dog philosophy every day. Plus I wanted to have a tattoo of him somewhere. Now he can always remind me of the above quote.
We also got the lines and some colour work done on a cover up of an old tribal tattoo. But the purple we needed didn’t arrive, despite my guy ordering with Saturday delivery. So I’ll share that once the final colours are in, in around a month.
Take the dive...
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Got my cover up finished today.
What we were covering up:
After adding a layer of a skin tone to knock the black back a bit:
After doing the line work and colour on the leaves about a month ago, and before we got started today:
And the final result:
I love the end result. It’s so much better than my old crappy, I-just-turned-18 tribal that I got in the mid-noughts.
Once this has healed we might need to a touch more shading and highlighting if the tribal ends up being a bit more visible than we’d like, but he’s done such a good job with making the design fit the shape of what was there that it is, for now at least, practically invisible unless you know what you’re looking for.
Doing a fourth layer on some spots, like the pink on some select petals, was rough…
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Been on a cartoon kick lately.
Hawaiian Donald Duck by Trevor Taylor done last night at Smith Street:
Popeye by Moon done a couple weeks ago at Greenpoint Tattoo:
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Whuff, the ribs. I hope you'd had your spinach going into that one...
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Finally fixed a 15-year-old mistake over the weekend.
Blastover by Chad Koeplinger at Adventure Tattoo:
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Looks dope. I like the strong, classic design.
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Snuck this little rosebud behind my ear the other day.
Done by Jason Ochoa at Greenpoint Tattoo Company:
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@EdH I love your stoic sleeve idea!
I've also been back to my tattooer... Took about 3h of brutal pain but had to stop. I didn't expect the back to be that painfull.
(this is an image of him doing a freehand drawing on my back before starting the actual work.)Of course this is going to take about 40h to complete and I doubt it'll be done before the end of 2024 but the idea is based on the work 'duivels die mij sarren' by James Ensor. It's about being surrounded by your demons all the time, but having to resist and rise above them.
I know the visual is a far cry from Ensor's work with the skull and all but the idea is that the skull will be surrounded by demons making it a real 'clair obscure' and uplifting the head. It's more the idea of Ensor, channeled trough my tattooer, about life, death and struggling with your demons.
"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
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@scarfmace That is going to look fucking awesome - I love the drawing work alone. Please do keep us updated on progress, I'm keen to follow this journey!
And I'm glad you appreciate my Stoic sleeve. Trying to think of ideas for gap filling before I go back for more punishment.
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@injunjack Nice work!
The back of the forearm is particularly and surprisingly difficult to photograph, ain't it!
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@EdH I'd love to show you a picture of the little work that has been done atm, but the back of the body, turns out is also pretty hard to capture in a selfy (or put lotion on)
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@scarfmace I had my guy use the anesthetic spray for a few of my back sessions. I did many without though. It was awful. Best of luck my man.
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@Matt you got a name of the brand you used? Did it do anything? I was screaming for the last 30min until I had to tell him to stop. The next day I was completely physically and mentally drained. Was not expecting it to be that bad at all...
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