Sorry I have taken so long between posts lately! I have been working as an intern on the Lifehacker web site, and the time I used to spend browsing around for body art information has been spent on other things. 

However, to make up for that a little bit, here’s some great links.

Evil Tattoo’s Tattoo Gallery
Tattoo Finder
5 W’s Tattoos
Tattoo Art of Pat Fish
TattooArtists.org
BMEInk (a lot of adult oriented material; viewer discretion advised)
About.com’s tattoo and piercing galleries

What are your favorite web sites featuring body art?  I’m always up for someplace new to look!

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Better than the Louvre

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In my last couple posts I talked about rude, crude tattoos and images of death. In the wake of the elections in the USA, I think it’s now time to focus on upbeat, positive images that reflect well on us and send a positive message to the world as well.

I wrote earlier about spiritual designs.  Putting an affirmation of your spiritual beliefs on your skin could be one way of sending a positive message, although in today’s increasingly fractured world other people might not see the message you are trying to send.   But in thousands of years of religious art, there are plenty of examples of designs that uplift both the wearer and the observer.  It’s worth doing research to find exactly the right design.  The usual run of religious (mainly Christian) flash can be found just about anywhere.  You want something that represents you, not a bazillion others with exactly the same flash, right?

Another form of positive design is a memorial to a lost loved one.  I have mentioned before that I am not a fan of fine-line portraits.  I think there are plenty of other ways to honor those we have lost.  Think about what mattered to that person and find a design that showcases that.  I have a stylized dragon on my back to honor my grandmother.  That, to me, is more profound than just getting her name or a portrait inked on my skin.

And of course there is a wide lexicon of images that are upbeat and postitive all on their own.  “Sunshine, lollypops and rainbows” is more than just the title of a 60s bubblegum song.  :)  Well-done Celtic designs can combine the spiritual and the decorative.  The tried-and-true images of four-leaf clovers, lucky horseshoes and the like are popular for good reason.  There are more elaborate designs representing good fortune from pagan beliefs and non-Western cultures.  Once you set your mind to it, the possibilities are limitless.

What kinds of positive images does your ink show the world?
photo credit: showbizsuperstar

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Messages of hope

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Now that we’re past Halloween and the Day of the Dead, I’d like to consider the use of death images in body art.

Skulls, skeletons, and other ancient images of death remain incredibly popular as body art.  In ancient times such markings would have been used as a symbol of power, or for protection from evil (archaeologists turn up such designs all the time, all over the world).  Today, at least in “western” society, those images are often used to convey a message.  Politely phrased it would be “Don’t mess with me.”

Gang tattoos are loaded with death symbolism, in an attempt to convey power, fearlessness and the disposal of enemies.  But the skull-and-crossbones motif once used to identify a pirate has long since passed into popular culture and adorns many bodies today as well.  Some body art explicitly displays the destruction of other living beings.  Some just conveys the threat.

As the old saying goes, “You are what you eat.”  To my somewhat mystical way of thinking, such toxic images would be poisonous to the soul of the wearer.  I feel that body art should represent something positive to its wearer–even if that image is in honor of someone who has died.  One of my tattoos is in memory of my grandmother, but it’s a bold and colorful dragon.  I would not put a tombstone on my skin.

What do you feel about images of death and destruction?  Are they just so much ink, or does their presence affect their wearer in some way?  Am I just too far over the moon?

photo credit: katie cowden

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Perpetual Day of the Dead

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I have never used this blog for political commentary before, because it’s not what I’m here to talk about.

However, since we multicolored people are showing the world we can think for ourselves and stand outside the mainstream, I will step up on my soapbox just this once today, and urge California voters to reject Proposition 8.  It’s being supported by a lot of people who don’t think for themselves, and who listen to the worst kinds of scaremongering lies.

Today is the 39th anniversary of my husband’s and my first date.  We’ve been married 36 years.  We believe in marriage and we believe in justice.   Allowing same-sex marriages has changed nothing about “traditional” marriage any place in the world.  Let’s show the bigots in California that it won’t change anything here.

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Stop the hate. No on 8.

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The other day, I saw a man with a rude, crude tattoo.  Not only was the design not up to junior high art class standards, it was a drawing of a hand making an obscene gesture usually referred to as flipping someone the bird.

I had to wonder why someone would mark himself permanently that way. I’m sure he thought it was a good idea at the time, but now he’s stuck with it, and does he really want to maintain that attitude forever?  I have no idea.  I certainly didn’t put myself at risk by asking.

Of course, I have wondered many times why people marked themselves the way they did.  Blurry ink lines, wretched art work, people’s names that later had to be crossed out or

Image via Wikipedia

covered up, gang symbols, you name it. There’s artwork done by people who look like they could have flunked coloring in kindergarten, designs that leave the viewer wondering what on earth the wearer was thinking, and what the artist must have ingested before picking up the needle.

Don’t these people check the artists out?  Or do they just not care?

And it’s not just bad artwork that leaves me wondering, sometimes.  Some of the calligraphy on gang tattoos is outstanding–why waste talent like that on art that only serves to make its wearer a target for trouble?  Come to think of it, why is the lower-back tattoo called a tramp stamp?

We multicolored people each have our own ideas of what’s appropriate and what’s artistic.  Have you seen anything that made you think someone’s doing his or her best to give multicolored people a bad name?

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Inking the bird

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While I’m not a regular watcher of “LA Ink,” I do tune it in from time to time, and I watched “Miami Ink” while Kat Von D was working there.

Kat does excellent fine-line portrait work.  I must admit that up till the time I saw what she could do, I was definitely not a fan of tattoo portraits.  Maybe because I’d never seen a really good one.  It always seemed that the pictures might have looked good when drawn on paper, but when translated to skin they were distotred and amateur-artist-looking.  I couldn’t understand why someone would want to honor someone else by putting a mediocre junior-high-art-class-looking drawing on their skin.

Transferring a drawing on flat paper to the curved surface of someone’s body requires a certain amount of adjustment and talent.  And of course a tattoo needle is nowhere near as forgiving as a pencil, and you can’t just go back and erase your mistakes.  But does that account for all the sappy-looking tattoo portrait art out there?  I saw some fairly mediocre portraits turn up on “Miami Ink” and the recipients always said they were pleased, but was that just for the TV cameras?  Who knows?

I’ve even seen portraits of “Jesus” (the standardized Western portrait of a man who certainly wasn’t the blonde-haired, handsome dude used to represent him) that look bad enough that they could be taken for mockery, not faith.

The Total Tattoo Book includes a photo of a man’s back completely covered by a portrait of Charles Lindbergh, which left me wondering why someone would pay good money for something like that.  Of course, my opinion of LIndbergh and his politics might color my opinion a bit. 

What do you think about tattoo portraits?  Do you have one?  Whom does it honor, and who did the work?

photo credit: R.O.K.E.N

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Fine line tattoo portraits

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Many people get my blog posts via an RSS reader, but not everyone wants to do that.  If you’d like to receive my posts via email, now you can.  Just click on “subscribe by email” in the banner above and fill in your preferences.

I guarantee I do not now and never will use your email address for anything but sending my blog posts.

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Subscribe by email

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I’m taking an art class this semester, and yesterday I wore my TATTOOS ARE MY WAY OF INVESTING IN ART t-shirt to class.

This led to an interesting discussion with one of my classmates, who has several tattoos herself.  She said that all her tattoos have a common theme, something very spiritually meaningful to her.  Like me, her ink is usually covered by clothing, but she described some of her tattoos and explained why they fit her theme.

I obviously never had a “theme” in choosing my tattoos, but all of them have deep personal meaning to me, so in that sense they go together even though visually and stylistically they don’t match in any way.  But the idea of planning each tattoo with one central theme in mind intrigued me.  I wonder how common that approach to body art must be?

Obviously, the people who get whole-body Japanese tattoos are following that kind of philosophy.  But is a gangbanger whose ink reflects gang sensibilities even though not coming together in one unified design doing the same?  What about a person whose tattoos relate to the same general principle (religious art, for example) but are all done in varying styles or by different artists and present a mish-mosh of visual effects when seen as a whole?

What happens if a person starts out with one theme in mind and then goes off in a different direction?  Can the original ink be altered to match the new theme?  Should it be?  I’m reminded of the tattooed lady in Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land who starts off as a standard-issue sideshow performer and then has her tattoos transformed into a religious work of art by her husband, the tattoo artist.

And what if some of the art is done by one artist and some of it is done by another artist with an entirely different style?

I guess what I’m asking is whether having a theme results in a “unified field” of body art or not. 

Do you have a theme?  Do you know anyone who planned their ink in advance?  I’d be interested to hear what others think about this.
photo credit: rasseon

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Tattoo themes

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I’ve written on the subject of religious objections to tattoos before (if you’re interested, you can read that entry here).  I was reminded of that by a story in yesterday’s local paper, on the subject of Jews and tattoos.

Before I begin today’s essay:  I had one Jewish grandfather, but he died before I was born, and I don’t claim any expertise on the subject of Judaism or the Law and the Prophets.  I am an interested outsider, with a nearly lifelong interest in Biblical history and comparative religions.  I belong to no sect, either by heritage or by choice.  All human theological traditions both living and past have an equal chance of being true, in my opinion.

Does Leviticus say no?

That said, it is widely believed that there is a prohibition against making any marks on the body in the book of Leviticus.  The various translations seem to agree that people should not cut themselves “for the dead” (it was a tradition in many cultures for the bereaved to slash their own skins).  But what follows differs depending on which translation one reads.  Some prohibit “making marks” or “printing marks” on the skin, while some use the word “tattoo.”  I can’t read Hebrew, so I don’t know exactly what the original Scripture said.  I am looking forward to Dr. James Tabor’s group’s future publication of The Transparent English Bible, so those of us who can’t read the original IN the original can finally get as close as possible to what it says.

Many Jewish people believe that the prohibition is against tattooing, which made the death-camp marks all the more horrible.  And that memory quite rightly lingers on, lending greater force to the present-day prohibition on tattoos.  Whether a modern tattoo becomes a matter of honor or horror is far beyond any outsider’s business to decide.  But according to the article, many modern Jews are choosing to be tattooed precisely because they value their heritage and wish to say so in a permanent way.

Does 21st century choice enter into it?

In an earlier post, I talked about choosing religious or spiritual designs for tattoos.  I believe those designs should have intense personal significance, and certainly people who choose to override religious prohibitions must have strong feelings on the subject.

Here is a link to the original story. If you do a Google search with “Jew tattoo” you’ll find plenty of opinions pro and con, with good reasons to support both sides.  Do you have an opinion?  I’d like to hear it.

photo credit: hometownzero

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Jewish tattoos

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Mark your calendars for Sunday, October 12. The History Channel will be rerunning “Ancient Ink.”

Host Craig Reynolds travels around the world to document traditional methods and styles of tattooing, and has himself tattooed in traditional ways by several artists.

The final artist is Zulu, of Zulu Tattoo in Los Angeles. My daughter and I each got two tattoos in Zulu’s shop, although not by the master himself, who is in such great demand (and quite rightly so) that one has to make an appointment months in advance.

Here is the link to information on the History Channel web site.

photo credit: dalbera

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Ancient Ink

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