Multi.Colored—tattooed people, tattoo dreams

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?

Submit this post to:

Hide Sites

There’s a leech out there who’s stealing my posts verbatim, including my images which have NOT been released into the public domain. Imitation might be flattering, but stealing word for word, no way.

photo credit: shredpet501

Submit this post to:

Hide Sites

A lot of people get their start in body art by drawing on their own skin with ballpoint pens (or having their more artistic friends draw on them). I had a little flower drawn in green ballpoint ink on the inside of my left ankle for several years. I’d just re-draw it every time it got washed off. My daughter had an extremely elaborate abstract pattern on her arm when she was in high school–apparently that was a good way to fill time in boring classes.

I recently read a post on the about.com tattoo/bodypiercing forums (a link to their home page is under “resources” on the right) whose son had actually tattooed himself with a ballpoint pen. The parent’s concern was whether ballpoint ink was toxic; the kid’s was that after he put the ink on himself he decided he didn’t like it. (It is said that a person who represents himself or herself in court has a fool for a client; seems that some people who tattoo themselves have fools for artists, too.)

From everything I have read, ballpoint ink used in the USA is not toxic, but nowadays who knows where the ink is actually manufactured? I sure wouldn’t want to take a chance on ink manufactured in China out of who knows what kind of industrial waste. It might be OK for a temporary design on top of the skin, but injected into the skin? No WAY. Ballpoint ink is pigment dissolved in solvent, and you’d have to be nuts to want solvent punched into your skin.

And there doesn’t seem to be any consensus about whether ballpoint ink can be laser-removed like tattoo ink. The pigments are different. There’s the solvent to consider. It may well be that this particular adolescent folly is there for good. If the kid hates it now while he’s still in school, just think how he’ll feel about it later when he (presumably) grows up.

I think this is yet another example of why people should think before they ink!

photo credit: awrose

Submit this post to:

Hide Sites