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By infmom, September 5, 2007 11:16 am

Here’s a quick reference guide to the blog, so far.

An Introduction

Before You Ink, Think

Preliminaries
About The Actual Ink
Where To Put It
Important Considerations
Family Reactions
What To Wear (And Not Wear)
Yes, It Hurts (And How To Deal With That)
Religious Objections

Aftercare

About Plastic Wrap (Don’t!)
About Bandages
Protecting Your Newly Inked Skin
Tattoo Specific Skin Care Products
The Healing Process

Choosing Your Design

Languages As Graphics
Inspirations For Original Designs, Part 1: Your Life
Part 2: Your Family And Your Fan Clubs
Part 3: Your Spiritual Beliefs
On Copying Other People’s Artwork
Part 4: Memorials
Part 5: Reworking Your Existing Tats

Next up, a brief look at the history of tattoos.

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By infmom, September 3, 2007 12:02 pm

(Otherwise known as Everything Old Is New Again)

Even if you’ve spent plenty of time thinking about your design, and working with your artist to create it, the old saying that “There’s nothing so sure as change” still applies. As time goes by, you may well change your mind about that tattoo. So, then what?

How about having it re-worked into something else? Not every design is suitable for this, of course, but with enough imagination and careful ink placement it may well be possible to transform something old and/or unwanted into something fresh and new.

Amy Krakow’s Total Tattoo Book includes some photos of old designs being covered up by, or reworked into, new ones.

A lot depends on what color the ink was in the original design and where it’s located. Black ink, of course, will be the most difficult to cover up. But even that can be worked around if you’re willing to take time and think about it.

My own transformation

I had a small Eye of Horus on my ankle that I was never entirely happy with. The artist went too deep on the outline, and over time the black outline spread into what was supposed to be the gold color of the Eye, and obliterated the nice little spiral in the “eyeball’ that had originally been highlighted in white ink. When I consulted with another artist about re-doing the gold color, she explained to me that tattoo ink is transparent, not opaque (which, believe it or not, I had not known up till then) so it would not be possible to color over the excess black with more gold. However, she suggested that she could highlight the entire area with gold after she applied the new surrounding design, to make it look like the Eye of Horus had been designed with a golden highlight. And that’s what she did.

Here’s how that turned out:

So if you’ve changed your mind about your ink, don’t make the tattoo-removal clinic your first stop. Get someone to take a picture of your tattoo, and print out several copies at life size on plain paper (the quality of the reproduction is not as important here as is having a good surface to draw on and paper that doesn’t cost a lot if you toss out several sheets while you’re working through your idea). Try drawing a new design with the old one. If you don’t have much in the way of artistic skills, sketch in what you want as best you can and take the drawing to your favorite tattoo artist and see what he or she says about it.

Even if you’re not a fan of the Transformers, you can still be transformed.

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By infmom, August 24, 2007 1:22 pm

One of our cats died early Thursday morning, after a long illness.

And thus, today’s entry is about one of the most profoundly personal of all tattoos, one designed as a memorial for a lost loved one. From the simple addition of someone’s name, to something as elaborate as my nephew’s back piece that serves as a memorial for his fallen colleagues in Iraq and Afghanistan, the placement of an image to honor the loved and lost can be among the most satisfying of decorations.

It is important, though, in the decision to get a memorial tattoo, that one not act too much in haste. Taking proper time to think, consider, and allow the first sharp pain of the loss to die away a bit is essential to getting the very best design.

Start by making a list of all the things that would serve to remind you of your lost loved one. Set the list aside for a while (adding to it if you happen to think of something else). Come back to it in a month or so and reconsider. (Your ink will last forever, so waiting and thinking carefully first won’t hurt, and can really help make the design the absolute best.)

Would a portrait be appropriate? You will need to find an artist who specializes in portrait work, for the best results. Would a picture of something else do better? Would it be enough to just have a simple “In Loving Memory” with the person’s or pet’s name and dates? How large a design do you want, and where should it best be placed? Even more so than with other designs, a memorial should be the product of careful consideration.

My dragon tattoo is in honor of my grandmother, and it took me about a year of thinking, drawing, and re-drawing to get the design perfected. I didn’t put her name on it, but I did have the artist add a very tiny Chinese character for “woman” underneath. When a Chinese friend saw the tattoo for the first time, he said “Oh, it’s a GIRL dragon.” I’m sure my grandmother, who always thought that she was the reincarnation of a 9th century Chinese poet, would have smiled at that.

This blog, by the way, is partly my memorial to our cat. Her name was Calypso, and she was a calico, and I often called her “Multicolor” in honor of her lovely fur.

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By infmom, August 10, 2007 8:09 pm

Today I’m going to talk about a somewhat different approach to tattoos that honor one’s spiritual beliefs.

A lot of people want designs that represent some aspect of their religion or spirituality. From crosses and Stars of David, to
pentagrams and crescent moons, to stylized representations of all kinds of deities, it’s often important to have a symbol of something that plays a major role in one’s life.

But there’s nothing that says one has to settle for the same-old-same-old in this area. I know that religious beliefs are kind of a touchy subject, so I’m going to try to take a somewhat general approach to this.

There are fairly common symbols of most major religions, like the Christian cross or the Jewish Star of David or the Muslim crescent. Many people find those symbols to be profound representations of their beliefs and that’s all they want or need when it comes to picking a design. But almost all world religions have ancient roots, and perhaps it would be better to look at designs that are less common but still profoundly representative.

Great art on canvas, great art on skin

Start by looking in books about religious art. There are wonderful pictures and designs from illuminated manuscripts from the past. There are photos of temples, churches, and mosques with glorious artwork incorporated into their interiors and exteriors, any of which could be adapted into a tattoo design. How about something from the Book of Kells? Here is a link to a site that will sell you the whole thing on DVD, and you can browse the text and illuminations to your heart’s content.

Or, how about some of the glorious Islamic decorations from the Taj Mahal? Most of us have only seen the standard pictures from a distance that show the entire building, but when one looks closer, one can truly appreciate the brilliance of the artists who created it.

Likewise, the Torah has been illuminated by countless artists and can be a rich source of inspiration. Here is a link to a modern illuminated Torah that should be a great source for unique religious designs.

Architectural inspiration

And of course that’s only the beginning. Try to think of buildings, art, and other representations of your beliefs that could be adapted for your design and I’m sure you’ll find a wide world full of inspiration.

One caution, though. If you find photos of other people with tattoos or painted designs, please, don’t copy those designs exactly. Those designs have personal and religious meaning to the person who wears them–think how you’d feel if someone who knew nothing about your religion copied something from your tradition for purely decorative purposes without knowing what it meant. Be as respectful to those people as you would wish them to be to you.

Which, come to think of it, is an appropriate way to think about spiritual design.

photo credit: mockstar
photo credit: Ya Susanne

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By infmom, August 7, 2007 8:14 pm

Many people get someone else’s name as a tattoo, and wind up regretting it later. It might not happen with a child’s name, or a parent’s, or a grandparent’s, but it often does with Significant Others. (Yeah, I’m looking at you, Johnny Depp, “Wino forever,” and Billy Bob Thornton and Angelina Jolie, washing each other right outta their… skins.)

What do you do if you want to declare eternal feelings for someone, but don’t want to get caught (literally) with your pants down later on? Especially because tattoo removal has been described as “Being snapped with a rubber band stretched from here to Venezuela.”

A reminder without a name
Find an image instead. Something that would be meaningful to the two of you, but that won’t be exclusive to just the one person should you break up later on. What did you do on your first date? OK, maybe you don’t want to commemorate the Three Stooges marathon. But maybe you went out afterwards and discovered that you really liked each other over a couple of cups of coffee. Find a cool picture of a coffee mug and use that as your inked-in trip down memory lane. If your Coffee Companion turns into used-up grounds later on, you can always explain that image in some other way having nothing to do with Ms. or Mr. Wrong.

If you’re a big fan of some celebrity, or a band, should you get a picture of That Star or That Band’s logo inked on? Might be cool when you’re a young metal-head or Adam Sandler devotee, but what about later? Ask someone older than you are what they thought was just the ultimate in cool when they were your age and how they feel about it nowadays. My brother was the biggest fan of Herman’s Hermits in the world when he was a teenager. Now that he’s in his 50s he’d probably be getting Peter Noone’s face zapped off him as fast as he could manage it. When I first realized I wanted a tattoo, at age 16, I wanted my favorite little doodle of a flower in a pot tattooed on the inside of my left ankle. In green ink, no less. I still doodle that flower, but man, I’m glad I didn’t make a permanent commitment to it.

Pick an image. My brother might have gone with a stylized crown to represent “I’m Henry VIII, I Am” and I could have gotten a realistic chrysanthemum. Those have staying power where the more specific image would not.

Besides, if you have to sit down and think about a better way to show your devotion, you won’t be getting inked in haste and zapped over weeks and weeks and weeks sometime in the future. You know the old saying “Measure twice, cut once”? In this case, think twice, ink once. And your chances of keeping that ink infinitely improve.

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By infmom, August 4, 2007 12:55 pm

Here beginneth a series on where to find the best designs. They may not be where you think they are.

If you watch shows like “Miami Ink,” you will see many people coming in to have tattoos done that have great personal meaning. A photo of a lost loved one, for example, or something that represents an experience that was life-changing in some way. To my way of thinking, these tattoos are the best, and the least likely to send you running to Dr. Tattoff and associates years later to be blasted into oblivion.

My own tattoos are a group of seven stars (personal significance a bit too complicated to explain), a multicolored Chinese dragon (in honor of my grandmother) and an Egyptian design of lotus flowers surrounding a scarab and an Eye of Horus (in recognition of my lifelong fascination with Ancient Egypt).

It helps not to have a lot of discretionary money lying around to be used at the tattoo parlor on the spur of the moment. My designs were considered and re-thought and refined over a long period of time, and in all cases the artists contributed their thoughts and made my designs even better.

What really matters?
What’s important in your life? What happened to you that really, really meant something? What person meant the most to you, and why? What symbol would best represent your most significant life-changing moment? Take some time to think about that. Get a sheet of paper and write those things down. For each person or event, see if you can find a symbol or design. To use my tattoo as an example–my grandmother ran a nonprofit foundation called Draco and she wrote a novel about a ninth-century Chinese poet. She was one of the most important people in my life and that won’t change, so the dragon was a natural.

See if you can find childhood photos that show your favorite object or toy. See if you still have great artwork done by your child(ren) when they were young. Work with your artist to design something representing those. Don’t expect instant gratification.

The more you think about what you want, the more time you spend refining and improving the design, the less likely you are to be face down on a table ten years from now getting the Tazmanian Devil removed from your butt.

Seems like simplistic advice, but this is something that will be on your body till the end, and better a picture of your red tricycle than some cartoon character that ten thousand other people already thought was oh, so cute and are now itching to get rid of.

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