"I think of God and Death and Triangles..."*

Stencil is on and ready to go. Left ankle, crossing my leg up to the table from the chair. Yes, it's a blurry picture.









This is 1/3 of the way through the outline. I freely admit I didn't do as well as I may have if it wasn't on myself. There's a pain that you have to work through and ignore to get it done and get it in.







And the outline is finished.

Celtic Triangle - Ankle 5/2/2008

And the the fill-in for the bare spaces. My knotty triangle.
3rd tattoo completed, 2nd tattoo done in 1 sitting, 2nd personal tattoo. Canvas is canvas and nothing behaves like real skin.

Outline: 3L
Fill in: 8L

*A reporter once asked Dylan Thomas what he thought about. "I think of God and death and triangles," the Welshman replied. It was the title of my term paper in the 12th grade, 1988, for Mrs. Johnson's World Literature class.

We have machine!

My order came in today from Superior Tattoo. 3 springs, 2 armature bars, 5 #15 mags, 5 #13 mags, 5#14 rounds. The machine hums again. Triangle for me, cross for Sic_un. Pictures when I find batteries for the camera.

So THAT'S who she is.....

This woman has fascinated me since I first saw her picture 2 years ago.


Isn't she beautiful? She is defiant towards the camera, an early 'fuck you' to the mores and morals of society and 'normal' people. I finally found out who she is, thanks to The Vanishing Tattoo and their History of Tattooing pages.

She is Mrs. M. Stevens Wagner, and the picture was taken in 1907. So who is Mrs. M. Stevens Wagner? I don't know, but I bet she's related somehow to Charles Wagner, who was partnered with Samuel O'Reilly in the late 1800's in NYC (Bowery). Charles Wagner did something else, too...

Recognize it? It's a dual coil reciprocating engraver, a prototype of today's machine.

It's amazing what you learn when you surf the 'net, isn't it? Oh... A Google through various search terms provides us this: "Maud Wagner was the first well known woman tattoo artist in the United States. Maud was a circus aerialist and contortionist who learned to tattoo from her husband Gus. Her daughter Lovetta Wagner became a well known female artist as well despite having no tattoos herself."

Someone needs to get me this book, please. I would dearly appreciate it. I'll tattoo you for it! No... Seriously. 1-2 color piece no more than 2"x2". You provide the book and the canvas, I'll give you ink. Deal? Comment and we'll work out details.

****EDIT**** She is Maud Stevens Wagner. Wow. .... Just.... Wow.

It's small and blurry, but you get a better idea of what the color is supposed to look like. Fresh, it looks almost navy. Healing up, you can see it's actually closer to the color of the wall (indeed, brighter than).
It's finishing nicely, and I have only spotted 1 instance I would like to go back and correct. At the top of the "Y" shape, in the above picture it's the right leg of the Y top. Right where it comes to the point, it's not. I am not stressed about this because it is less than .. the distance between those 2 dots. Really. But I'd like to correct it.
She's ready for her 2nd, which I'm still playing with the design on.
And Sic_un is giving me my 2nd. It's celtic knotwork, not super detailed (he admits he prefers the simple). I'm thinking bicep. Outline, potential color?
It's closest in shape to this:
but reversed. I want the terminus at the top. ANYway. This reversed (and yes, I have the flash for it already), but let me throw some ideas to you:
Thin black outline, pale shading overs and dark unders (purple shades)
Thin dark purple outline, dark shading unders, everything else left alone.
Thicker purple outline, above shading options.
Thicker black outline above shading options.
Thicker dark outline, navy blue or perhaps a deep purple, no shading, just the outline.

I'm leaning to the latter. I'll have to play.

Fire

SB, one of the women I work with, wanted a tattoo. Specifically, the kanji for fire flipped and modded just a little is what she requested. It's the crest for her karate dojo, and she wanted it on her upper arm. She was a lot like I was when I first started looking into getting a tattoo. She has a fear of needles, and wasn't really sure she could tolerate getting a tattoo. She didn't decide color until she was here. I was nervous, she was nervous.

She tolerated this admirably well. So did I. And I am now officially a tattooist (accepted money for a tattoo), and I have officially broken the law.






This is the outline. You can see 2 small scratches right above where this is at. That was the dry run. The bluish circle going around the outline (you can see it very faintly) is the edge of the stencil.







Here's the finished product. It's Superior's Sky Blue, even though it looks vaguely black in the picture.






Here's the full-effect finish. And you can really see the scratches in this one. That's what she likened it to... cat scratches. I couldn't agree more.

Outline: 3L, 3/23/08
Fill: 14S, 3/23/08
Subject: SB/Fire

Fixed Fill In-Completion.

Here's what it looked like after I redid the top line. You can see the feathering in the already tattooed area and how absolutely icky it appears, correct? NOT the new black line, but the greyish looking area (dry skin, older ink). That's what I started with, pretty much all over.











But now... taDAAAAAA! This is FRESHLY done. You can see the lines where I put down another layer of color, so there isn't any question about where I touched it up.

A close up of the same area as the first picture, now fully done...

And the full finished after it's been sitting about 45 minutes or so in antibiotic ointment... it rehydrated the skin and darkened the ink all over.



Outline: 3L, 2/22/07
First Fill: 14S, 12/7/07
Final Fill: 14S, 3/19/2008