Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright!

This is my fourth tattoo and the one I pondered the least.

If you've been reading, you know the premise: 2010 marks the Year of the Tiger in the Chinese Zodiac, and when I heard that Thicker Than Water Tattoo Studio, a new shop on the Lower East Side, was doing a special tiger-inking event for the new year, I grew interested.

When I saw the flash drawn for the event, I knew I wanted one. And, after talking with artist Shon Lindauer, he drew up a special one for me, and the rest was history. Because he wanted to put more time into it, we scheduled the session for Sunday, after the Saturday of the Tiger, and did it on the third, happy half-birthday to me.

So why a Tiger? Aside from the topical (thank heavens it wasn't year of the Rabbit), I can say I have connections to tigers.

My favorite baseball team is Detroit, and I spent four years at Occidental College in L.A., home of the Tigers. In that sense, since 1985, I have been part-Tiger.

But like most tattoos, meanings grow and new meanings emerge. I am a poet, and what writer is worth their salt if they heard the word tiger and didn't think of William Blake?

THE TYGER (from Songs Of Experience)

By William Blake

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

1794

And so I strode onto Avenue B with a sense of purpose, and a desire to go under the needle again. And the snow flurried but I did not feel the cold. I knew, soon enough, that I would feel the fire from the tattoo machine.

Even in my most positive frame of mind, I didn't dream that this great drawing


would become this much bigger and more colorful tattoo:


And one of the many things I love about it is, that at a slightly different angle, the perspective shifts significantly:


Lucky me, Shon worked with mechanical precision, and I was his first client that got to experience his new custom shader, built by Seth Ciferri.

The tattoo was done in under two and a half hours, and the reviews have been overwhelmingly positive. I love it.

Thanks to Shon Lindauer for his hard work on this awesome tattoo and the staff at Thicker than Water for welcoming me into their shop.

The Year o' the Tiger Has Begun...

Happy New Year from all of us here at Tattoosday!

2009 was a banner year for us as we reached an even broader audience, racking up 317,000 hits, almost triple what we had seen here in 2008. We're looking forward to welcoming even more visitors in the coming year.

Yesterday, I paid a little visit to Thicker Than Water Tattoo Studio on the Lower East Side where, as I mentioned in the previous post, the good folks were inking tiger tattoos to celebrate the upcoming Year of the Tiger. At $50 a pop for these tiger specials, the artists had a steady stream of clients asking to get their tiger stripes for the upcoming year.

Despite frigid temperatures with single-digit wind chills, clients were still drifting in when I left later in the evening.

I did get to watch as Shon Lindauer worked on Jennifer, who added this cute little tiger to her collection of over thirty tattoos:


Jennifer was born in the Year of the Tiger, so it seemed appropriate to take advantage of this super deal that the artists at Thicker Than Water were offering.

It was also great to see Peter Caruso again, who tattoos at the shop three days a week. Pete appeared here on Tattoosday and subsequently inked this piece on me last Spring. He even had his own set of flash for the January 2 promotion:


As I bundled up to brace myself against the cold, customers were drifting in from Avenue B and a young lady checked out the flash to decide on another tiger tattoo. With a few more hours to go, it looked like the artists were going to be busy.

As for me, many may be wondering if I joined the ranks of the tiger-tattooed. Check back tomorrow to see if I have anything new to share...

Happy New Year and thanks for continuing to visit us here on Tattoosday.

Usher in the Year of the Tiger with a New Tattoo!

2010 Looks to be a great year and I am looking forward to ringing in the new decade on January 2nd by visiting a new tattoo shop of the Lower East Side called Thicker Than Water Tattoo Studios.

From Noon to 10:00 PM, artists in the shop, which just opened on December 1, 2009, will be inking Year of the Tiger tattoo specials for $50.00 apiece. It's first-come, first-served, folks, so don't show up too late.

In case you were wondering what kind of tattoo this deal will get you, we here at Tattoosday were thrilled to get a sneak peak of the flash from which customers can choose, and got the blessing from Shon Lindauer, designer, tattooer and shop manager, to share the designs with our readers:



So, come on down to Thicker Than Water and start the new decade with an appropriate Tiger tattoo to ring in the year!

All I Want for Christmas is a Tattoo with Teeth

On Christmas Eve afternoon, I was passing through Penn Station, I spotted Lindsay, a woman with what appeared to be a sleeve that had a water-inspired design.

It wasn't until after I approached her and asked if she wanted to contribute to Tattoosday that I saw, as she rolled up her sleeve, what awesome work she had done on her left arm:


Lindsay said that, like all of her 14 or 15 tattoos, none of them have "deep meaning". She just goes with whatever she describes as an "intense urge" at the time she's getting the tattoo.

The sleeve above started with her taking photos with stylings to the artist, saying she wanted a bloody shark. This was the first part of the tattoo:


She then expanded it with this segment of shark


which is certainly reminiscient of the movie poster for Jaws.


This piece was created in four sittings lasting 3-4 hours each, by John Reardon at Saved Tattoo (which was the shop responsible for yesterday's post, too).

Work from John Reardon has appeared here on Tattoosday previously. Work from Saved appearing on the site can be seen here. Reardon is also the author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting a Tattoo.

Thanks to Lindsay for taking the time to share her incredible shark sleeve with us here on Tattoosday!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!

Max's Spin on a Traditional Gypsy Tattoo

I was passing through Penn Station late yesterday when I spotted Max, who offered up this fascinating tattoo:


At first glance it looks like the traditional gypsy piece, but if you look closely at the back of the gypsy's head, you can see Max added an element that extended the design up and around his right arm:



That is a deer skull that the gypsy woman is wearing, complete with a set of antlers.

When I asked Max about this he acknowledged that the tattoo, in concept, had started as just the old-style gypsy profile but, growing up in Maryland, he said that there were deer everywhere around his home, and that this was a nod to his former home state.

Perhaps reading too much into it, I asked him if he was taking a symbol of home and tying it to the nomadic image of the gypsy to illustrate a dichotomy between the two contrasting lifestyles. He nodded and said he hadn't thought of it in those terms before, but it seemed to make a little sense if you looked at it like that.

This is one of nine tattoos Max has. The piece in question was designed by Paul Bosch at Saved Tattoo in Brooklyn. Max came to Paul with the concept and left it to the artist to design the tattoo. Work from Saved has appeared previously on Tattoosday here.

Thanks to Max for sharing this fascinating spin on the traditional gypsy tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Woman, Deconstructed

With winter upon us, I have been tempted to bemoan the scarcity of visible ink on the streets (or subways) of New York.

But Mother Nature giveth, as well, by depositing the powdery white stuff and causing delays that held up commuters in Penn Station.

One such soul was Kaeti, a visual artist passing through NYC on her way from Philadelphia.

This pheomenal tattoo jumped out from her corporeal canvas on Tat-tuesday, catching my eye as I walked by:


Kaeti originally thought she was going to get a sleeve inspired by the work of Salvador Dali, but the scale and concept didn't converge in a final design.

She went to the artist, Andrew Johnson-Lally, at Body Graphics on South 4th Street in Philadelphia. She described for him the general concept behind what she wanted, something along the lines of a representation of a female figure, deconstructed. Kaeti also is very influenced by stitching, so she brought along examples of work she had, which included stitched sculpture and sketches. Andrew drew something up based on these styles that she liked, with her ultimately yielding creative freedom to the artist.


To me, she was describing a collaborative effort, which many tattooists and their clients create. Another example of her influence on the end drawing is the empty eyes, which Kaeti said was similar to a lot of the work she herself was doing around the time of the tattoo being inked.


The whole piece took about 3 and a half hours to complete. Initially she told me that when the tattoo was initially completed, she thought that it was finished. Like many people with large tattoos, however, Kaeti is tooling with the idea of expanding the work to include background, which might involve wrapping around her arm and making it a "true" sleeve.

Incidentally, work from Body Graphics has appeared previously on Tattoosday here.

I want to thank Kaeti for taking the time to speak with me in a crowded Penn Station, and for sharing her fascinating tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Two More Tattoos from Josh

Well, more than six months have passed since I posted Josh's amazing Verrazano Bridge tattoo, and I almost forgot he sent me some additional shots, including the clock from the old Penn Station on his inner bicep, which is interconnected with the bridge piece:


This is a fairly accurate homage to this bygone historical monument seen at the top of the photo below:


Josh, being in the military, also has this back piece:


This tattoo consists of a pair of variations on the caduceus, surrounding the insignias of the 44th and 30th Medical Brigades - the two units he was assigned to in Iraq.















Thanks again to Josh for sending along these pictures and if you haven't seen the Verrazano tattoo linked at the top of the post, you must go check it out.