Two-for-Tattoosday, Brazilian-Style

Sometimes, due to a) a language barrier and b) the passage of time, we're not always able to give you the most in-depth story about our subjects' tattoos.

Such is the case with Celso and Reginaldo, who I met back in September outside of Madison Square Garden.

Both gentlemen were visiting from São Paolo, Brazil and one of Celso's tattoos caught my eye:

That was on his right arm. He also had this one on his left arm:

Celso's friend Reginaldo pulled his shirt off so I could get the full view of his koi tattoo:

Celso credited Artur at True Love Tattoo in São Paolo for inking his dragon and his mermaid.

Artur also was the artists who did Reginaldo's koi.

Thanks to Celso and Reginaldo for sharing their tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

Anthony's Dragon (and more!)

I spotted Anthony on the N train in Brooklyn and was happy to see him also switching for the local R train at 59th Street.

As luck would have it, both of us were headed home to Bay Ridge.

Anthony has a bunch of tattoos, and I snapped this photo of the dragon on his upper right arm:

It was inked by Joe at Brooklyn Ink.

He estimated that the work so far has been completed in about three two-hour sessions.

Work from Joe and other artists at Brooklyn Ink has previously appeared quite frequently on Tattoosday (all posts tagged as such here).

Anthony later emailed me photos of these shots as well:

The praying hands holding the rosary, I recall him telling me, were tattooed at Distinction Ink in Brooklyn. The tattoo reads "Forgive me Father, for I have sinned".

He did not tell me where he had this tribal sun done, but it's definitely an attention-grabbing piece and certainly worth a mention.

Thanks to Anthony for sharing his tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

Tammy's Earth Fairy

Tammy says that, within an hour of meeting her, Steve Gagliano of Tormented Souls in Kings Park, New York, knew exactly what to do with the tattoo she wanted covered up. He began freehanding a design over the existing tattoo, and the end result made her very happy:

The artist utilized the tribal butterfly that already existed and expanded it into an earth fairy, with a dragon protector.

Thanks to Tammy for sharing this, one of her seven tattoos, here on Tattoosday!

Be sure to click on the Tormented Souls link to explore their site. It's one of the more creative tattoo shop websites.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Brendan Constantine

One of the more satisfying aspects of this year's Tattooed Poets Project has been completing posts for poets who first contacted me in 2009 during our inaugural year of the endeavor.

In Brendan Constantine's first e-mail to me, back in February 2009, he mentioned being "extensively tattooed," a fact that, over the last thirteen months, escaped me. Brendan and I have stayed in touch, and he was finally able to send me a photo last night of one of his tattoos. I was surprised to see this amazing back piece:

Photos by Shawn Burkley

Brendan explains how this work came into existence:

"In 1994 I went to an retrospective of legendary Japanese artist, Kawanabe Kyōsai, at the National Gallery in London. Known as the ‘Demon of Painting,’ Kyōsai was among the very first artists in his country to bring western techniques to bear upon traditional themes, a move which earned him much criticism. I was transfixed by his work and came home with a huge book of his prints. Artist, Kirby White, then with Yoni Tattoo in the San Fernando Valley, shared my enthusiasm for this unique painter and said, “I would kill to work in this style!”

Unfortunately, halfway through the process, Kirby began to experience chronic back pain which ultimately kept her from finishing the piece. Nevertheless, I asked that she sign it, something few if any people allow artist’s to do. I know the work is supposed to be its own signature, but I wanted the piece to bear Kirby’s mark the same as if it had been rendered on rice paper.

Photos by Shawn Burkley

About two years later I met artist Sung Song at Pure Tattoo in Los Angeles (he has since moved on, now at Unbreakable Tattoo in Studio City) and discovered he was also devoted to the work of Kyōsai . I showed him where Kirby left off and he enthusiastically finished the job, adding his own improvisations while respecting Kirby’s work. The piece now bears both their idiographic signatures as part of the design. I’m a happy gallery!"

Photos by Shawn Burkley

Thanks to Brendan for sharing this amazing work!

Please be sure to head over to BillyBlog to read one of his poems here.

Brendan Constantine is a poet based in Los Angeles. His work has appeared in numerous journals, notably Ploughshares, Ninth Letter,The Cortland Review & RUNES. His book, Letters To Guns, was released in 2009 from Red Hen Press. He is currently poet in residence at The Windward School and Loyola Marymount University Extension.

Tattoorism: Dean's Samurai

Last Saturday, I posted some tattoos sent to us from Tammy in Texas. Her son Dean is also tattooed and, in a much bigger way. We'll let him explain:

My very first tattoo was done on my 18th birthday in 2005...[it is] a black dragon with kanji above it. About a year letter I had a koi fish done on my calf...both of these tattoos were just drawings I had found. In 2006 I started working on my rib piece and in 2007 I got together with John from A Different Drummer here in Wichita Falls (he is now at the Lawton, OK location), and the two of us collaborated on bringing the rib piece together. Once the drawing was to our satisfaction, it took a little over 2 months of 3-4 hour sittings weekly until the tattoo was complete. 16-plus hours and worth every minute!

In 2009 I decided it was time for an arm piece and went back to A Different Drummer and Tuan who was in Art Class with me in high school listened to what I wanted... and the arm piece came to life...this one was done in one day and took a little over 7 1/2 hours:

Both pieces are marvelously done.

Thanks to Dean for sharing his work with us here on Tattoosday! And a hearty thank you, as well, to Tammy, for being a cool mom, sharing her pride in her son's amazing body art!

Doug's Dragon

Back on July 13, I posted a photo of Doug's Geisha. Doug was waiting around the Penn Station area before heading down to see Horisei, at tattoo artist working out of Rising Dragon's Chelsea Tattoo Company.

Doug followed up his moment in the Tattoosday light by sending us photos of the work he had done that day. As would be expected from work by Horisei, the tattoo is beautifully done:






Work from Horisei has appeared previously on this site here.

Thanks again to Doug for sharing his new tattoo work with us here on Tattoosday!

Danny's Incredible Tattoos

On occasion, I will wander from 7th Avenue to 8th Avenue, through the campus of F.I.T., hoping to spot some creative work. One of my first posts (documented here) featured tattoos from someone I met on that stretch of street.

Last month, I ran into Danny, who had several very nice tattoos.

First I took a picture of this hannya mask on his right forearm:


Then I snapped this photo of the tattoo above his right wrist:


This metal-plated heart represents Danny's emotional toughness, with a trace of sensitivity. In his words, "even if my heart is dead, it will still bleed".

I also took a photo of Danny's knuckles, which I wanted to post up on Knuckletattoos.com. However, since they're working on a six-month backlog, I thought I'd spare them the extra post and just share these here:


They read, of course, "HATE PAIN". This just represents what Danny was going through at the time he had his digits inked.

Initially, he had told me his back was done, but I didn't press him to show me the work. By the time I had taken pictures of his knuckles, I guess he felt comfortable enough to share this truly remarkable back piece:


All of his work was done by Thailand Mike at Scratch Tattoo in Elmhurst, Queens. He initially went to Mike for a cover-up on his back, providing just the central part of the design...


Danny visited from time to time for over a year, having elements of the back filled in. The demon head at the top of the back is particularly cool


and the dragon hovering above the wasitline is also impressive:


I rarely get to feature back pieces, as they have to be offered up by generous contributors, so when I see one, I am seldom disappointed.

Thanks again to Danny for sharing so much of his work with us here on Tattoosday!

April Marching into May

Last Friday, I spotted this tattoo on Seventh Avenue in the 20's:



April was happy to stop and chat about her black and gray tattoo which was a gift from her boyfriend on her 27th birthday.

The piece is fairly straight forward - cherry blossoms bloom in late March/early April. Her birthday is in March and her name is April.

For that alone these traditional tattoo flowers seemed appropriate for her.

The design of the ouroboros, or the dragon forming a circle by consuming itself beginning with the tail, represents the "vicious cycle of life".

This tattoo was inked by Iann at Armageddon Tattoo in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. Iann's work has appeared here previously on the site.

Thanks to April for sharing her lovely tattoo with us on Tattoosday!

Ben's Amazing Back Piece

With the Tattooed Poets Series under way last month, I was a bit remiss in posting about the "regular" tattoo encounters.

With apologies to the following volunteer, I am presenting some amazing work on a gentleman named Ben, who I spotted back on April 2 while walking through Penn Station.

Ben was wearing a short-sleeve shirt and had tattoos covering his arms. When I approached him and explained Tattoosday, he enthusiastically agreed to participate. In fact, he removed his shirt to reveal an incredible back piece:



The one problem with featuring huge tattoos like this is not getting all the details in. What follows are some of the finer points of the tattoo.

At the bottom of the back is an hourglass design, within which is, Ben said, kanji representing the word "redemption":


The piece represents that he has "only so much time to redeem himself".

The main set of Chinese text in the center of the back was loosely translated by Ben as "I have trust in no man except for the trust I save for myself":


Also of note on the back are the two kanji representing "father" (the right side) and "forgive me" (the left side). These characters are in disks on either side at the top of the back.

The back was done by an artist no longer practicing at Skin Deep Tattoo on Long Island.

Imagine busy Penn Station, a guy standing there talking to a bespectacled blogger, camera in hand, beholding a subject covered in ink. Where to even begin?

It's like taking someone to the world's largest buffet and telling them they can only fill one small plate with food.

The back as a whole was impressive, but Ben was willing to share more, and we settled on this view, with a dragon and a geisha:


Ben credits this part of his body's tapestry to an artist named Loco working out of Dharma Tattoo in Miami Springs, Florida.

Thanks to Ben for sharing his amazing tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

Tattoorism: Sean's Leg Piece Represents His Transformation from Child to Adult

This installment of Tattoorism comes from Sean, a reader who offered up his leg piece for our viewing pleasure. The detail above is my favorite aspect of the tattoo, which wraps around Sean's entire left leg.

In Sean's words:

"...Even though this was done in about 4 or 5 sessions, I could not describe this in any other way except as one big tattoo. Each piece works together with each other.

I consider this my growth-themed tattoo. I started the tattoo, at the age of 18, right before I graduated from high school and finished it right before entering my first year of college, a period of immense growth in my opinion. As long as I can remember, I have been drawn to Asian artwork, so at an extremely basic level this tattoo is just extremely aesthetically pleasing to me, but there is also deeper meaning.

From the Japanese folklore I have heard, koi fish are said to grow into dragons.

That was the basic premise of my tattoo, maturing from childhood to adulthood. I decided to have the koi swimming upwards to portray the different struggles experienced in this growth. The dragon has always been such a powerful image to me and a great symbol of courage and strength, two qualities I constantly strive to achieve and portray myself.

There are also two other major images in this tattoo, the pagoda and the lotus flower.

The lotus is another symbol of "growth." I always loved the idea that a lotus begins its life in murky, dark, ugly waters, but eventually grows to become a beautiful flower despite its surroundings. It's a reminder that no matter how hard things get in life, I can make it through those times and blossom as a better person.

Finally, the personal symbolism I hold for the pagoda is a house of knowledge and discipline. I hoped to achieve, and believe I have, a great amount of knowledge and discipline through my years in college and during the growth from childhood to adulthood in general.

The tattoo was done by Mike Schweigert @ Electric Tattoo in Bradley Beach, NJ.

Thanks to Sean for sharing this amazing leg piece with us here on Tattoosday!

Sean recognized that our "posts kind of drop off, completely understandably, during the colder months." Not only did he help us with content on an ink-less day, regular readers will recognize that I generally don't run sleeves, or wrap-around tattoos, on the blog, as their characteristics make them very difficult to adequately display in their full glory. It's tough to capture them fully when on the street. So a double thanks to Sean for not only sending us an elaborate leg piece, but providing a well-written synopsis of the personal meaning behind the elements in the design!

Jessica's Back, Sharing Tattoos 51 and 52

I met Jessica back in June, prior to a Pearl Jam concert, in front of Madison Square Garden. She is an artist in her own right, doing a lot of the work her self, using her own kit and mirrors. Check out the original post here. I followed up with a post of more of her work here. I had a third post planned, as she had sent me some more photos of new work at the end of July.

I recently reconnected with her via e-mail and she responded with follow-up photos of the July pics, plus a whole bunch of others she has worked on since.

I am easily overloaded by too much information so I am going to try and space Jessica's work out over time and give her work the attention it deserves.

I'm going to start looking at the two pieces Jessica sent me back in July:




At the time, she advised me that she had "just finished starting [tattoo] #51 (Beetlejuice holding a jack o' lantern which I've wanted a really long time." She had just had "session one of a dragon started by Joe Matisa from il Bacio Tattoo in Trenton...he'll finish coloring it in after i get back from my vacation...".

So that was then, this is now.....




Jessica expanded a little more:

Beetlejuice is on my right leg. [I] always loved the movie and show. I've said if I ever got married, it would be awesome to wear Lydia's red dress, dress as Lydia and find me a Beetlejuice groom! and to have a big Tim Burton-style costume ball reception. Fall is my favorite time of the year. The leaves. The weather. All the spooky hayrides and haunted houses... Halloween!!!

[As mentioned above,] Joe Matisa of il Bacio Tattoo in Trenton, NJ did my dragon. That's on the left leg. It's a total custom freehand design he came up with. All I came up with was the awesome color scheme. The rest was the amazing Joe's work. I plan to put an Ed Hardy dragon next to it myself, which shall be my most ambitious idea to tackle so far....

Thanks again to Jessica for sharing her awesome work with us here on Tattoosday!

Crys Shares His Colorful Arm

When I passed Crys on Seventh Avenue last Friday, I knew I had to stop and ask about his arm.

Aside from the matching ohms-within-nautical stars on both elbows, Crys has two main pieces on his left arm.

Chronologically, the dragon came first:

He got it basically because he liked the design. It was inked by Nick at True Blue Tattoo in Austin, Texas.

The kanji surrounding the dragon were added later at Atomic Tattoo & Body Piercing, also in Austin. These were gifts from Crys' girlfriend. According to Chrys, going clockwise from the top, the kanji represnt love, honor, peace and life.

After that, he went back later to Atomic Tattoo and added the fire around the dragon to give his arm more color.

Finally, he added the Buddha at a shop in Houston:

Actually, a friend of his, Corey, from Austin, designed and drew up the initial sketch. Crys doesn't remember where it was inked.

Thanks to Crys for sharing his arm with us here on Tattoosday!

Erica's Ink: A Tale of Two Tattoos

Last Saturday I was riding my bike on a gorgeous day (see this post here) when I passed Erica who was sitting on a bench along the Shore Promenade.

I spotted a tattoo on her back as I rode by, so I circled around for a closer look:


It seemed interesting so I asked her about it. She said there really wasn't anything interesting about it but I told her to try me. Sometimes when you've lived with a tattoo for a while, the circumstances surrounding the piece seem ordinary. But to a fresh set of ears (and a blogosphere full of eyes), the story can be fascinating.

About 12 years ago, and a year or two out of high school, Erica was dating a gang member. (See? Interesting already!) She was born in 1976, the Year of the Dragon in the Chinese Zodiac. Her boyfriend's gang nickname was "Big Dog," and not wanting to have that written in English in the tattoo, she had the Chinese translation inked in the piece.

When people asked, she would just tell them in stood for "Year of the Dragon". She notes, however, that she has received a negative reaction from the Chinese women who work at the nail salon. So, she acknowledges, the inscription probably isn't very nice.

I showed the picture to my local Chinese language expert, Kwok, who has helped me translate kanji before, and he shook his head and said that, technically, the characters are correct, but a person well-versed in Chinese would not have selected those characters to represent the name of
“Big Dog”. He acknowledged that the reaction that Erica has experienced is probably due to the elementary nature of the words. As written, it is a literal interpretation of the meanings, and not necessarily in a flattering way.

To make this piece even more interesting, the tattoo was done at a defunct Bay Ridge shop called Ink Masters (their work has appeared previously here). She noted that the guy that tattooed her was named Eric and that she knew he had been "featured" in a film called "Erica" (same spelling as her name, incidentally), which was, in fact, an adult film. Erica wanted me to reiterate, the tattoo artist had been the adult film star, not her.

Finally, to make this tattoo's tale complete, two years after she had broken up with "Big Dog," she regretted the youthful folly that had caused her to get the tattoo. Rather than laser it off, or cover it up, she chose instead to improve it by adding flames to it to represent her anger over getting it in the first place.


Erica then offered up a bonus: a tattoo that, to her, meant much more:


Often, asking someone about a visible tattoo is rewarded by the unveiling of a much more significant piece (see here and here for two of the best examples on Tattoosday).

The new piece above, a pattern of fifteen dots, was inked by Erick Diaz at Asylum Studios in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn.

Erica entered the shop not with the intention to get tattooed, but to accompany her cousin Samantha when she went in for a tattoo.

Samantha has an interesting story. Many years ago, she had been a passenger in a vehicle that was involved in a drunk driving accident. She was ejected from the vehicle and hospitalized in critical condition. In a coma, Samantha faced life-threatening circumstances when her brain underwent significant swelling, so much that part of her skull needed to be removed to accommodate the condition. Ultimately though, Samantha recovered and was none the worse for wear. She currently is residing in South Africa and working as a photographer.

So Samantha was visiting her cousin Erica who took her to get a tattoo. When Samantha was getting the phrase “the sky is my only witness” inked, Erica was watching, knowing that she needed to get a new tattoo that honored her cousin’s miraculous recovery.

Which brings us back to the fifteen dots. Erica explained the code to me. She used dice as a metaphor and four rolls run together. A four and a three, along with a two and a six. The pattern is symmetrical and if you add the four and three, you get a value for 7. The two and six represent
the number 26. Erica wanted a representation of a magical date, July 26, the day when Samantha opened her eyes and emerged from her coma.

The piece is inked on the lower right side of Erica’s stomach, along the waistline. It serves to remind her about the value of life and mark the date that is so important in the lives of her family.

I want to thank Erica for her taking the time to talk with me, and for sharing her interesting stories about her ink here on Tattoosday.