Patricia Loves Summer

The Borders book store in Penn Plaza is closing in less than two weeks, which is sad on so many different levels. When its doors finally shut for good, we here at Tattoosday will personally mourn the loss of one of our favorite spots to browse and, of course, spot ink. Over the years, this particular Borders has been a great location for meeting people and talking to them about their tattoos, as it is just a stone's throw from where I work.

Patricia is among the last people I have met there, having spotted her a couple weeks ago, and interviewed her about this tattoo on the back of her right arm and shoulder:

This tattoo was inked by Miss D'Jo at Lark Tattoo in Westbury, New York.

The artwork for this piece is based on the work of Alphonse Mucha's series of decorative panels depicting the Four Seasons. This was based on "Summer, 1896".

Miss D'Jo's work on this piece is extremely well done and true to this original artwork, which is Patricia's favorite of the four seasons.

It should be noted that I find it remarkable how often I see Mucha's work translated into tattoos. Clicking here will display all the previous works by Mucha that have appeared on Tattoosday. Work from Lark Tattoo has appeared previously here, and this work showcases the last time work from Miss D'Jo blessed our site.

Thanks again to Patricia for sharing this lovely tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2011 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I can contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Patricia Loves Summer

The Borders book store in Penn Plaza is closing in less than two weeks, which is sad on so many different levels. When its doors finally shut for good, we here at Tattoosday will personally mourn the loss of one of our favorite spots to browse and, of course, spot ink. Over the years, this particular Borders has been a great location for meeting people and talking to them about their tattoos, as it is just a stone's throw from where I work.

Patricia is among the last people I have met there, having spotted her a couple weeks ago, and interviewed her about this tattoo on the back of her right arm and shoulder:

This tattoo was inked by Miss D'Jo at Lark Tattoo in Westbury, New York.

The artwork for this piece is based on the work of Alphonse Mucha's series of decorative panels depicting the Four Seasons. This was based on "Summer, 1896".

Miss D'Jo's work on this piece is extremely well done and true to this original artwork, which is Patricia's favorite of the four seasons.

It should be noted that I find it remarkable how often I see Mucha's work translated into tattoos. Clicking here will display all the previous works by Mucha that have appeared on Tattoosday. Work from Lark Tattoo has appeared previously here, and this work showcases the last time work from Miss D'Jo blessed our site.

Thanks again to Patricia for sharing this lovely tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2011 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I can contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Two from Samanatha, Including a Tattoo for Bubbie

I met Samanatha last month in Penn Station and asked her about her many tattoos. She's 26, and has been getting inked since she was 18, and appears to be going at a steady clip, because she has a lot of great work.

She was kind enough to share two of her tattoos, both from her right arm. The first piece is this hamsa:

Samantha explained that she got this tattoo in memory of her grandmother, or "bubbie," as they're known among many Jewish grandchildren. Samanthha's bubbie passed away a few months ago. I asked her what she thought of her tattoos and she replied, "Well, being a Jewish bubbie, I don't think she was too excited about them, but I always asked her if, as long as she still loved me, then it was okay; and she always said, "ach, yeah."

This hamsa, a symbol often associated with luck and warding off the "evil eye," was inked by Josh Schlageter at Hand of Doom Tattoo in Buffalo.

Samantha also offered up this dragon tattoo:

She got this from Steve Boltz at Smith Street Tattoo Parlour in Brooklyn, explaining:

"It's called a  spaulding dragon - it's old sailor flash ... I just wanted to go to one of the guys that could do one really, really well. Everybody in the tattoo community up in Buffalo that I know said, 'you gotta go to Steve Boltz', so I traveled down here to got see him."

Thanks to Samantha for sharing these cool tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2011 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Two from Samanatha, Including a Tattoo for Bubbie

I met Samanatha last month in Penn Station and asked her about her many tattoos. She's 26, and has been getting inked since she was 18, and appears to be going at a steady clip, because she has a lot of great work.

She was kind enough to share two of her tattoos, both from her right arm. The first piece is this hamsa:

Samantha explained that she got this tattoo in memory of her grandmother, or "bubbie," as they're known among many Jewish grandchildren. Samanthha's bubbie passed away a few months ago. I asked her what she thought of her tattoos and she replied, "Well, being a Jewish bubbie, I don't think she was too excited about them, but I always asked her if, as long as she still loved me, then it was okay; and she always said, "ach, yeah."

This hamsa, a symbol often associated with luck and warding off the "evil eye," was inked by Josh Schlageter at Hand of Doom Tattoo in Buffalo.

Samantha also offered up this dragon tattoo:

She got this from Steve Boltz at Smith Street Tattoo Parlour in Brooklyn, explaining:

"It's called a  spaulding dragon - it's old sailor flash ... I just wanted to go to one of the guys that could do one really, really well. Everybody in the tattoo community up in Buffalo that I know said, 'you gotta go to Steve Boltz', so I traveled down here to got see him."

Thanks to Samantha for sharing these cool tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2011 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Emma's Monarchs, and a Spalsh of Verlaine

At the end of July, a young woman named Emma missed her train in Penn Station and had some time to kill. Her wait was shortened when I chanced upon her and asked about this lovely tattoo she had going on her left arm:

She explained the origins of this wonderful body art:

"I knew that I wanted a monarch. And I knew that I wanted it on my arm. And I knew that I wanted it coming out of a chrysalis ... I did a lot of research online and ... didn’t know who I wanted to get it done by and was just in San Diego for the day with my cousin. Pacific Beach, actually, and was ... shopping in Pacific Beach and walked into a tattoo parlor, just like 'Oh, let’s go look at tattoo parlors!' and was flipping through all the catalogs and it was like dragon, dragon, dragon. Samurai guy, samurai guy, samurai guy. And then opened one and it was just all these amazing beautiful naturescapes and just amazing detail and I immediately, right there was like, 'whoever this is, I want this person to do my tattoo'. And they were like, 'Hold on. She’s in the back' … her name is Rebecca Min and I basically came to her with the idea and was like, 'You’re the artist, so I want it hanging from a dead branch. I want the branch to be black and gray and I love monarchs.'

I have always loved monarchs for my whole life from when I was three. That’s one of my earliest memories, I found a monarch caterpillar with my great aunt and took it home from Wisconsin to, at the time, Chicago, in a jar with some milkweed and watched it spin a chrysalis and then hatch out of the chrysalis and then let it go and ever since then I’ve just loved monarchs …they’ve reminded me of the older women in my family, my grandmother, my great aunt.

It’s still a work in progress and she combined all these pictures, she put them together and I knew that I wanted the chrysalis to be empty, like it had just come out of the chrysalis, like a rebirth sort of thing and we both had the idea to make it translucent so that you could see the branch through the chrysalis...

 

We’ve been working on it for over a year and a half now, just bits and pieces , my longest session was three and a half hours and I had the idea to do a whole swarm from different perspectives and once we have all of those one, she’s going to pick a light source from one direction and do shadows….and she’s  gonna do moss on the branches, a white lichen."

The shop where Emma began to work with Rebecca Min was Chronic Tattoo. Emma says Rebecca has moved on to Eden Tattoo, although she is still listed as an artist on the Chronic website.

Emma also has these tattoos on her wrists:

The left wrist reads, "Les roses étaient toutes rouges et les lierres étaient tout noirs" which translates to "The roses were all red and ivy were all black."

The right wrist reads, "Voici des fruits, des fleurs, des feuilles et des branches" which translates to "Here are fruits, flowers, leaves and branches."
 

Emma elaborates:

They are the first two lines of the last two songs in a set called "Aria T'oublie" by Claude Debussy. The poetry is by Paul Verlaine. I was a classical voice major in college and I wanted to do the set for my senior recital and I am obviously not your normal opera singer and my voice teacher said, 'Okay, that’s fine you can do the set, except for the last two songs. They’re too hard for you.' And I said, 'Fuck you.' And I took a year off and did nothing but practice and did lessons and studied and performed the set and was, too my knowledge, the first undergraduate ever to perform the set in its entirety. And so this was my badge of honor. Now seven year later, eight years later and until I’m in my eighties, I can look down and read these first two lines and remember every single word in French to both of these songs.

I was in West Hollywood, I was 23 and had 50 bucks and was like 'who can do this for really cheap?' and I don’t remember what his name was but I do know that at the time he had a sprained wrist and he was like 'I’ll do it. I’ll do it cheap. But I can’t believe you’re making me tattoo in a foreign language, upside down, with a sprained wrist.'

A hearty thanks to Emma for sharing these cool tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2011 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Emma's Monarchs, and a Spalsh of Verlaine

At the end of July, a young woman named Emma missed her train in Penn Station and had some time to kill. Her wait was shortened when I chanced upon her and asked about this lovely tattoo she had going on her left arm:

She explained the origins of this wonderful body art:

"I knew that I wanted a monarch. And I knew that I wanted it on my arm. And I knew that I wanted it coming out of a chrysalis ... I did a lot of research online and ... didn’t know who I wanted to get it done by and was just in San Diego for the day with my cousin. Pacific Beach, actually, and was ... shopping in Pacific Beach and walked into a tattoo parlor, just like 'Oh, let’s go look at tattoo parlors!' and was flipping through all the catalogs and it was like dragon, dragon, dragon. Samurai guy, samurai guy, samurai guy. And then opened one and it was just all these amazing beautiful naturescapes and just amazing detail and I immediately, right there was like, 'whoever this is, I want this person to do my tattoo'. And they were like, 'Hold on. She’s in the back' … her name is Rebecca Min and I basically came to her with the idea and was like, 'You’re the artist, so I want it hanging from a dead branch. I want the branch to be black and gray and I love monarchs.'

I have always loved monarchs for my whole life from when I was three. That’s one of my earliest memories, I found a monarch caterpillar with my great aunt and took it home from Wisconsin to, at the time, Chicago, in a jar with some milkweed and watched it spin a chrysalis and then hatch out of the chrysalis and then let it go and ever since then I’ve just loved monarchs …they’ve reminded me of the older women in my family, my grandmother, my great aunt.

It’s still a work in progress and she combined all these pictures, she put them together and I knew that I wanted the chrysalis to be empty, like it had just come out of the chrysalis, like a rebirth sort of thing and we both had the idea to make it translucent so that you could see the branch through the chrysalis...

 

We’ve been working on it for over a year and a half now, just bits and pieces , my longest session was three and a half hours and I had the idea to do a whole swarm from different perspectives and once we have all of those one, she’s going to pick a light source from one direction and do shadows….and she’s  gonna do moss on the branches, a white lichen."

The shop where Emma began to work with Rebecca Min was Chronic Tattoo. Emma says Rebecca has moved on to Eden Tattoo, although she is still listed as an artist on the Chronic website.

Emma also has these tattoos on her wrists:

The left wrist reads, "Les roses étaient toutes rouges et les lierres étaient tout noirs" which translates to "The roses were all red and ivy were all black."

The right wrist reads, "Voici des fruits, des fleurs, des feuilles et des branches" which translates to "Here are fruits, flowers, leaves and branches."
 

Emma elaborates:

They are the first two lines of the last two songs in a set called "Aria T'oublie" by Claude Debussy. The poetry is by Paul Verlaine. I was a classical voice major in college and I wanted to do the set for my senior recital and I am obviously not your normal opera singer and my voice teacher said, 'Okay, that’s fine you can do the set, except for the last two songs. They’re too hard for you.' And I said, 'Fuck you.' And I took a year off and did nothing but practice and did lessons and studied and performed the set and was, too my knowledge, the first undergraduate ever to perform the set in its entirety. And so this was my badge of honor. Now seven year later, eight years later and until I’m in my eighties, I can look down and read these first two lines and remember every single word in French to both of these songs.

I was in West Hollywood, I was 23 and had 50 bucks and was like 'who can do this for really cheap?' and I don’t remember what his name was but I do know that at the time he had a sprained wrist and he was like 'I’ll do it. I’ll do it cheap. But I can’t believe you’re making me tattoo in a foreign language, upside down, with a sprained wrist.'

A hearty thanks to Emma for sharing these cool tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2011 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Gowrish Shares His Blessing, Amma in Ink

There are times when I feel lucky to find a tattoo by an amazing artist and then there are times I find something that is so breathtaking, I feel honored to be able to share work by a true master of the craft.

Last week, I was walking down Crosby Street in SoHo when I met Gowrish after spotting a flash of color poking out of his short sleeve shirt. After he called the artist to make sure it was okay with her that I take pictures, Gowrish shared what I consider one of the finest tattoos I've ever posted on Tattoosday. Check out this piece by New York artist Denise de la Cerda, of Inkline Studio:

Tattoo by Denise de la Cerda

Gowrish explained who this tattoo depicts:

"This is Amma, who is the Divine Mother and comes from India ... she's a great humanitarian leader and spiritual leader. She does a lot of good work. The 'Hugging Saint' they call her in the West...Denise [de la Cerda]  is amazing, one of the things is that it's really difficult to capture ...it's considered a great blessing  if you can have Amma's image like this ... Denise is very blessed because this is so real life that it's kind of unbelievable....

Tattoo by Denise de la Cerda

She tattoos the way that an artist paints, she's a real artist .... the detail of the fabric and everything you see her are traditional Indian offerings ...  the lotus, apples, bananas ... incense stick - see the smoke ... Indian sweets ... rice ... a lamp ...it's so amazing, right?"

Tattoo by Denise de la Cerda

Take a look, also, at the amazing detail Denise created in the flower garland around Amma's neck. This truly is a sensational piece of tattoo art.

You can learn more about at Amma at http://www.amma.org/. I first became familiar with Denise de la Cerda's talent when I posted these amazing tattoos over two years ago. I encourage people to visit her website, http://www.chicksdigtattoos.com to check out more of her work

Thanks to Gowrish for sharing this amazing tattoo, and to Denise for consenting to my posting the photos here on Tattoosday.

This entry is ©2011 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.