Tattoos for Martial Artists

oh, and since Alex was boasting about how the inside of the arm didn’t hurt too much :new_tomat

lets have it then, what are other people’s experiences with the pain factor for tattoos

my first one, on my back, went 5 hours straight. It was winter time. So the cold didn’t help my body at all. I have a super sensitive spine, so i’d say that was the hardest tattoo i had to endure (artist kept saying the area should go numb in about an hour - which was basically after the outline)…it never did!

other than that, the chest, specifically the nipple area…and just under armpit, the fleshy soft meat which tends to have stretch marks for those who do weights…so needle through that area was a bitch too. And then of course, any time the needle travels through a boney part like the collar bone, it illicits some twitches :thebirdma

its weird tho, its one of those things, where after u endure the pain (like what my spine went through) I kept saying that i would not get another tattoo ever again, blah blah blah…needless to say, given time to forget the pain, you’ll be hungry to do it all over again…and repeat the same process (this excludes arms tats tho, cuz they really don’t hurt) :new_silly

When I got the one around my arm, she started on the outside and I really didn’t feel much at all (I’d had a couple of shots at the bar next door beforehand on top of a few beer on my way back from a three hour surf session, so I was pretty set to go) but started to deinately feel it when she got to the inside of my arm. It was kind of a tickling mild pain thing, kind of like when you’ve had too much sex and your knob has been rubbed raw - you know how it still feels good even though it hurts.

The butterfly, which I wold have expected to be almost pain free, since its in a much less tender area and I was a whole lot more drunk, actually hurt a lot more. I don’t know if its because of the colors (yaks I talked to in Japan about their tats said that the reds and purples hurt a lot more) or that the artist in Austin was just more ham fisted (felt like she was trying to dig shrapnel out of my back with a K-bar). My wife concurred that her butterfly hurt a lot more than her first tat, which she go on her hip.

Also, is it just me, or does the butterfly look a lot more crude in execution (i,e. blurry and indestinct lines) than the infinity knot, which is about six years older?

Phrost ,
If you have an artist already , you should be jiving with him on this . Show him things you like and have him sketch it up from there .

Sorry to kill the fun .

:emo:

The carp picture I posted was done in one sitting because I have to travel 6 hours by car to see my tattoo artist. It took ten hours striaght and by the end my arm was swollen and VERY tender. It’s funny the stages you go through in a ten hour period. First it’s not bad, then it gets painful, then it goes numb and it’s all good, then it just fuckin hurts. That being said… I’d take the ten hours again over the six on each pec. Fuck me runnin’ getting tattoed on the sternum hurts. :fucyc:

nah, its a valid point
if ya ain’t a very good artist, you should definitely rely on the expertise of the guy that is gonna be inkin u up

the tattoo can only turn out better if the artist is drawing up something that he help create

all of my tattoos were just ideas i threw at artists, and they’d sketch shit out and we’d go from there

and yes, heavy handed artists are a ‘pain’!!! my first one (back) was from a dude that really pressed hard…the artists i go to now, all say that he dug too deep, hence the tattoo is raised off the skin.

didn’t know colors make a difference tho…hmm…wonder why this is so…cuz i have red and black on the chest, to me the pain was about equal

whats worse, is when they go OVER the inked areas again and again to make sure the color is filled in properly - usually after they leave it sit for a bit first too, before going back to it…:dodgy:

^^^ The yaks I talked to all had their tats done the traditional way - bamboo needles applied by hand - and said that the colored inks burn more. The blue/black ink is just plain old india ink, but I think they put metals in the colored dies, which is what burns so much. The yaks said they’d get the red and purple layers done in the winter so they could jump in an icy cold river to cool down the burn, which was also supposed to bring the color out more, too.

Had that done on the back of my arm by my tattoo artists teacher who was here at a convention. It didn’t feel that bad at the time but some of the ink fell out later on. :crybaby2: Interesting on the color hurting more. I know it takes longer to do and assumed that was the reason. Have never heard of it burning due to chemical composition.

is that yours?

I really don’t have enough technical knowledge or practical experience to say one way or the other, this was just what some yaks told me back in my Shingu days. For all I know, they were just BSing the gaijin.

they told you all sorts of other crazy lies … water is the worst thing for fresh ink

Hank ,

If I say it is will you quit Systema ?

what a tempting proposition!

I’ll have to seriously consider this one

No need to seriously consider it , I will tell you just becouse I am a nice primate .

Yes it is a section of my uncompleted sock . I have over 30 hours on it so far , problably closer to 40 hours … I have started to lose track .

I’ve got 9, mostly small ones. I have several more planned, just don’t have the $$. I’d have to say the most painful part was the blacklight ink on my right forearm. It was the last thing she put in, and she went over and over and over that spot for awhile, since she couldn’t see if the ink was all in or not. That spot stayed a nice blood red for about a week afterward as well. Funny though, I’m pretty much never near a blacklight.

Nice tats H, why didn’t you rip off your rash guard and show us those before?

hahaahahahaha

enjoy your cancer buddy .

  • coughs *

I mean …

geee Mr. Bladesinger …

Bobby’s Inkslinkers doesn’t use those black light inks … people all over the world have been having some mighty nasty reactions to them … and they seem to disappear after a year or two … unlike their sid effects …

My blacklight ink is a little shy of 4 years old now and hadn’t faded as of a few weeks ago, and I haven’t noticed any side effects yet, though I’m sure now that I’ve said that I’ll end up with a massive tumor on my arm in a few years. Oh well, done is done.

yeah I was exagerating a little … there have been only a “few” cases of actual cancer but lots of strange and horrifing reactions .

I heard about a few of them sometime after I had mine done. I’m happy nothing bad has happened to me because of it, but if i had heard beforehand, I likely wouldn’t have had it done.
However, with my shitty luck, now that I’ve mentioned it something bad will happen. That, and the word tumor is funny. Actual tumors aren’t funny, but the word is.
I’ll try and get pics of my tats sometime soon. Then everyone can learn some things not to do when getting a tat.

I especially like the Chinese leprechun. Classic, just fuckin’ classic.