Siobhan's Colorful Girlie Skull

I still occasionally get people who ask me with wide eyes, "So you just go up to people you don't know and ask them to take a picture of their tattoos?" Pretty much, yeah.

Despite this sometimes daunting hobby, I'm generally pretty comfortable just asking away. Occasionally, however, I am quite self-conscious, fearing that I'll come across as creepy, which is why you rarely see lower back tattoos here on Tattoosday. I only show them when they are offered. Similarly, when a woman has a colorful or elaborate chest piece, I try not to make that the center of my focus and, again, I generally only ask about it if it's exceptional or very interesting.

Such was the case with Siobhan, who I spotted outside of Penn Station on the corner of 31st Street and 7th Avenue last last month. She has three tattoos, but this piece was the only one I really noticed, not necessarily because of where it was, but because of its colorful playfulness:

Siobhan credits this piece to a free-lance tattoo artist in Philadelphia named Joe Tizzo. She says she wanted a girlie skull, and this was his creation. He added the flurries of stars to fill out the piece. I particularly like the use of negative space and the use of  multi-colored dots to add a little zip to the edges of the tattoo.

Thanks to Siobhan for sharing her beautiful tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Out With the Old.....

As we wind down 2010, and look ahead to 2011, I wanted to take care of one of my several loose ends from the past year.

Back in July, I met a guy named John on the D train. He had tattooed arms and we chatted a bit. He said he'd send me photos and he did a few weeks later.

I never posted the photos because the resolution was low, and when I tried to increase the size, they blurred. I was going to include these in the Christmas housecleaning post, but the work is just too good.

So hear you have them, small photos, but recognizably amazing:

I mean, what is there to say? This work is quite excellent. The koi, the tiger, the sailing ship, sugar skull, nautical stars - it's all quite a body of work!

The artist is Nacho, who appeared once before on the blog here. You can check out Nacho's work here. in New York, he tattoos out of Studio Enigma on Avenue U.

Thanks to John for sharing these amazing tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

And thanks to all of our fans and contributors for making 2010 a successful year of inkspotting!

Jessica's Chest Piece and a Tale of Two Tigers

There may be eight million people in New York, but it's still, at times, a small world town.

Last month in the Amtrak section of Penn Station, I spotted Jessica, a young woman with a beautiful tattoo across her chest:

This piece even was our banner here for a few weeks, thanks to Jessica.

The inscription reads "Never Love, Never Lose," which is certainly thought-provoking, a slight spin on the aphorism, "It is better to have loved and lost than never loved at all." It also recalls an Irish claddagh ring, with two hands holding a heart. Feathers on the ends of the hands were added to even out the design.

I particularly like the fact that Jessica is wearing a key around her neck and, in the photo, it is lying across the keyhole at the center of the heart.

Jessica collaborated with the artist known as Ollie XXX in Montreal. If you look at his portfolio on his site, slide 87 shows a brighter original version of the tattoo when it was first completed.

When I asked her how many tattoos she had, she said, twenty-two, and showed me her most recent, a Peanuts tattoo. When I inquired where she got it, she said Thicker Than Water on the Lower East Side. "Oh," I commented, "you got one of the $50 specials?" I knew that the shop had done a $50 tattoo event the previous Saturday. Jessica confirmed that she had, in fact, attended with a friend.


I continued, "Shon Lindauer was the artist for my tiger,"and I rolled up my pant leg to reveal the piece Shon had inked at the beginning of the year when they were in "Year of the Tiger" mode. Well, you could have knocked Jessica over with a feather and her aunt, who Jessica was seeing off at the station, was also surprised. Why?

Jessica pulled down her right sleeve to reveal a familiar, but more feminine version of my tiger from my calf.


Shon had inked a variation on the tiger for her in February. Jessica's aunt insisted we pose with our tigers together.

I love how the designs are so similar, yet hers is much more feminine (or mine is much more masculine).

Granted, inkspotting certainly reduces the odds, but nonetheless, our paths crossing still seemed incredibly amazing.

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

A Double Shot: Steve and Krista Show Off Some Awesome Ink

Last Friday, my head was spinning. It seemed that there were tattoos everywhere. They were as prevalent as the blossoms on the trees. I passed out a few fliers, but hadn’t received any commitments from people to chat. The good weather means that we here at Tattoosday can be more selective in our choices, hopefully bringing you more intricate and complicated tattoos.

Just outside of Penn Station, I saw a man and a woman chatting in the sun. The guy had a bright red tattoo on his forearm. I couldn’t tell if the woman had ink, as her back was to me when I approached.

In introduced myself to Steve, who has six tattoos in all. He offered up the arm piece first, as it was the most meaningful of all his work:

Steve plays bass for a band out of Long Island called The Devilles. Check them out here. He described them as "punk rock n roll". Their MySpace profile categorizes them as "punk/blues/soul". Here's Steve at a gig:

To break the tattoo down a little, the quote in the banner is “When I got the music/I got a place to go,” which are lyrics from the song "Radio" by Rancid, from their 1994 album, Let’s Go. A little research proved that “Radio” was originally released on the Radio Radio Radio EP a year earlier, with Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong as a second guitarist in a brief stint with the band. Armstrong is even shares writing credit on the track. The album version, post-Bille Joe, has a significantly different arrangement.

Here's a little video of Rancid performing "Radio":

The guitar in Steve’s tattoo is modeled after his own instrument, a Gretsch.

He explained that the tattoo exemplifies the role of music in Steve's life. He finds it very therapeutic and acknowledges that, without music, "I would not be the same person I am today, or even be here at all." It's the biggest, most important thing in his life.

This was designed and inked by Greg Fly at The Tattoo Shop in Medford, Long Island.

Steve also offered up this stomach piece:

This is a direct quote from the Clash song of the same name from the London Calling album. Pepe at The Tattoo Shop did this piece and it represents Steve's belief that he'll be able to make an impression on this world before he dies.

In the course of talking to Steve, the young lady with him was an active participant in the discussion. Her name is Krista and she works as an apprentice at The Tattoo Shop where Steve's work was done. She said she had about six or seven tattoos in all. After talking with Steve, I asked her if she would like to show off her ink for Tattoosday as well.

She tried to downplay her body art, saying that, compared to Steve, her stories weren’t that interesting. I begged to differ but, to be perfectly honest, she could have been right. I only saw one of her tattoos, but it is truly spectacular:

Krista was born in upstate New York but she grew up in North Carolina. She remembers always being fascinated by the "Western motif" and when she drew up the rudimentary sketch of this tattoo, this was in the forefront of the vision. She took the basic premise to a tattooist named Zam at Visionary (a custom shop). She told him "this is [basically] what I want. Go nuts with it." Like I said, the end result is breath-taking. I believe this is Tattoosday's first chest piece.

Krista wanted me to plug her shop's show on April 26th at Club Bianco in Hauppauge. Check out The Tattoo Shop's page here to get all the details.

Thanks again to Krista and Steve for sharing their awesome tattoos!