Jacqueline's Blood Rose

Two weeks ago I spotted Jacqueline and knew I had to ask her about this large tattoo in the center of her back:

Jacqueline explained that she and her older brother got this same tattoo in the same spot. "We just wanted to get a matching tattoo," she told me, "and, you know, we're both blood relatives". It's as simple as that.

She credits Seth Wood with this tattoo. Seth currently works out of Saved Tattoo in Brooklyn. Work by Seth appeared previously on Tattoosday just last month here.

Thanks to Jacqueline for sharing this amazing 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 contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Alex Shares Three Elements of an Amazing Sleeve

I'm not sure why it has taken so long to post Alex's tattoos - when I met him at the end of May in K-Mart @ Penn Station, I was totally stoked by his ink. Perhaps I was just letting the photos simmer as I waited for the right time to share them. Nevertheless, here they are, finally.

What we're seeing are three portions of Alex's left arm sleeve, beginning with this segment which is the most impressive part of the work:

 

As Alex explains, this tattoo is

"inspired by the carvings in Cambodia in Siem Reap ... it's one of the temples of Indra, Indian god of thunder ... he's also the god of change and progress ... 

 ... He's very human-like because he messes up a lot ... he's somewhat of a womanized, so it makes him very original from the rest of the Indian gods..."

At the top of Alex's arm is this symbol:

He told me that this is the logo of a hard rock group from Brooklyn called Life of Agony.

You can check out their website here or peruse their Amazon catalog here.

In the photo above, you get a glimpse of the third and final segment of Alex's sleeve which we're seeing today, which features this familiar face:

That's the symbolic face of  Steeplechase Park on Coney Island.

Compare to this tattoo, which appeared here last year.

Alex explained about his connection to Coney Island:

"...Basically, I grew up there ... I grew up in Bensonhurst, but [Coney Island] is kind of where I became myself, adolescence and all that stuff - that's the old Coney Island..."

Alex credited all of his work to a tattoo artist named Seth Wood who is currently working out of Saved Tattoo in Brooklyn.

Thanks to Alex for sharing this amazing work 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.

Luis Shares Two Lotería Cards

I met Luis in Borders, Penn Plaza, last month and asked him about his tattoos. He has more than fifteen altogether, and three are based on Lotería cards, which are used as part of a Mexican bingo game, as well as in fortune-telling.

He shared two of these cards with me and explained that, as a first generation Mexican-American, these Lotería cards remind him of growing up.

The first one he explained is number 21, La Mano:

Luis explained that he relates to this card because "la mano" is Spanish for hand, and  he is a builder/electrician/carpenter by trade. He considers himself a "designer of ideas," and because he works with his hands, this is an appropriate card to have as a tattoo.

The second one he let me photograph is number 27, El corazón:

This card is appropriate, according to Luis, because "El corazón" means the heart and, Luis said, smiling, "I've got a big one".

There are a lot of different artistic representations of these cards out on the web, which tells me that they serve as inspiration for a lot of people.

Image courtesy of "The Lucky W" Amulet Archive by Cat Yronwode

Luis had these tattoos done by a tattoo artist named Fish, who was visiting Saved Tattoo in Brooklyn, but generally works out of Th'ink Tank Tattoo in Denver. Work from Th'ink Tank appeared here once before.

Thanks to Luis for sharing these two Lotería cards with us here on Tattoosday!

Jess Shares Her Colorful Rooster

I met Jess last month and, still using a loaner camera, managed to get a shot of one of her three tattoos, located on her right forearm:

Aside from the fact that the picture is not ideally crisp, one can still see how beautiful and colorful this tattoo is.
The inspiration came from a book of Chinese propaganda posters.

Jess noted that she asked the artist, John Reardon at Saved Tattoo, to give the rooster a "gentler eye" which she hoped would "embrace [its] masculinity while poking fun at it". Reardon's work has appeared previously on Tattoosday here and here.

Thanks to Jess for sharing this lovely rooster with us here on Tattoosday!