Show Us Your Ink

[ReturnOfTheMack]

Come on all, show us your tattoos, good and bad!

I can only upload a certain amount at a time, but out of mine here's my Supernatural tattoo that is a cover up. Originally I had a tattoo of a gem in a heart as my ex wife was called Gemma. But as they are now a man it felt disrespectful to have a tat referencing his deadname. So I decided to go for something with my favourite TV show.

Then my hydra with UV green eyes. A reference to my Warhammer 40k favourite army. 

[ReturnOfTheMack]

And my most recent 2. 

A variety of the Greek evil eye.

And my Guyver in the style of Van Goghs Starry Night, a tat my regular artist was excited to do but afterwards said she never wants to do again. 3 and a half hours of small line work.

[Boycie]

Couple of swallows I had done a couple of months ago in honour of a dearly departed friend.

[Carbomb]

That evil eye design is superb. The name always confused me as a kid, because the local Greeks and Turks had them up everywhere and sold them in shops. In the end, I asked a friend who said it's called the "Evil eye" because it wards off evil. Still doesn't make sense. Surely it should be called the "eye against evil"?

Anyway, blah blah. It is a superb tattoo, and I wish I had thought of it. Nice one.

[BomberPat]

Just one on each wrist for me, for now...

They're both David Bowie references; the lightning bolt from Aladdin Sane, and the album art for Blackstar, his final album. When Bowie died, I spent a bit of time on Photoshop trying to combine the two images and was never really all that happy with anything, so on a whim I found a tattoo place that took walk-ins and just got them done separately instead. I have since met someone who has them as a combined image, and I think I made the right call. I've met four or five people with just the Blackstar artwork, too.

I should be getting my next one this month; a friend of mine just moved to London as a student, and she does stick-and-poke tattoos, so I've asked her to do a small one for me soon. 

I have a long list of ideas that I want to get done eventually, but the actual act of finding the right artist, booking time, committing to it all, tends to put me off more than anything else. I have friends who are artists, but none who live locally, so I just need to get round to booking in trips to see them, I think. 

 

Edited February 5, 2025 by BomberPat

[WyattSheepMask]

Got a few, but my favourite is my Oldboy one. My favourite film, and this is ‘Cries & Whispers’, the recurring theme that’s used throughout the film. The black & purple is also a reference (I’m sure enough of you know the film to know that anyway)

 

And yes, that’s the soundtrack on the turntable 

[Jesse]

Got my first one years ago, a Transmetropolitan reference. I'd read the comics as a teen and they had a profound effect on me, and then Warren Ellis even became a kind of parasocial friend for a while, giving me very patient feedback on my writing. Then all that awful shit came out about him so now I treat it as a reminder of my youthful idealism while I slide into middle-aged bitterness



My second one is more recent, a stylised logo for Millennium Break, the player character organisation from Friends at the Table's PARTIZAN and PALISADE seasons. One of my all-time favourite shows that I've used over the past five years to keep me sane when my job makes me feel like I'm melting down. Not exaggerating that sometimes I've done the "You can't kill yourself, you'll miss the next episode' so I wanted to celebrate it somewhere on me.



Planning two more, I want to get another Friends at the Table reference tattooed on me, and my wife really wants us to have matching Lord of the Rings tattoos and I've slowly convinced her away from the tired Aragorn/Arwen reference and towards Theoden's "Forth, and fear no darkness" speech from the movie

[Chris B]

Mine's also a movie one. I had it planned for a long time, and found a guy in Shoreditch that not only specialised in the precise line-work this one needed, but also was able to take my ideas and expand on them a little. As a bonus, it was also a vegan tattoo parlour, so I was happy about that.

I wanted something that was a little abstract and not immediately obvious (otherwise I might as well get 'The Shining' tattooed in big letters on my arm). 

Next up is a plan for something similar but Red Room/Twin Peaks based - I'm thinking the zig-zags can be lined with the lines around the hexagons going up my arm, leading to either the curtain or a large red hexagon above. It'll take me a while to figure it out, but I'm hoping for that.

 

I also have a small Eye of Horus on my shoulderblade that I got in my 20s, but that was very much because of Neil Gaiman's Sandman, so I'm kind of glad I can't see that one now.

[Tamura]

Anti-fascist martyr Sopie Scholl.



Night of the Living Dead.



Most recent one, nicked from an album cover as I liked the artwork.



Plus a few smaller ones.

[Carbomb]

That last one reminds me of a guy I follow on Insta called ta2pawel - he specialises in "trash polka", i.e. that black with red elements style.

Edited February 5, 2025 by Carbomb
Ralph Milne

[mim731]

I have a few that I'm happy with (I've also got some shit ones I'm choosing not to share until I eventually get them covered).

I have the Sex Bob-omb logo from Scott Pilgrim and the Marvel vesrion of Thor's hammer on one arm (there's some secondary meaning around these, but I won't get into that now)

I have an origami godzilla on my calf that I had done in Tokyo, and then had King Ghodirah and the Tokyo Skyline added at a later date.

I have Dos Caras' mask on my leg, simply becuase my attoist thought it would be cool.

Jushin Thunder Liger's mask on my forearm, and then just below it an ode to my love of all things 80s VHS era films, with a reference to the test card. 

A slightly random mish-mash of things. Bit like me, in all honesty. 

Apologies for the terrible photography!

[ReturnOfTheMack]

Talking about mish mash! On one calf I have a kitten (a nickname I have with a small group of friends) and a kitsune.

 

And, due to a teenage dare, on the sole of my foot I got what I was informed was Mandarin for 'Love Hurts'. The artist said if I had it without reacting he would do that and my kitten for free. I got them for free.

[Carbomb]

That looks more like Japanese - the third one is from the Japanese syllabic alphabet. It does read "love hurts", though that particular first character means a more sexual/direct love in nuance than the deeper, more general emotion of love.

[ReturnOfTheMack]

To be clear, it was a dumb choice to not investigate what I was getting. Folly of youth and all that.

So by love hurts is it claiming me to be a masochist? ? 

[Carbomb]

3 minutes ago, ReturnOfTheMack said:

To be clear, it was a dumb choice to not investigate what I was getting. Folly of youth and all that.

So by love hurts is it claiming me to be a masochist? ? 

Could be a sadist, depending on whom you're saying that to