Ooooh SNAP!

What have I been up to you ask? Well, lots of stuff...One of my projects that I have been working on has been my new tattoo.

With age comes wisdom, or so they say. In my younger days, I certainly made some choices that were less than wise. One example, my first shoulder tattoo...A heart that said "luz de mi vida" - loosely translated as "light of my life", hand picked from a color by number book. LAME, I know.

Several years later, the cover-up. A Celtic knot triad...while certainly an improvement over the heart, not to well thought out either...and not executed to the precision that I had hoped. Less lame but still not great. For years I thought, maybe I can add to it. Make it cooler. But it just wasn't that cool to begin with.

Recently, I made the decision to work on the tat again...so this time, older, wiser...I was much more thorough in my search for a design and an artist. I like to refer to this as my clinical OCD. I must have been to every tattoo shop within a 75 mile radius and studied a hundred Asian tattoo websites to learn the what and why of what I was about to do. I wasn't taking this exercise lightly.

Feedback from the artists ran the gamut....some wanted to integrate Asian with Celtic, which to me was a serious faux pas - from these artists, I quickly ran the other way. Others wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole. Some artist seemed to lack any vision, some didn't listen to a word I said, some didn't acknowledge my presence in their shop, some were completely arrogant douche bags. I was beginning to feel little hope.

Next shop on the list was Th'ink Tank. Finally, I found my shop. I found my artist. "Tell me what you are thinking and we'll make it happen"...it was on!

After the first session, I thought Kristina was going to freak (actually I thought I might too). It was BIG...relatively speaking anyways. We were sitting on the couch (me in pain)...checking out the well thought out, well executed phase one. I said "this dragon needs a name". Almost without hesitation, K said "Snap", as in snapdragon. LOVED IT. Snap it was.

After 3 sessions and about 15 hours of tattooing Snap came to life; complete for now anyway. I now have a wicked tat, a new friend & tattoo artist, and your tattoo artist too, if you have any good sense. Thanks Ryan.

*These pics are of phase one and two. The third and final phase was mostly shading of rocks and waves and just bringing everything together. I'll add more pics soon.