This is a close up of the dragons' necks - look at the errors!
My Tattoo
As of 12/8/00
As of 12/8/00
As of 12/8/00
As of 12/8/00
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Design based on original artwork of Dan Thompson of Lakewood, CO.  I had spent about 15 years looking for the design I wanted when, one day at the Larkspur, CO, Renaissance Festival I walked into Dan's booth.  I saw this design and knew I'd found what I'd been looking for!  My tattoo is based on Dan's 18" x 24" Limited Edition #44 Martial Arts Dragon in black and white. Click on the links to see his website!  Work on my tattoo began in December '99 and was done by a fellow named Aaron of Tau-too in Indiana.  He's a friend of my best friend,  Glen, and did the work in Glen's house.
Click here for Dan Thompson's Fine Arts Webpage!
Close-up of the tails.  Note the inconsistent scales.
Taking a look at the photo of the whole outline it's hard to see the mistakes made.  Take a closer look and you can see problem areas, especially in the necks and tails.  Look at the neck in the close-up on the right and you can get a better idea of how tired Aaron must've been while doing that area.
Look closely at the tails.  It's harder to see here but some of the lines are blotchy and some of the scales, like those in the neck, have been misdrawn or fragmented into smaller scales.  Unlike the necks there was little excuse for these errors as I was Aaron's first customer and the tattoo started with the tails.  Aaron used a gel-transfer (a copy of the original art that is composed of a gel on special paper that is applied to the skin using deodorant) and was following the lines on my skin.  In addition, he had the original artwork nearby to refer to whenever he needed it.  The outline you see, including 1 hour of breaks, took about 7 hours to complete.  Considering the numerous mistakes I think James did a great job covering them up (see below).  I'm not sure why Aaron had such a hard time with this.  I know that not all of the transfer applied to my skin correctly so some of the lines were not as distinct or fine as they should have been but I think that Aaron should've been able to take this into account.  I am not a tattooist so I don't understand the finer points of the art.  I watched him do other tattoos and he used transfers for them all.  I could see him making small mistakes on some of them.  Perhaps I'm being too judgemental but when it comes to living art like this I think I have the right.  Or maybe it's the coffee and cigarettes he seemed to thrive on? :)
As of 12/8/00
Completed February '01 by James of American Tattoo, Denver, CO
I have to admit that the experience was rather painful.  Shortly after Aaron started we had to stop because my body was pumping adrenalin into me.  Lynette, Glen's wife, fed me crackers and gave me some water.  After a few minutes I was ready to go again.
I was disappointed by the quality of work and, after a delay of several months, I found a local shop that could fix my tattoo and do good work at a reasonable price.  That shop is
American Tattoo and James is the man who did the work.  James, unlike Aaron, is not a tattooist.  He is a tattoo artist.  The difference is the former can do the work, sometimes quite well, but lack genuine artistic skills, while the latter routinely does great work and has real artistic skills.  If you don't believe me look at his work.  In October '00, after I'd healed from elbow surgery, we began the long process of completing my tattoo.  Every Friday we spent about 3 hours (excepting some holidays).
Above are some photos showing how my tattoo looked as of December '00.  You can see from the close-ups how well he covered up Aaron's mistakes.  I selected the colors I wanted James to use for each dragon and I also showed him a yin-yang design I saw in his shop.  I gave him artistic license in coloring the design, changing the yin-yang, and adding pupils to the eyes.  The original yin-yang was the traditional, plain design and I wanted to further exemplify the yin-yang's ideology through things that are associated with it, hence fire with the white (male) side and water with the black (female) side.  This theme radiates beyond the yin-yang through the use of colors in the dragons that are opposite their complementing side of the yin-yang.  You may have noticed the white spot in the red dragon above the yin-yang.  That's a mole that James later colored in.  The reason the red dragon has only a little yellow is because James said yellow die fades quickly.  The reason the section around the yin-yang seems to be more vivid is because it was done after the necks and, thus, hadn't completely healed.
I must confess that I took weak prescription painkillers for each session to help take the edge off.  It seemed to help me deal with the pain (I hate pain and needles).  Keep in mind that James refuses to work on people who are high on illegal drugs and even those who are drunk.  One thing I noticed when I went to see James, 10 months after Aaron did his work, was that the ink outline had started to fade.  I talked about this with James and he said that setting the needle depth is very important - if it's too deep or too shallow the ink will fade away much quicker than it should.  We suspected, considering the amount of pain I experienced, that Aaron may have set the needle too deep.  It's also possible he used inferior ink.
Here you can see the completed tattoo.  After each session I treated the tattoo 2-3 times daily with triple antibiotic ointment. Aloe vera isn't recommended as it can make the ink fade.  The tattoo was completed in February '01 and took about 29 hours of work, excluding Aaron's work.  The above photo was actually taken Dec. 23rd '02.  The Chinese writing is the direct result of my studying Shao-Lin Kung Fu and T'ai Chi Ch'uan in Denver, CO.  The left side says "T'ai Chi Ch'uan" which means "Grand Ultimate Fist" and the right side says "Shao-Lin Warrior".  Shao-Lin actually means "Young Forest" because the first Buddhist temple in China was reputedly built in a young forest.  A bit pretentious but I was feeling the "spirit" of what I was studying.  One of the reasons I favored these dragons over the many I'd seen was the skillful blend of Western and Oriental traits.  Western dragons are too evil and fat while Oriental dragons are too influenced by animal traits of lions and dogs and such.  Interestingly, in the Orient, male dragons are usually associated with good while females are associated with evil.  Even more interesting is the fact that, while the phoenix plays predominantly in artwork, usually opposite dragons, there is very little in the way of Phoenix styles in Shao-Lin Kung Fu but there is a lot of Dragon style.