Outlining isn’t that much fun. It straight up kind of sucks. Good thing my tattoo artist jumped around when she saw that I was feeling uncomfortable because I only commented on how it felt maybe three times over the course of our five hours or so of tattooing.
Definitely looking forward to seeing what the sensations of the next session are, what with having lots of color and shading in my future. I’m both nervous and excited to see what different spots feel like when it comes to color. My inner wrist was by far the most painful place for me, but fortunately, my artist started there and got it out of the way early on. I actually almost asked for a break about four or five minutes in because it was so intense on that sensitive skin. I pushed through it and didn’t feel that way again after that.
I was able to take pretty minimal breaks (really, just to take sips of drinks, and once to pee because of said sips), but I’m thinking I’ll probably need longer breaks next time just because all of the work will be concentrated on one area instead of spread out all over my arm. We’ll see, though.
The people I was most excited to show my tattoo to – other than Greg, of course – were his grandma and our daughter. Greg’s grandma got to see it on Sunday and she seemed to like it, even though tattoos aren’t really her thing. My daughter seemed interested and even talked about wanting birds on her own arm, which I thought was very sweet.
My favorite aspect of my tattoo so far is probably the bubble pipe that we gave to Mr. Bird last minute. My tattoo artist suggested it (first just a pipe, then said “Wouldn’t it be funny if it was a bubble pipe?”), so we went for it. It fulfilled some of my impulsive nature about tattoos in general. All of the rest of my tattoos were poorly planned, but I’ve been planning this one for years.
I put a lot of thought and time into this sleeve, and I’m really impressed with Megan (my artist) and her execution of drawing the individual pieces up with limited direction, not to mention figuring out the placement with few adjustments. My sleeve looks beautiful so far and any single piece – even the flowers that have less character than the birds or the bee – are by far my favorite pieces of artwork currently on my body. All of my tattoos are very sentimental to me – and they still are – but my sleeve is on a different level.
I’m so glad I got to/get to be tattooed by Megan, and I’m looking forward to seeing how much my sleeve transforms as pieces begin to get color.
brainspill 2.0 