This is my experience of my second tattoo. I got this tattoo in July of 2003. I knew I had a bonus coming to me at work so I would have some extra money to get a tattoo. It had been about two years since my first one and I was ready for more. So about a week before I got paid I went into my friend Nick's shop which he had opened only a few months before. I was kind of hesitant about Nick doing my tattoo because I hadn't heard the best things about his work. But, after seeing a tattoo he had done recently on my brother and cover up he was doing on a friend of mine I decided he was the man to do it.
At A Glance Author Rubber Dolly Contact Rubber Dolly@bme.anon When A year ago Artist Nick McMillan Studio Sacred Art Location Ogden, UT USA So, I went into the shop about a week before and told him what I wanted. I wanted to get a cat that slightly resembled my pet cat Adolph. I didn't want it to necessarily look like him but more so just represent him, so I never showed Nick a photo of my cat I just said draw a black cat with a white mustache, white socks on his feet with one black toe. He said he would do it.
I think it was a Thursday when I went in to get it started. It was fairly early in the morning so there was no one else in the shop. Nick had just finished drawing the cat and when I saw it I fell in love. It was perfect. Except instead of the regular pupil in the cat's eye I wanted him to make them stars. So there it was a beautiful black kitty. I decided I wanted it to fairly large and I wanted it on my lower back.
He had me sit in the special chair you sit in when you get tattooed on your back, I'm sure they have a special name for it but I thought it just looked like a massage chair. When he started the outline I thought "Wow, this is more painful then I thought it would be", especially in the places close to my spine. I remember every time he touched me I would jump, even before the needle touched me. I never thought of myself to be a wimp but the outline on that thing was painful. I remember he was listening to some industrial band and I kept shutting me eyes and feeling like I was on some strange painful planet.
We took a break after about an hour so I could smoke and when I stood up to check it out in the mirror I got the wonderful excited/exhilarated/shaky feeling that I love about getting needles poked in me. I couldn't smoke fast enough to get back in the chair and get going again.
The piercer from the shop came in and when he saw the tattoo he said, "That's bad ass. At least it's not some lower back tribal butterfly like most girls get."
The first sitting lasted about 2 hours and then we decided it was time to finish up for that day because my back was scraped raw and Nick had other appointments. He greased up my back with A&D ointment and put on some saran wrap and sent me on my way. Ink and blood dripped out of the saran wrap and got blood on my wife beater in a nice square but I didn't care because I was so stoked about how great the tattoo was turning out. We planned on finishing it up about two weeks later.
The healing of bod mod's are always my least favorite part about the whole thing. I love the whole experience of it all but the healing is always not that enjoyable. Especially trying to wash your back every couple of hours. I didn't want to take a shower every time I had to clean it but it was real difficult to have to strip down and splash water on your back when you're at work or whatever.
Anyway, I was back two weeks later and the memory of the pain was getting faint. I was ready to get it finished. He finished with the black shading and then colored the eyes an awesome greenish-yellow. And the nose was a bright pink. We had originally planned on making the fur black and blue but we decided that would be too much and you wouldn't be able to see the detail in the face as well.
When I finally got to see the finished product I was so happy with it. My respect for Nick had grown a million fold. It looked awesome. It was a lot bigger than I had pictured it in my mind but I was happy about that. The eyes are my favorite part, the color is so bright and the stars look amazing. I am so pleased with how it turned out I want to show it to everyone. I've never seen anything else like it. Someday we'll make it a whole back piece, Nick has lots of ideas of what to do.
I have gotten other tattoos since but it is still my favorite.