Hey, I got a new tattoo. It’s very itchy today (but I’m not scratching!).

Stuart recently began apprenticing at Tough Love Studio in south Minneapolis. He needed some victims volunteers to begin his new adventure in tattooing, so I said “sure.”

I found an image of a bison cave drawing through Google, and Stuart worked with the image to customize it for tattooing. He did a very lovely job; I’m very happy with it!

The colors in the tattoo are perfect — when it heals a bit more and calms down, it’ll look nice and organic. Maybe I’ll call it my bison birthmark.

Stuart kept his workstation very orderly. It was all very clean and comforting.

After a brief break so I could stretch my leg, little droplets of water (or is that ink?) would gather on the tattoo as if it was sweating. I thought that was kind of cool — this is the first tattoo I’ve gotten that I could actually watch while it was being done. My first tattoo was a scorpion (because I’m a scorpio) in 2000, and the second was a very small line-drawing of a rooster I doodled in Germany in 2004).

The actual tattooing was more uncomfortable than I remember it being, but I suffered through pretty well (though not without verbalizing “ow ow ow”).

This was the sketch Stuart created before making his stencil. There were slight modifications between this and the final tattoo that we discussed beforehand.

I go back for a touch-up in about a month!

When we were done, Stuart wrapped me up and we went out for a celebratory beer. Yay for a new pet!