My Pet Bison

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

Stuart

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.”

Bison Tattoo Stencil

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!

Bison Tattoo - 1/2 done

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's Workstation

Bison Tattoo - Colors

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

Bison Tattoo - Bleeding Out

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”).

Stuart

Bison Tattoo Pre-design

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

Bison Tattoo

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

Bison Tattoo wrapped up

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

6 Comments

Jason P

Finally got that tattoo of Jabba the Hutt you’ve always wanted, huh?

Oh, there’re pictures. Sorry, Amy.

Jess

The droplets are lymph, your body’s reaction to the wound. My last one hurt more than I remembered too, but like yours, it’s a lot bigger and has more shading.

John

You got a tattoo from an APPRENTICE tattoo artist? That’s bravery.

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