I’ve been waiting a long time to write this post, almost 7 months. I have finally finished my second quarter sleeve tattoo, on my right arm. There was no original design to start with and each aspect of the tattoo has been added without any reference material, so during the process I had no idea what it would eventually look like.

I was originally going to keep the spiked eye design that has existed on my arm for many years into my new tattoo. When I went in for my first tattoo session on the quarter sleeve my tattooist expressed interest in just covering the existing design to essentially clean the canvas. I agreed and we started. He drilled massive amounts of white and light blue ink into my existing black and grey design changing the form entirely in only one session.

I was extremely pleased with the outcome of the first session and we discussed what the figure would become. I thought that we were going to use it as a headdress for a sexy womans head or something of that nature, but of course it changed by the next time I went to the tattoo shop (this happens a lot). The initial session lasted about four hours.

On my second session my tattooist presented me with 4 rough sketches of what he had come up with for the remaining front of the tattoo. Three of the four were very Biomech in design which I wasn’t particularly interested in since I already have a Biomech quarter sleeve on my left arm. The sketch that really drew my attention was the least developed of the three it featured a human head being held down by alien arms. I loved the movement in the piece and immediately said “That’s the one” to the torturous design.

After a five hour marathon on my arm, the previously thought headdress turned into an alien dissecting a human head. I loved the finished product and now my quarter sleeve had direction. To this point it wasn’t painful getting tattooed and healing felt no worse than a brush burn. I did however neglect to take care of it long enough and it got some pretty big scabs on all the black ink. I wrote a post about the tattoo scabs back in November.

The third tattoo session consisted of another 4 hours of work. It didn’t seem like nearly as much ground was covered as the previous sessions. After looking at it more thoroughly I saw all the detail that went into the newly added tentacles and he even moved slightly onto my chest which I didn’t expect. The quarter sleeve now had more form but looked incomplete, I hate walking around with incomplete tattoos.

The fourth tattoo session was even less eventful. My tattooist ended up finishing a large block of color but I was a little bummed that nothing new was taking shape. I kept telling myself, “All in good time”. The new tentacles were colored and developed a super realistic texture that I liked the more I looked at it.

By the fifth month I was itching to figure out what I should do with the inside of my new quarter sleeve tattoo. About two weeks before my appointment I got an idea and stopped in to talk to my tattooist. I said, “Can we slice open a human head? Brains and torture and all that good stuff.” You could see the gears in his head turning as he agreed that that would be a nice addition to the torturous scene developing on my upper arm.

This session turned out to be the smoothest of them all. I walked in and he had a rough sketch already drawn up, so I had an idea of what I was getting. I had no idea however that the head would have stitches which really brings out the torture aspect of the tattoo. I absolutely loved the outcome of this session. Surprisingly it didn’t hurt much getting the back of my arm tattooed but the entire tattooing session was spent on it so maybe the pain is just relative.

Before my sixth tattoo session I was hanging out with my tattooist outside the shop. I decided that I liked the design so much I was willing to take it down my armpit to the bottom of my ribs. He seemed even more enthused at the new canvas he had to work with.

I walked in for my sixth tattoo session and my tattooist immediately started spouting armpit tattoo. He asked if I would be alright with that since you kind of need to be in the right mindset to get your armpit tattooed. I somewhat reluctantly agreed and we went back to the chair. As soon as I took off my shirt he saw the large area of missing color on my quarter sleeve was more than he remembered. He decided to complete the rest of my quarter sleeve before continuing the tattoo down my body.

After 4 hours my quarter sleeve was finally finished. He went back into many of the colors especially around the eye, defining the alien creature even more. I couldn’t wait to see what was going to go on my armpit and ribs. I’ll be writing an extensive post on my first session on my ribs shortly. All I can say right now is “OUCH”!