Jim's Tawdry Tattoo Page

the old tawdry tattoo page is long gone, but my personal ink collection is still here. if you're serious about body modification of any or all kinds (including kinds that i never would even have imagined), check out the excellent BME (Body Modification Ezine).

I got this Kanji "bear" character on my chest in February or March of last year. I picked the bear character for personal reasons that aren't really related to the widespread gay "bear" concept, but hey, you can think of it that way, too. The picture and the others on this page are direct scans, flesh to the flatbed.

When I got the bear I was thinking of getting a tattoo in any of a number of different places, including my left shoulder and my right calf, in addition to the chest spot I decided on. Those other spots remain open and waiting for ideas from you, my dear readers, so write me: webmaster@amxfiles.com.

My first tattoo was (is) a little panther on my right shoulder blade. It's okay, but it's just a basic flash design, and I don't have a good picture of it.

Next came the dragon. This evolved from a picture I found on CompuServe. I spent a lot of hours converting the color picture into outlines. Unfortunately, the computer graphic I had showing the colors has been lost. This one is on my right upper arm -- it probably should have been bigger, and the tattooist screwed it up a bit. But hey, it's mine.

I've always called this one a "cave drawing" (or painting) because it reminds me of some of the images left in caves by prehistoric artists. A reader tells me that it "looks a lot like one of the English chalk horses," that is, "the places in the chalk country where people have cut outlines in the sod down to the white chalk bedrock and the outline shows up in the fields as a white on green (grass) drawing."

Sounds cool to me!

Another reader confirms it: "Your horse tattoo is indeed identical to Britain's most famous (and oldest) chalk horse (apart from the hatched lines) . . . The white horse in question is in the Vale of the White Horse, near the village of Uffington around 30 miles west of Oxford." So now I know.

I adapted the design from one of the hieroglyphs on the back of Nirvana's In Utero album -- they must have gotten it from the chalk horse. I got this one on my left arm shortly before seeing the band in November 1993. People are charmed by this little guy. Now that Kurt Cobain is gone, it means a lot to me.

This picture shows the chalk horse and my rattlesnake tattoo, which is probably my best one. Mike King at Rick's Tattoos (Arlington, VA) drew it directly on my skin, so I don't have the artwork on paper, obviously. It wraps around my left upper arm. Getting inked inside your arm can be pretty painful, but I was so tired that day I almost fell asleep while Mike was doing it!

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mail: webmaster@amxfiles.com.