Wow, there are some really beautiful tattoos here on craftster!!
I'm pretty sure I posted in the original "show your tattoos" thread, but I've gotten several new tats since then (with several more in the works...) and thought I'd just post again
From oldest to newest:
This is one that I drew myself. It's on my right shoulder blade. It's a cover-up of an old home tattoo. 13 is my lucky number, and I like bats, so....yeah. ^^
This is another cover-up (underneath it is my first-ever tattoo...a tiny ankh done at home by an old boyfriend when I was 16...lol). It's the Zanarkand Abes symbol from Final Fantasy X and X-2. I'll be getting this covered with a half sleeve before too long. It's not that I don't like it, I'd just prefer to have the whole area covered, and what I want doesn't really go with the Zanarkand tat. ^^ This is a really old pic, btw...I've lost a lot of weight and had breast reduction surgery since then. lol. sorry, TMI. ^^;;;
My Dark Mark, and "myaku" kanji. Myaku is a song by my favourite band, Dir en grey.
There's a tattoo on the back of my neck of a raven wearing a crown, but I can't find a picture of it. My husband did this as his first tattoo when he was apprenticing a few years ago.
My knuckle tattoos! I love these so much!! The text reads Amor Fati, which you can read about here if you are interested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amor_fatiHere are some pics of the half sleeve on my right arm:
The geisha with the lion is from an ukiyoe tarot deck, and is that deck's depiction of the strength card. I have read tarot for almost 20 years, and the strength card has personal significance to me. Also, I've been in love with all things Japanese for as long as I can remember. ^^
All of the cherry blossoms and branches were free-hand drawn right onto my arm by my tattoo artist.
The text here reads "oboete iru no deshou?" and means "don't you remember?".
It is a line from the song "OBSCURE" by Dir en grey.
Above my old myaku tattoo, left to right:
"saku" (new moon)--another Dir en grey song.
Next to that is the symbol for the band MUCC.
The kanji below the myaku tat is "kodou" (heartbeat), and is also a Dir en grey song. Yes, I
really love Dir en grey.
Finally, here is my "tramp stamp" (haha...and please disregard my enormously swollen backside...I had just had the tattoo done when this pic was taken!):
My tattoo artist designed this image of a traditional Oni crossed with a hannya. I brought her several reference pictures and a lengthy, rambling verbal description of what I wanted, and she came up with this on her first go, and it is exactly what I wanted! The text underneath reads "Oni ni kanabou", which means "Oni with an iron club", and is an old saying meaning to be undefeatable, or to possess strength beyond strength. I was very excited to get this tatoo, and it's probably my favourite of all of them. However, the kanji on my banner is wrong. Why is the wrong kanji now permanently on my body? Long story. I'll try to be brief.
When I first discussed this tattoo with Kristie (my artist), I had the sentence written with two different kanji. Both read "kanabou", and as far as I can tell, both mean a metal rod. I gave them both to her with the reference pics, and said I wanted to ask my friend (who lives in Japan and is a renowned Japanese-English translator) which kanji should be used for the sentence. I did, and he told me, and the next time I saw Kristie I told her which one we should use. I watched her take the incorrect paper out of her folder, and I thought she threw it away. Guess not. But anyway, when I went in to get the tattoo done my dumb ass was so excited about the drawing she did that I didn't double check the kanji...I just assumed it was correct because I thought she got rid of the other paper. And then I never got a good look at the kanji in the tattoo until I looked at the picture above, which my husband took the day after it was done (cause, y'know, it's kinda hard to look at your own ass
). Had I taken the time to actually look at the text on the drawing I would have known right away it was the wrong character (it's only the first half of kanabou that's wrong). So yeah. It could be A LOT worse. I mean, it could say something totally incorrect or just nonsensical. But, dang. I'm dumb as hell.
Anyway, sorry for the excessively pic heavy and rambly post...I felt I ought to explain the wrong text on my Oni tattoo. When I got this done and posted it on Livejournal, a number of people were pointing out that it was wrong (which I already knew), so I just thought I'd explain in advance here. ^^;;
