Month / November 2021

by theremonster

Thanksgiving Conspires Against Me

Perhaps my title is a touch dramatic, but Thanksgiving travel is the only explanation for the traffic I hit on the way to my 96th appointment with Horizakura. A normal drive into the city should take around 45 minutes for me, but this commute (despite it being a Tuesday) took an hour and 45 minutes. It was absolutely brutal and so incredibly frustrating to be late on a day when work was finally not an obstacle in the way of me making it to an appointment. The bright side is that the holiday season tends to be a bit more calm in my industry so I’m optimistic about the appointments we have going forward. Getting there when I did only left Horizakura an hour to work, and I suspect that is why he opted to shade some of my arm instead of continuing with the outline. The background outline often takes some time to draw on and work out the flow and it’s my guess that he opted to maximize our time together by going with some shading which he can start right away. You might be wondering why I didn’t just ask him for his reasoning. I don’t have a very good answer to that question other than to say it doesn’t really matter to me. Sure I’m increasingly excited about being near the end of the full outline, but it all has to get done eventually. The order it gets done in will be largely inconsequential when we cross the finish line.

From an outsiders perspective there probably isn’t anything exciting about the results of this appointment. From my perspective, having full sleeves has been a goal since I started getting tattooed nearly 15 years go. Seeing this take shape is very exciting to me, no matter how small the step forward is.

by theremonster

In and Out

After three months of cancelled appointments, Horizakura and I were finally able to meet up for our 95th appointment together. Work has just been unbelievably busy for me and I had no choice but to cancel my appointments in September and October to accommodate. In fact, I was in danger of having to cancel this appointment if not for the willingness of my colleagues to cover me on a job last Tuesday. We were booked on a show in Soho so I was able to dip out around 5:30, walk over to the studio for a quick hour of tattooing, and then had to jet back to work to help the guys load out the show. I was in and out so fast there wasn’t too much time for chit chat or beer like we usually do, which was a huge bummer… but there wasn’t any other choice. Nonetheless, Horizakura was able to spend an hour or so drawing out and tattooing some background on my forearm. Not exactly the kind of content that will get me 10,000 likes on Instagram, but background is such a vital part of any horimono design that I am always very excited to see it come together. I was a little late taking the photos below and the lines have started to heal, so you may see some irregularities that won’t be there once the healing is complete. Not much else to say here other than I am so happy to be getting tattooed again and so happy to be writing updates here.

Also, the day after my appointment I had some interesting bruising in my elbow ditch. I don’t recall ever having bruised like this before and I thought it was noteworthy.