My first tattoo was a back piece...

[flamin8]

the pain is all part of the whole tattoo experience
kinda also a way of people thinking before inking
if it was not painful then how many people would just go in a get one
its makes alot of ppl think.
surely having any form of drug or chemical in your body will being tattooed will inhibit the body from doing its natural healing process
i mean none of us would tattoo ppl who had a medium amount of alchohol in their system would we??
or if they had taken speed or any such pills??
we would all be very very very busy but there would also be alot of ppl with tattoo's that werent reallyh thought out
jay

[flamin8]

im a great believer that the tattooist should be able to distract from the pain thing with conversation and making sure the client is comfortable and relaxed etc
jay

[shelfreak]

that was something i specifically looked for when i was coming up to doing my first. i wanted to find a relaxing place with someone i liked and could chat to easily. i'm really pleased i did as well. I'm hoping to have a back piece by the end of my tattooing too but i agree that if you build it up slowly over time you not only have the greater accumulation of knowledge and the money saved to really go for it but you can see the life history, the stories, and have the memories. i want all the bits of mine to mean something important not just the whole thing

[sly]

yeah, but they should look good too. I don't have sentimental attachment to any of my old crap ones, in fact they've all gone, hooray. Maybe I would have viewed it differently if they had been good.

[shelfreak]

I guess i'm not the most qualified to judge what's good but i'm incrediably pleased with the way mine turned out especially the custom work in the second one. I still love my first as much as i did when it was done, I do have a sentimental attachment to them still but then they're not very old. I'm hoping building slowly a life story will keep that sentimentality as they will all be connected, it wouldn't be my real story if they weren't there....ask me again in a few years!