The first tattoo of this episode is a crane on a girl’s ribcage. As Kat’s applying the stencil some dude Corey’s tattooing is ogling her and making rude comments. If this ever happened to me when I was getting tattooed, I would never come back. If I were the artist working on a client who […]

Some of Alana’s Derek Hess tattoos have made their way onto his site.
Though I’m not a fan of Derek Hess’ work, Alana really enjoys tattooing his designs since the style and line work are drastically different than typical tattoo art.

The theme of the episode is Kat’s dramatized self-intervention. She gets wasted, says something to upset her boyfriend and decides to stop drinking. Hmm, probably a good idea since her party antics got her fired from Miami Ink, and it appears she doesn’t have much involvement managing her own shop. The last thing I ever […]

The previews for this show frame it in such a way to suggest a lot of drama will happen each episode. But this is almost entirely gimmick, and very little actually happens. It took until the end of the episode before Kat decided to “lay down the law” with Pixie after being a big passive […]

What’s up with the creepy new title credits that sound like the movie Seven?
Kat talks a lot of shit about running a business, but she ran off and left Cory in charge. How can she expect her “employees” to take her seriously when she takes off whenever she wants? Secondly, the artists themselves are […]

Wherein they spell my lovely girlfriend’s name wrong, after she spelled it for them twice. Read about HIV and tattooing and piercing here.
We cannot refuse someone services based on whether they have HIV. We are trained to deal with blood born[sic] pathogens, we are trained on how we can prevent them from spreading, and […]

Alana’s teen class yesterday at the Akron Art Museum went really well. Above is a picture of her getting ready. For the first half, she gave a slide lecture in the museum auditorium on the history of tattooing, tattoo mechanics, sterilization, and styles of art in tattooing. For the second she helped the kids make […]

Television tattoo artists are in the unfortunate position of ambassadors between the tattoo world and the so-called “normal” world. It’s certainly less than ideal, but this is how TLC chooses to present their reality franchises, as insight into lives and professions most of us will never experience. Little People Big World is a perfect example […]

I believe this is the first episode of LA Ink where Kat doesn’t tattoo a celebrity. Instead she accompanies some girl’s lame sob story with equally lame lettering. “I came out, and my parents said they still loved me. It was real sad.” Yeah I definitely feel for you, wow what a life changing experience. […]

Every week this show becomes less about tattoos and more about Kat’s personal life and client tragedies. This episode focuses on Kat’s new boyfriend with a gross, unironic mustache.
Kat does a terrible tattoo on Jenna Jameson, who seems to be going for the world record in worst tattoos. After she finishes, Kat’s sure to […]

What can I say about this episode that I haven’t said already? Most of the customers are ridiculous, and most of the tattoos are flash grade crap.
Kat Von D only deigns celebrities worthy of her services. She has an astounding collection of bug-like sunglasses. And she instigates drama at every given opportunity. Sounds like […]

Kat’s 5 hours late which is completely unacceptable and unprofessional for any artist let alone supposed shop owner. Were she working for anyone else she would’ve been fired- again. She continues the show’s trend of only tattooing celebrities, presumably to keep the ratings up. After making the guitarist of My Chemical Bromance and his hired […]

One of my biggest problems with this show (and any tattoo reality show for that matter) is it’s attempt to pass fabrication as reality. No artist has a 5 minute turn around time for the preliminary drawing of a good portrait. The fact is since all of the tattoos on the show are prearranged the […]

Tattooer to the butt rock / nu-metal stars, Paul Booth is not the best tattoo artist in the world. He’s not even close to the best tattoo artist in the country. But people (non-tattoo artists) can’t stop talking about him because of his over the top persona, and the “high profile” (MTV culture) clientele he […]

Over the last couple of episodes I’ve grown to appreciate Kim Saigh’s work more. While her style isn’t necessarily my favorite (always a matter of personal preference) she has good drawing skills, isn’t afraid to use a lot of color, and has very clean and sterile practices. She’s the only artist on any of the […]

Chi-tonw sweet Chi-tonw. More about the guy who sues over a misspelled tattoo. A tattoo he approved the drawing of. Then he approved the stencil of. Then he signed a waiver saying he approved of the spelling. Hope this guy ends up having to pay the artist’s legal fees.

Wednesday night Alana and I watched the first episode of LA Ink. On these tattoo reality shows you have to take everything you see with a grain of salt, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes. For example, I’m fairly certain TLC actually puts up the money for these shops and owns them, which […]

Tonight is the series premiere for TLC’s latest trainwreck, LA Ink, a spin off of Miami Ink. The show is certain to make me roll my eyes and groan with irritation, but I’ll probably watch anyway out of morbid curiousity. Other things the show is certain to contain:

Mediocre black and grey work.
Kat Von D spreading […]

If you didn’t know already, my girlfriend tattoos. Because of this, people have a lot of questions for me, and I’d thought I’d take this opportunity to address them, so this is not directed at any one particular person. Additionally I find a lot of people aren’t really aware of what the tattoo experience entails, how they should be prepared, how they should expect to pay, and how they should interact with the artist. Hopefully this will help you and your artist or future artist have a good relationship.