Do I have great tits, or what?

Before we move, I decided to go ahead and get the tattoo I’ve been thinking about for several years now. We received a wonderful wedding present from our friend Dave of some tattoo work, should ever we want some. Dave owns a great little shop called Uptown Tattoos in the riverbend. I called them up, and he fit me into his schedule on Friday evening when I got done with my last day of work in Baton Rouge. A wonderful whirlwind.

The bird, in case you haven’t been plagued by my horrible jokes yet, is known as The Great Tit, or  Parus major. The  tits, chickadees, and titmice  birds make up the family Paridae. The Great Tit is a relative of our more familiar Tufted Titmouse of North America. Great Tits make their home in Europe, the Middle East, Central and Northern Asia, and Northern Africa. They also reside on the front of many a fine-ass woman. So ends your Science lesson for today, folks.

(Above photo by Alastair Stewart.)

The image I wanted is from my first Field Guide, an ongoing series of hand-bound pencil and watercolor drawings on paper. I talk more about them in my previous post, Field Guides:Drawing a Flashback. But the image started before then, with a tryptic of paintings I did back when I was at Tulane. The first painting in the set is myself looking rather like some sort of statue with an elongated torso, holding Great Tits in front of my own, with some blue-footed boobies and headlights in the background. This painting is currently living with our family friend, Pam Preston.

I turned my imagery into the sketchy drawing above for the tattoo, and then Dave cleaned it up and turned it into a tattoo drawing. Yes, it may seem weird to be getting tits on my back, but the way I see it, this way I’ll have great tits on at least one side of my body for the rest of my life.

So what do I do when the joke gets old, you may ask? Well, first of all, dumb jokes never seem to get old with me, much to the chagrin of my companions. But even if it does, I still have a beautiful drawing on the best canvas my body has to offer, and some wonderful memories to go with it. I’m glad I didn’t get a tattoo when I was younger because who knows if I would even like it now, but I feel that at this point in my life, I know who I am and what I want, and great tits are it.

Before the tattoo, Blake and our friend Barbie and I had some sandwiches and cheese fries from Cooter Brown’s next door. The guys at the shop are, as you might imagine, tired of the food from next door, so they had some delicious-looking sushi from the nearby Mikimoto.

Dave at work.

The bird outlines in, before color.

The first outline before the crosshatching. I really like just the outlines, also. Dave did such a great job with them!

Adding the dark breast feathers.

Adding the yellow. Yes, it looks red here because I was bleeding a bit, but it cleared up!

Outline one on the right in progress. On the left is the transfer he did from his outline drawing before we got started.

The transfer up close.

The wall I stared at for several hours is full of interesting drawings that Dave did for other people’s tattoos.

Dave’s tattoo shrine.

Working from the sketch.

Starting in on the second tit.

We had a wonderful time, and I am healing up well. They say that once you get one tattoo, you want more and more. We’ll see about all that. For now, I’m very happy with my tits.