Before I chose Chris O'Donnell at New York Adorned to do my back work, I put together a written outline of what I wanted. It's hard to get across sometimes, but this guy had the vocabulary I was looking for. Here is what I wrote:

"Neo-Traditional Japanese style. Bold outlines, deep colors. Very "readable." Large orange Koi. No pattern, just shades.Arching left. Whiskers. Serene look on face. Entire back and descending only onto left buttock. There should be very few “hard stops” between untattoo’d and tattoo’d skin. Effective use of negative space to “ease” the tattoo in.

Traditional style blue water. Bamboo with some green leaves at upper left back. Maple leaves. Not too heavy on the isobars and spirals, but definitely some. There is a cover-up component of a tattoo on upper right shoulder blade. Entire piece needs to tie into pre-existing work on shoulders / upper sleeves."

Pre-First Session. April 16 2003. 10:45AM.
I'm about two hours away from starting my back piece. I'm both nervous and anxious. Nervous about the pain (I'm human.) Nervous about the way I'll need to dress till it's healed. What a pain. And I'm anxious because I have no patience. I want it on and done. I hope that we can at least get 100% of the outline done today.

Post-First Session. April 16 2003. 6:00PM.
Yeah! Right on! So, just got back from the first tattoo session. It. Looks. GREAT. HUUUUUGE! This tattoo is fugging huuuuuuge. Well, my back is pretty damn broad so it just goes to reason, huh?

We got the Koi outline 100% done with a bit of the water that overlaps at the fins and tail . I highly suggest Chris O'Donnell at NY Adorned if you are looking for Asian influenced work. He's fast, concise and a nice guy.

I go back on April 25th to do the outline of the background elements. Fire, bamboo, maple leaves, water, wind, some symbolic touches... All in all, I couldn't be happier.

From: Lara ({usenet}@waawa.cx)
"Put the endorphins down, and back AWAY from the keyboard."

  

Pre-Second Session. April 25 2003. 10:00AM.
When you do large scale work, all the days leading up to each session are annoyances. You just want the day to arrive, to get the work done and get the hell out of there and have a beer. I like the end result, not the process. Well, I like the planning and the layout and process things like that, but sitting still for three hours is not enjoyable. Sitting still for three hours getting drilled is even less enjoyable.

I take delivery on a custom-made Taiko drum today, too. It's a small one, more suited to practice than performance, although it can be played in a group setting. The people over at World Sphere Taiko were kind enough to make it for me.

Eight hours till tattoo time, 12 till that beer. And then about 336 hours till the next session.

Post-Second Session. April 26 2003. 11:00AM.
Color work, while less "pointedly" annoying than outline work has a worse post-tattoo feeling. Sleeping was rough. If you were to add up all the ink used in the outline, it'd probably be two thimbles worth, but when you start looking at the amount used in the color work, you get closer to ten or more. All that coverage equals one raw back. Heh.

We got a good amount of color work done. About 1/3 of the Koi has been colored in. Chris picked some nice oranges, yellows and a touch of red. All blended to give the image some great depth and motion. It's interesting how the color changes over the course of a few days. When you first see the color, your skin is red. The color is also much darker due to the blood that mixes into the excess ink. As the swelling goes away and you wash off the ink that didn't "take," the colors become much more vibrant and alive.

But hell, it's looking better than I could have hoped.