Tattoos from the Blogosphere: The Back of Nathan's Legs

My recent affiliation with Nathan over at KnuckleTattoos.com has been fairly sparse with the cold weather seizing the Northeast. However once he added me as a contributing writer, I queried about him sending me photos of some of his ink to put up over here on Tattoosday. This post reflects a couple of leg pieces he sports.

First a pre-color peek:

And then, with some color, in its completed form:


A little limb isolation (click to enlarge):



These pieces were inked by Jason Brooks ("he is incredible") at Rock of Ages Tattooing in Austin, Texas.

The following is an excerpt from Nathan's blog, which begins to explain "bitter strength" and "Quixotic honor":

So I went under the gun again. First time in almost six years. I was just supposed to get the outlines done, but then his appointment after me canceled and I got a four hour session. The crook behind the knee and the area around the Achilles tendon were miserably painful, but the rest was pretty tolerable.



The theme behind the piece is a warning about virtues bordering on being vices. Values that can bite you back. Just because I am strong enough to endure hardship does not make it any less hard. Sometimes not bearing the load is better than having the strength. Honor is good up to the point that it becomes pride or self delusion. Of course it also works backwards. I am strong enough to persevere. Sometimes the windmills are dragons in disguise.

Thanks to Nathan for sharing his ink here on Tattoosday. Be sure to check out his ink blog here. Who knows, may be you'll see a post by yours truly over there one of these days...

Tom's Arthurian Tattoo

I ran into Tom coming off of the subway at 86th Street in Brooklyn. He had several tattoos (four, to be exact), and he offered up the above one as a special piece. Do note that he said, as many people do, that all of his tattoos are special.

Tom told me this piece, on his right bicep, is a representation of one of the more famous aspects of the King Arthur legend - the sword in the stone. The sword of course, is Excalibur. Tom's parents, when raising him, gave him a thorough teaching of the Arthurian stories and the lessons from these tales carried with him through to his adult life.

He indicated that the colors of the stained glass behind Excalibur are significant in that the blue represents courage, the red represents honor, and the purple represents valor. He had this inked the year that his father passed away from cancer, in part, as a tribute to the morality with which he was raised by his parents.

The tattoo artist was Mike at a shop that closed its doors many years ago (somewhere in the vicinity of 18th Avenue and 77th Street in Brooklyn).

Thanks to Tom for sharing this tattoo with us here at Tattoosday!