I’ve long been envious of my friends with sweet sleeve tattoos. It’s a cool place for a tattoo. You get to see it yourself a lot. Some of it sticks out from a rolled-up shirt-sleeve which is fun and mysterious. You’ve got a decent amount of real estate to work with. You get to showcase it with a sweet sleeveless shirt at the pool.

I brainstormed about it for a while.

I used Notion like some kind of nerd.

Note that I already have a circle tattoo on my left shoulder (see image at top of blog post). I was thinking that my new right-arm tattoo would kinda synergize with that or whatever. The original idea of the circle is that it represents line and shape (e.g. basic elements of design) and that perhaps someday I would extend it with other basic elements and principals of design. Like if I did a solid red circle on my other arm, I’d get color and balance conceptually out of that.

So my original thinking was to do something very geometric on the right arm. Maybe a bunch of interlocking circles or the like.

I took all these ideas and went over to Monolith tattoos here in Bend. I had the most uninspiring conversation ever with a tattoo “artist”. It was like 10 minutes, they glanced over what I brought in, barely caring, and then pushed really hard to get a date for the tattooing on the books. I agreed to it at first, then heard literally nothing about sketches or collaborative design, just reminders the date was coming up. That is not what I had in mind at all. I wanted to work with an artist crafting a final design with their skills and style with what I wanted to put on my body. I’d be happy to pay for that time, not just hours under the gun.

Apparently that’s just not how it works.

But I got a lead on this other guy Sean Wright who had his own shop: Sigil Tattoo.

Seans work isn’t particularly geometric. When I talked to him about that, he kinda brushed away the idea, because he’s very into the idea of the tattoo being a successful project and that sorta requires leaning into the artists style.

Looking at his past work, I was impressed by the floral, bone, and bird stuff:

Even aside from my own theme ideas, definitely something I wanted is a very well done tattoo. Likely clearly a piece of art. Sean is definitely a guy for that.

Knowing birds were on the table: Ravens! I love Ravens. Smart and clever birds. They tend to do mischievous things, which end up being for the benefit of all. For instance, the classic story of the raven, that telling via Northern Exposure, my favorite show. There is a strong connection to Alaska which I also like.

Sean was down with a Raven. He said he likes the idea of a “main character” of a tattoo and then supporting elements to flesh it out. So Raven is the main character, then we could tie it over to my other arm via a portal-looking nest in the same position and size as the existing circle. Cool idea.

Sean sketched it out and placed the sketches over photos of my arm in an iPad app.

At the first session, the design gets printed out in this transferrable purple ink which can stick to my arm, so Sean can get the overall positioning and concept right. I think we did the purple ink the second session too, then didn’t need it anymore. It was 5 or 6 sessions overall.

On my drive over to that first session, I literally had to stop my car for a Raven in the middle of the road looking at me. True story.

Then we got to it!

Does it hurt, you ask?

Frick yeah it hurts. Especially anything near the inner or outer elbow. It’s managable though. And by manageable I mean you just deal with it because it’s worth it. You can’t take anything. After the session is over, the healing really isn’t bad. Sean uses a 2nd skin style large sticker things that stay on for 3 days, then that’s about all you have to do.

As the sessions went on, we hopped up to the top.

Eventually getting the Raven totally fleshed out.

Then we moved on to the nest.

Then onto fleshed out the space with more nest stuff.

And now it’s done!

I’d like to get some better/proper photos of it soon. So if I do that, I’ll post ’em here. There are some cool details like a little white ink in the Raven’s eye and stuff that isn’t captured well here. Plus this wasn’t fully healed yet.

All in all, the job was 5-6 sessions approximately 5-6 hours each. Done over the course of ~3 months. Each session being ~$1,000.