Horror Goulash with a Side of Power Mushrooms

I was passing through Century 21 Department Store when I spotted Jason, a web designer who estimates he is 50% covered in tattoos.

He offered up this sleeve, which he worked on for six sessions with the tattoo artist Sean Sweeney at Lola's Tattoos in Bogota, New Jersey:


Sean has subsequently moved to Virginia.

They called this piece "Horror Goulash" as it was a big pot of ideas for a sleeve, with an emphasis on the dark and macabre. Over the period of its creation, they collaborated to add ideas to it.


Jason also had this piece tattooed on the back of his left calf:

These are, for the uninitiated, the power mushrooms that are sought after in the Nintendo Super Mario Bros. video games.

Jason loves Nintendo and admitted, it was a "spur of the moment" piece tattooed "somewhere in the Village".

Thanks to Jason for sharing his amazing ink with us here on Tattoosday!

The Return of Eryn's Ink: Frankenstein's Monster and the Little Girl

At lunch, I ran into Eryn, whose yarn skull, was one of my favorite posts of 2008.

We've been exchanging messages for a while, and I have been anticipating another sample of her work (she has a lot of tattoos).

She has added to her yarn skull, and her whole right arm is a sleeve-in-progress. We decided to wait and showcase the whole limb when it's complete.

Her January offering was this brilliant portrait from the 1931 classic Frankenstein:


The picture above is the one I took, the one below is from the artist's portfolio:


This tattoo is based on this famous scene from the movie:

That's Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's monster and Marilyn Harris playing the little girl. The scene is simultaneously poignant and horrifying. It is a commentary on the innocence of childhood and society's destruction of that innocence through its creations. The little girl does not see a monster, but someone with whom to share a beautiful experience.


But the end result is tragic. The monster is even more innocent than the child, until his unintentional curiosity drowns the little girl.

The scene can represent many different concepts. One of which is the way society judges people based on the way they look. Adults see the creation as a monster, whereas the little girl sees him for what he is inside: a child with a curious innocence (soon to be lost).

Eryn has a lot of tributes in ink, commemorating "the darker things [she] loved as a child". This scene is her favorite one in the film, for all the meaning she finds in the brief couple of minutes therein.

The tattoo is inked on the back of her right calf. The detail in the portrait of Karloff as the monster is phenomenal:


The piece was inked by Randy Hall at Hero Tattoo in Conway, South Carolina.


Jeff Cribb, who founded the shop, is credited by Eryn as being the leading force behind the legalization of tattooing in South Carolina.

I also photographed Eryn's knuckle tattoos, which will be appearing in the future on KnuckleTattoos.com.

Thanks again to Eryn for sharing her awesome body art here with us on Tattoosday!