Hahaha! Awesome grapefruit! Googly eyes! o<O

Looks pretty cool to me, though!

That looks pretty damn Awesome. :)

Where is this Don Bluth YouTube video is at?

http://www.youtube.com/user/DonBluthProductions I think that hippo was floating in my mind when I did this :P

You won't be needing them anymore, and they'll probably go bad after awhile if you don't eat them. It'd be funny to slip them back into the stand at the grocery store and see how people react to them. ;)

XD why would you draw on grapefruits?

THey have a slightly uneven texture and the flesh is supposed to have a consistency somewhat similar to human skin. THis makes them a good practice medium.

Huh....that's brilliant!

What's even moreso is that I kinda pulled that out of my ass, but it makes sense to me. ^v^;

Very nice, you use Those cuz they are somewhat like skin right?

Exactly!

I thought so, i think i remember you telling me about it at OC

Actually, not really. :)

Actually I think that's really cute and pretty good. Love the colors as well. You're on your way to tattoo-land! :)

For the size and the level of detail, it's actually pretty damn good.

Grapefruits are great to get the hang of using the machine, gain some hand strength and work with a difficult surface; but it's far from the texture of skin. Eventually, you'll want to graduate to pigskin so that you can have a large canvas to work with. Smaller pieces are much harder to do and they don't allow you to get any sort of flow with the tattoo session. Pig is also much closer to the texture of human skin.

There's a great essay online here: http://forum.ink-trails.com/Pig-Ski.....rs-t17060.html about pigskin practice. The whole forum is pretty good, actually.

If you don't mind, I'm going to add you to my watch list. I'm also starting up tattooing and have been at it since late August. I've done 26 tattoos on people so far and each one of them has been a learning experience. :)

Fantastic! Someone else going through this, for whom with I can relate!

Heh, I've been thinking lately to 'upgrading' to pig skin. I hesitate because I'm a veggie-type, but I know I need to move onto a more realistic practice medium to continue.

*reads the article, and watches back* I'd really like to chat you up, sometime. ^.^

Im around off and on. AIM:jovino (old skool!)

I'll have to warn you, pig skin is freakin' GROSS! I'm also a veggie, and it actually freaked the hell out of me while I was doing it. After doing people some, I might be able to return to it for some technique practice. I dunno. We'll see.

In all honesty, I only did a little piggie before starting in on myself. I realized that while the feel is similar, the skin is dead and doesn't move quite the same. The article I pointed you to mentions this as well. Also, my first session onmyself I was freaked out! I had an instant "holy shit this is real" moment right before I set the needle in and I had to pause. Then I dug right in. My first few human sessions were a bit harrowing, but now I'm feeling much more comfortable working on friends.

And, YAY for learning together! I love the idea of information sharing in a craft that seems overly protective of important information.

There simply are not enough reptiles being drawn on grapefruit these days, it's a shame.

I'm not a tattoo artist, but I have a -lot- of tattoos....does that count?