My tattoo is done.

Today I went to the tattoo parlor and we put the UV ink onto my left arm. That was the last session. My wings are finished.

My tattoo is done.

I suppose I’ll have to make some UV photographs happen soon.

Here’s a couple pictures of me from FC that popped up in my inbox while I was sick.

This fabulous photo is by Julia/foxgrrl. I’ve been meaning to make something happen that shows off the now-finished-except-for-UV-on-the-left wings, and I think this PRETTY MUCH FILLS THAT BILL.

Trikotomy took this at the webcomics panel. See, Dana drew a picture of Phoebe from her strip ‘Heavenly Nostrils’ saying “UNDERWEAR”, which is something the syndicate wouldn’t let her do. I looked at the picture, and I was like, this isn’t DONE, it needs the thing in QUESTION, so I took the paper from her and added… everything else.

I used to draw arms that went straight up from the shoulder and curved around like that all the time when I was a kid. Just so you know.

Edit. Here’s a couple more pics I forgot about; these are from one of the local papers, and are by Ignacio Lopez.

Ben Coon hung out behind my table for a while, and was busy chatting with someone else while I was showing off my wings for the newspaper.

Another dragon stopped by to show off his fursuit. We got into an I’M THE BIGGER DRAGON RAR contest. He has mass but I have HEIGHT, and we all know that height is a significant part of dragon superiority. *nod*

yeah, lots of posts today. Deal.

I put off taking a shower until the evening today, because I wanted to wait until it was time to peel the protective plastic off my tattoo so I could clean all of that off. Afterwards, I grabbed the black light and stood there admiring my new GLOWING WING in the bathroom mirror.

I am, quite simply, the prettiest dragon ever now.

Yes, I know, pics or it didn’t happen. I’ll need to hang the black light somewhere it can shine on me, and get someone else to hold the camera. Plus I get the other side done this weekend anyway. So I guess as far as the Internet is concerned it hasn’t happened.

I am sitting at the bus stop after my next-to-last tattoo session. I’m still shaking a little; today was the first session of the UV ink, and it ended with Alexis doing some seriously solid work on the leading edge of the wing, and the claws at the tips of each rib. This was revisiting some of the most surprisingly hurty places of the whole piece, with the added bonus of not being able to really see how much ink was being laid down without lots of fossicking about turning off the shop’s lights and using the UV lamp, and erring on the side of caution.

It was totally worth it, though. My right wing now glows under ultraviolet light. I was able to schedule my next appointment for this coming Saturday, thanks to some holiday drop-outs. And then this tattoo will be, at long last, finished.

It took about a year and a half, a modicum of pain, and more money than I care to count up. Dragon wings cost dragon money, I guess.

I hadn’t been tipping for most of the process, so I gave Alexis a thousand dollar tip today. She’s pretty sure it’s the biggest one she’s ever gotten. I urged her to use it to take some time off and do some art for herself, a desire that’s been a recurring theme in our conversations as she worked on me.

And now I’m going to go home, plop myself down in the living room, and eat a little too much delivery pizza. I have some healing to do.

I wonder if I can throw together some sort of head-mounted halo of UV LEDs before Further Confusion. Probably not, not if I’m gonna get art off to the printer for that as well.

I keep on meaning to post some shots of my tattoo.

(click for bigger)

It’s a little dull in these shots due to crappy lighting and still having suntan lotion left on it from when I went out earlier. But you can see that it’s getting pretty close to done; we’ve actually done a pass of every color but the UV! The blank spots are places where Alexis got a little unsure of what color went where in this crazy complicated piece, and erred on the side of caution. It may be all done by Anthrocon if all goes well.

I found myself watching this TED talk about how you can alter your behavior via your own body language. I can definitely agree with Cuddy’s thesis; the time I spent in burlesque class taking confident, sexy poses very quickly seeped into how I carried myself on a regular basis, and into how I think about myself. But watching this, I realized something.

My tattoo is accidentally designed to make me assume the kind of pose she describes as “powerful” at exactly the times when I need a dose of self-confidence. I’m sitting behind a table at a con, trying to sell my stuff; someone is interested enough to stop by, and if they look me over, there’s a good chance they’ll say “ooh, what’s going on with that tattoo?”… which of course means that I stand up and spread my arms as wide as they’ll go. People are asking me to take a dominant, confident pose right in front of them. If I was out at an interview, or out at a bar prowling for conquests, it’d be the same thing: “Oh wow can I see your tattoo?”.

This wasn’t intentional. All I wanted was for a better way to present a pair of wings coming off the shoulder blades than folded up along my back. But I got a regular boost of “hi there I am an awesome powerful lady” as well.

As side effects go, that’s pretty damn awesome.

(And since I haven’t mentioned it lately here, an update on the tattoo status: It’s pretty much done! At my last session, we realized that every single color had been put in; there are some gaps of blank skin where there shouldn’t be, and that’s entirely due to Alexis erring on the side of caution whenever she got lost in this insanely complex design. So the next few sessions will consist of filling in these gaps and doing some fine touch-up here and there, then the UV. I might even have the UV in by Anthrocon. Perhaps I’ll make Nick take a few photos next time he visits.)

This is weird. I figured the long blue strips that are the latest addition to my wings would be itching like hell once the top layer of skin started to come off, judging by my experience with the initial lines and the black/brown. But the only sensation I’m feeling now is a slight achiness when I flex my elbow. Initially there was a fair amount of ache on the shoulder, especially near to the half-inch-wide bit of redness around the very top of my deltoids.

Not that I’m complaining. I just wonder if this is because my body has kind of given up being itchy there, due to this repeated abuse. It could also be because of the very different nature of this session; it’s mostly a couple of very long, very solid strips of color, done with one of the wider needles, instead of a lot of little fiddly stuff done with a small needle. There’s also the possibility that this color is simply less itch-inducing; there’s some fiddly stuff to be added in the same color, so I guess I’ll find out when that happens.

There’s another session planned for this Friday, then two weeks off due to my con schedule. Dunno what color we’ll be doing.

Anyway, I guess I should get to work on the next page of Rita now.

edit: Speaking of Rita, I just checked my email: I’ll have a proof in my hands by Friday, and if it looks good then I should be able to have ~30 copies in hand for Rainfurrest! WOO.