Several, and yes, I believe it is an art form. Assuming the artist really does original work.

I've thought aboot getting one several times, but I always remember my personal sense of aesthetics would always change faster than I could afford to change the tat [grin].

And tattooing *can* be an art form -- just like in any other, you have a lot of people doing paint-by-numbers and then a small percentage of great originals...

I havent gotten a tattoo, I have pondered the idea for sometime, but someone made told me that a tattoo is the equivalent of doodling on your homework in class, we, are all just doodeling on ourselves till the metaphorical bell rings, and not that i perscribe to this thinking, but it just always enters my mind when i hear of tattos.
I do think though that the body is the coolest of all canvases.

I have been trying to post my avatar 'tattoo' with no success, so am trying once again.

Just after I washed out of the navy I went and got a tattoo because it was something I said I would never do (although I never thought I would enlist in the military either until I felt like I needed to do something to better support my family). Anyway after threatening suicide and washing out I felt like I needed to reinvent myself, specifically doing certain things that I'd been told were "bad", tattooing among them. I've still never done anything especially outrageous -- I've never even been falling down drunk. But what I regret about the tattoo now is that I didn't spend enough time looking at different parlors and put more time into my decision for the design. I ended up getting a heart on my left hip which was supposed to be red & blue shading over a black line drawing, but because the tattoo artist was a dick ended up being red & black and not well drawn.

From the time I got the tattoo until now I've been a computer programmer for a living, but I'm not actually pursuing becoming a tattoo artist professionally. I need to resolve a *major* problem with child support (the state has for the past 6 years been under the illusion that I'm a $40k+ average income earner, which I've never been, more like $25k, so my arrearage is now $67k because the state would never modify what I owed when I was out of work) and find a passive income source to get me by during my apprenticeship. I know I'm going to have to put up with a lot of crap to get the apprenticeship, to get through the apprenticeship and that once I am an artist much of what I do will be people's names and religious icons and I'm okay with that.

Anyway if you'd like to help me out at all, pick up a mug or a t-shirt from my cafe press store.

www.cafepress.com/anupwardspiral/2705826

i had a calling for a certain design on my right arm and i spent five years or so til i found the artist i was willing to let ink me.

I've always thought of getting a tattoo, but i never decide where or what design, and when i'm close to make my decition i think that i might get bored or regret it.

I think its an art form and i like a lot of tattoos. I have a lot of friends with great tattoos (mostly japanese) and a frien of mine is a tatto artist but i guess i'm a coward too....

I have, along the inside of my left arm, the text

"I sometimes regret having been tatooed with this message, and ocassionally wish that I had chosen something else"

Tattoos are the most personal form of art. Possibly the only thing you can have forever.

I had my first one done when I was just 18 [ I'm 43 now] and I haven't had my last yet. Pain + blood + ink, almost magical. Savage, wild, yet well planned and executed. What more could you want from a piece of art?

I just got my first tatoo, I am 56 and I figure I won't live long enough for it to fade.
It is a shapely female figure with six arms standing on one leg of my own design. In time the tattoo will extend all the way down to the wrist, but only in stages. I thought about it a long time, because I am an artist, and if something in a picture isn't right, it bothers me, I always see the flaw, so I wanted something I wasn't gonna look at in ten years and wish I hadn't done it. I chose an image that means a lot to me and that I did many years ago and still found it beautiful. Incidentally she is naked, except for a little thong sized loin cloth.
The actual idea behind it is the idea behind many tribal tattoos. Tattoo magic is based on a simple principle. It is used to focus the mind, and will of the worker. The tattoo represents an idea, if it is an idea that holds power in your life then the tattoo becomes a generator by focusing that energy. The little six armed Dancer represents to me the Source of the Life Force, the power we grasp when we find our place on the Wheel. So she, and the tattoos to come, represent an outward expression of my true self.

Damn strait they are!
Like a intentional scar that will be with you to the day you die.
How stellar is that?