Tattoo Thoughts (or more accurately, tattoo rant)

I like to be snotty about my tattoo, because in my unprofessional opinion it is ridiculously good and exactly what I wanted and did I mention ridiculously good.  I’m fully aware that there are other people with WTWTA tattoos. I just happen to think mine’s the best. 

It really bugs the shit out of me when someone tells me that they saw someone with “your exact tattoo”, because no you didn’t. If you’re familiar with the illustrations, mine is different (one wild thing eliminated, night sky, moon, slightly different foliage), and I just don’t believe that there’s another tattoo artist out there who modified the illustration in (per my desires) in the exact same way. I just don’t.

It also irritates me when people say something to the effect of, “Oh like the movie!”

No.

Not like the movie.

I know it’s taken a ridiculously long time for me to finish this thing and I know this is the most hipster thing I could POSSIBLY say but I GOT IT BEFORE THE MOVIE WAS A THING OKAY? I’ve never even seen the movie.

And it’s a fucking book.

I wrote a ridiculous number of pages about it (well, about Sendak’s work in general) when I was in grad school.

Do you want to know about how Sendak uses the moon to symbolize the ongoing presence of Max’s mother throughout his dream world? Do you want to know why it was important to me to have the moon included in this scene?

This is only tangentially related, but it ALSO annoys me when people say things like, “I would never know you had a tattoo if I didn’t see it.” Um….yes. That’s sort of how tattoos work. If you can’t see them, you don’t really know they’re there. I assume this has to do with my general non-hardcoreness, and the fact that my tattoo is large, but it’s still a weird thing to say.

Anyhow, getting more work done Saturday.

Ridiculously excited.