[imagesource:instagram/satc]

The Johannesburg leg of the South African Tattoo Convention was held this weekend in Johannesburg, and if you missed it you can always catch the Cape Town event this coming weekend at the V&A Waterfont.

For the Jo’burg peeps, it was a chance to get a brightly coloured image of your favourite pothole, or if we’re being really facetious, a nice barbed wire ring around those gymed-up biceps.

Ok, calm down, Capetonians will most likely be going to the convention in droves to immortalise the ohm sign on their wrist or write ‘Eat Pray Love’ in Elvish on their underboob.

Yes, people get weird stuff tattooed on their bodies and googling ‘weird tattoo will make you cringe and shake your head in puzzlement. But what about the tattoo artists themselves? How do they feel about doing a stylised version of a butterfly on your boyfriend’s lower back?

A tattoo artist from Three Ravens Tattoo in Athens posted a video where he ‘stirs the pot’ with some feedback from tattoo artists and the tattoos they ‘least like doing’. Check it out below.

@3ravenstattoo Stirring the pot! 🍯 We asked our tattoo artists their least favorite things to tattoo. 😜 #3ravenstattoo #athensga #tattoo #tattooartist #tattootiktok #tattootok ♬ original sound – 3 Ravens Tattoo & Piercing

It turns out infinity symbols are a bore to these skin painters, as well as ‘coordinates’ and birth flowers. Designs with thin, whispy text is also not a favourite, but mostly because tattoo artists know that the fine work will not stand up well to time and eventually just look blurry. Also on the list are heart & skull-shaped tattoos and quirky moustaches on your index finger.

These are seen as ‘generic’ tattoos and are perhaps too ‘mainstream’ for some artists. You might also love the All Blacks, but tribal tattoos have also fallen out of fashion, so rather get a springbokkie on your forearm.

Look, getting a tattoo is most likely a bigger commitment than most people realise and often they last longer than your relationship with the person whose name is now inked across your chest. So it’s important to choose something that means something to you, and not because it’s ‘quirky’ or ‘on trend’.

This might mean that a pothole is perhaps a good choice as it will still be there when you are old and wrinkly (the pothole as well as the tattoo). As someone who has more skulls on display than St. Bartholomew’s Church in Poland, I am hardly one to judge.

In the end, you do you.

[source:iol]