Speaking of tattoos...

i just thought i'd post a tighter shot of my unicorn. it's been over two weeks since i got it, and it's healed beautifully. leon told me it would heal much faster than my first tattoo, and he was right. 

what happened with my first is that i barely felt any pain except for the very, very fine lines around my ankle bone. leon compared being tattooed with thick, dark lines to being scraped repeatedly by a large iron nail, and he was right. 

truth be told, after the endorphins kind of died down, i realized that i wasn't 100% happy with some details -- i thought the tail could have been shaped better, and a bit of the shading on the tail wasn't even. i realized i hadn't gotten it in the best of conditions: it was the last evening on the last day of the tattoo expo and leon was dead tired. after a few days of obsessing i accepted it for what it was: not the exact picture i had in my mind, but a beautiful and unique artwork nevertheless.

the pain may not have been as bad as expected, but the healing process was much longer and more uncomfortable. it bled for a few hours immediately after, and was red, raised and tender for at least a week. on the second week, it began to peel, with the thickly inked lines falling off in scabs. i know it sounds gross, but it was looked ok -- kind of like when you have an old black leather bag and it starts flaking off in your hand or on your arm. 

AND it itched like the devil. i had to keep it constantly moisturized, and lotion was one of the few things that gave temporary relief. i also became a master of precision scratching -- using my fingernail to scratch as close to the lines as possible.

with my second tattoo, the lines are so fine that they didn't bleed at all. but the PAIN. according to leon, finer needles really feel more like cuts than anything and i have to agree. i was expecting the worst pain on the spine (something i had heard about from a former colleague) and received a nasty surprise -- it had nothing to do with what part of the body the needle was on, but with how fine the needle was and what it was actually doing. so the parts that hurt the most were the fine lines of the tail and its teeny, tiny stars, as well as the details in and around the hooves. 

but the pain was worth it. leon was at his most focused and relaxed, having a looser schedule and spending a whole week in singapore. we were in a lovely, airy old shophouse with a proper tattoo bed (or bench?), adjustable lamps, enough space to work in and the prospect of beers afterwards. i'm not surprised it turned out as beautifully as it did. of my two pieces of ink, this is the one that i am truly in love with. 

the fineness of the lines has helped with the healing, too. after feeling like a bad sunburn for the first two days, i began to forget that i had just gotten a tattoo. there was barely any swelling, itching and peeling -- maybe 10% to 20% of what i felt with the first tattoo. even now that the thicker lines on the body of the unicorn are going through a second round of peeling, i can barely feel it.