I'm sure I mentioned getting inked before. What made me do it? There were no Miami or LA Ink's on TV at the time to inspire me. In fact I had no plan to do it. My girlfriend at the time had a day off and wanted to go for a tattoo. I ended up with mine because it sounded like a good idea at the time, the artist drew a good dragon on my arm, and my rebellious urge to piss of my mother and grandmother needed to be sated. I was still 19 at the time.
The muse for this tattoo talk was a collection by Korean tattoo artist Kim Joon. Kim's work is really expressive and involves materials other than tattoo ink. Check out Kim's collection and you can see the level of artistic expression there that goes beyond even the modern tattoo artists boundaries.
My tattoo was inspired by the dragons on the sleeves of those US military servicemen's jackets from their Asian tours: Korea, Vietnam, etc. 
I bought one at a thrift shop in Tucson and absolutely loved that thing. So while I was waiting for my friend to make up her mind I asked the tattoo artist how much a dragon's head would be like on my sleeve? He said, "$35 bucks." I said, "Do it." The rest is history. I think it 
has aged pretty well, even though colors have faded some. Maybe I'll go for a touch up here in Taiwan.
