Japanese Irezumi from Our Havelock Shop

Starting a Japanese Project

Most of the Japanese work in this gallery is by Dave Tedder and Cabot Lerue, and both take large-scale projects: sleeves, backpieces and leg pieces. A few pieces are by Lauren Tedder and It’s Glitter.

Japanese tattooing is meant to be worn, not looked at one piece at a time. A sleeve is one design from shoulder to wrist, background and all, and it gets drawn that way from the start rather than assembled out of pieces you collect over the years.

It starts with a conversation. Send the subject, the placement and how much coverage you want on the tattoo request form, or come by the shop and ask whether Dave is in. When you book, a large project takes a bigger deposit than a walk-in piece, from $300 for a single piece up to $1,000 for a body suit, and it comes off the total the same way. The rest of the ranges, a leg at $5,000 to $7,000 and a turtle back at $4,000 to $6,000, are published on the FAQ.

Sessions are booked as full days, because outlining a sleeve is not worth splitting across short appointments. Plan on giving up the day. You can eat, take breaks and get up and stretch whenever you need to. Sessions sit two to four weeks apart so each one heals before we build on it, and before every appointment you will know exactly what we are getting done. A full arm sleeve is usually three sessions across two to four months, and it only runs to four or five when somebody cannot sit for a full day. A touch-up session about six weeks after the last paid one is already built into the plan. The rest of our work is in the shop gallery.