This is my first one:
http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a24/sp ... 57/105.jpg
I got this one earlier this year.
As some of you will know, its the Japanese Hiragana for rain, ame. It refers to a passage from the Hagakure that I read in the year after my father died. Not only did it help me get through that difficult time, it also summed up a lot of what he had tried to teach me. It serves as a reminder to me about the importance of staying positive. Since then I have come to think that things wont just work out for the best, but if you look on the brightside, stay positive, and take everything as a learning experience and move on, then things will most likely work out for you. This in turn has helped steer me through my recent divorce.
This is my second one, which I started yesterday.
http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a24/sp ... /020-2.jpg
Its just the outline, I'll go back for color and shading in about a month. This is the picture it came from; it'll give you and idea of the final product:
http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a24/sp ... iyoeGo.jpg
It depicts Yu Zhi playiner her quin and riding a dragon over the four seas. Yu Zhin was the daughter of Xingwamu, the Queen Mother of the West. Xingwamu had earlier origins in mythology, but was moved into the Daoist Pantheon as a Goddess of Immortality and Life. Or something like that. The art was done by Nishikawa Sukenobu.
I knew for my second tatoo I wanted something big, colorful, and on my forearm, but I wasn't sure what to get. I also knew I was leaning towards something strictly aesthetic versus personal meaning this time. I saw a Ukiyo e exhibit and fell in love with the work. So I looked through a book I bought at the exhibit till I found something I liked well enough to look at every day.