Hi everyone,

I’ve been thinking of an idea for my second tattoo, and I’ve been formulating an idea for a couple months now, and I think I’d like to present this idea to y’all and see what you think. I value the opinions of the ink-veterans on here. A little background for me: I have just one tattoo right now on my leg which is of a tribal dragon. I love it, but I realize it’s a fairly popular tattoo, and for my second one I’d like to do something completely original from scratch. This new one I’m thinking of doing on my arm from my shoulder down to about my elbow.

If you’ve ever looked at a face card in a deck of cards (King, Queen, Jack) there’s a face and then in the center of the card is a complex pattern of semi circles, diagonal lines, curving lines, all peppered with various symbols some of which may be a suit, such as spades, diamonds, etc. Here are a couple examples. I’d like to get this type of pattern on my arm. I would choose to exclude the actual head from the card pattern though, since the head/face is usually very plain and quite frankly a bit ugly. I’m more interested in the pattern, sprinkled with the suit symbols. I guess I would consider having a face included if it was something a little more abstract, like this – but I wouldn’t copy that.

There’s a couple reasons why this interests me. I like playing cards, in particular poker and blackjack; I wouldn’t consider myself a shark – I’m more of a casual player, an enthusiast. More so I really love Las Vegas. I love visiting, I usually go at least once a year. In particular I’m really fascinated with old school Las Vegas, like the way it was when the rat pack ruled the town, and the old casinos that used to exist like the Sands, and the Dunes Casino. I got a deck of cards from the old Dunes casino (demolished in 1993) and I think it would be a cool homage to style the tattoo after the style used on their cards — even though most of them are fairly similar in style.

What do you guys think of this idea? What challenges would I have, and what questions should I ask myself? What should I talk to the tattoo artist about? I am considering going to a tattoo artist with this idea, but it’s really just an idea right now, do you think that’s okay to just present it as is to an artist and see if he/she can make the idea come to life?