Beautiful piece. Can’t wait to see it finished.

The first thing you’ve got to realize is that the only reason the lightning in the pic looks so bright is because of its dark background. You can’t do white ink against skin tone, you’ll barely be able to see it. If you reverse it out and do black lightning it will look like a poorly done tree branch. You could shade dark around it, fading into the skin but it’ll increase the amount of tattooed surface area tremendously, and, in my opinion, look pretty crappy. I could see doing this if it was planned ahead to cut through other tattoos along its track, that way it would be surrounded by ink that it negatively cut through. I can’t see it working by itself, but it could work as part of a much larger tattoo. It needs to be surrounded by something.

Oil based stuff (neosporin, triple antibiotic, A&D, aquaphor, vaselin) all work fine. People screw it up by putting too much on. You really don’t need anything mediated, your body will heal a tattoo just fine with or without it. The reason for ointment is a lot more utilitarian.

1. It keeps the skin pliable so it doesn’t dry out and crack, leaving a scar line through it.
2. For the first couple of days while its raw it simply feels better than water based lotion.

As for any of those pulling ink out, its all in be you use it. If you goop a thick layer on and leave it on like it says to do on the neosporin tube it’ll never evaporate. People like to say “it doesn’t let it breath”, whatever that means. If you’ve got a big goop of oil, the only thing it can do is soak into your already perforated skin and turn it into moosh. Then you either wash it out and your ink with it in the shower or let it dry into a thick scab and loose the ink when it falls off.

Always rub your ointment in with clean fingers, let it sit a couple of minutes, and wipe it completely off. That’s all it needs 3 or 4 times a day to keep it from cracking. There is no difference between neosporin and triple antibiotic ointment, and you don’t need the medication unless you actually develop an infection.

As for plastic wrap over a tattoo.

The plastic = petri dish
Body heat = incubator
Blood plasma = bacteria food

If the plasma doesn’t get wicked away or washed off and stays liquid because its not exposed to air, its perfect for growing a nasty colony of bacteria. Especially over the course of a few days.

Sweet. Looks nice so far.

Looks awesome man! Nice and solid. As long as you aren’t hittin’ it so hard that it heals rough and you loose that pretty ink. You know how I avoid wobbly single pass lines? I try to never do them. I always sculptures the lines out, even if It’s only a hair thicker than the single pass.

Make sure you eat and get your blood suger up before you get tattooed. Most of the pass-outs I’ve seen its because they tried it on an empty stomach. Or a little fan.

You can’t get any more phalic than a lighthouse.