Finally! The Miyazaki tattoo reveal has arrived!
I know, it’s taken me a bit of time, but I wanted it to heal up a bit first before I started snapping more pictures and having them not come across as nicely.
It’s been just over a month since I drove down to Pennsylvania and got my tattoo.
My half-sleeve Miyazaki tattoo.
I am still so in love with it. Honestly, there are days where I can’t stop looking at it. It just makes me so damn happy.
I’ve spent years contemplating what I all wanted to get. I always knew that I wanted a Totoro tattoo. I won’t lie and say that this didn’t turn into something way bigger than what the Me from 5 years ago would have said she wanted. Back in the day I just wanted Totoro. Not that I didn’t have favourites from Miyazaki’s other works, but I just loved (and still obviously do) love Totoro. Plus, I love cute things and cute tattoos, and he is adorable.
But I couldn’t find the artist that could do Totoro justice. I didn’t want an interpretation of Miyazaki’s works – I wanted there to be no doubt that my tattoo was a Miyazaki tattoo.
Thank God for Instagram.
I’ve been doing sporadic searches for tattoos on Instagram for years when maybe just over two years ago I found the artist. Chris Mesi, based in NJ/PA, does anime style tattoos that are perfect. They look exactly like the original characters. His use of colour and proportions are perfect. I remember first looking at his stuff and keeping my fingers crossed that he was somewhere accessible. Pennsylvania? 7.5 hours away? DONE.
So, I emailed him at one point to get a little more information but it didn’t really go anywhere. I got pregnant, had a baby, was breastfeeding, so that put a damper on the whole “get a tattoo” idea. But then Kaiden decided to not breastfeed anymore, so guess who I immediately emailed? Yup. Chris. Pretty much I emailed him in February and had booked my appointment for April.
Holy shit I was doing this thing.
Of course, I did talk it over with Andrew – more to make sure that he was alright with me taking Kaiden to the US without him. It actually all worked out timing-wise because I left for PA, and then he left for the West Coast for work. You know it was meant to happen because literally, everything lined up perfectly for it to work.
The day of the appointment I was so nervous. It had been awhile since I last got a tattoo, and I wasn’t sure how I’d be with the pain! My previous ones I don’t remember hurting too badly, but that could just be time talking. We planned on getting the masterpiece completed that day – or go until I couldn’t handle anymore. But I really wanted to make sure that I got it all done.
Oh man, it hurt like a bitch.
My appointment was at noon, and once we figured out the placement and size of everything it was probably closer to 1. He did the outline first, and it wasn’t too bad. My inner arm hurt way more than the back (which is to be expected) but oh mamma. It was nice though – we watched Netflix and chatted. Still hurt.
Once the outline was done, we had a quick break while he prepped his colours and I went to the bathroom. I also checked it out and I was so pumped! Then it was back on the table. He started with the inner arm. Phew. That damn inner elbow and my wrist!! I’m actually terrible at knowing where things are happening on my arm, so while it felt like he was constantly working on my elbow, he most certainly was not.
I powered through the inner arm and half a season of Stranger Things before he finished and we had another quick break. Ate a little bit of food so I wouldn’t be light-headed (I know my body!) and had a quick discussion about how I felt. At this point, we had 3 major characters to still colour, and the background stuff on the back of my forearm. I was in a decent amount of pain, enough to consider not fully completing it. (Even though it killed me a little to even contemplate). So we decided on what order he was going to colour things in and got to work.
It actually helped mentally to break down the piece into each character. Once we got to the last character I was handling the pain better (the back of the arm didn’t hurt as much) so I said let’s do this. Which is a good thing because the last piece was all around my wrist and THAT HURT. But I had committed at this point so there was no going back.
Then it was done!
It looks so good that I’m glad I powered through. Chris was amazing throughout the whole thing and it looks better than what I pictured in my head. I wasn’t 100% on whether I wanted an actual person (Howl) on my arm, but once he was placed and coloured… Is it sacrilege to Totoro to say Howl might be my fave? He’s my all-time fave in Miyazaki’s animes, and I love that he’s immortalized on my arm. Haku is also so good. I stare at him all the time. I love how he flows on my arm.
The characters I got inked are:
- Totoro and his fellow forest spirits – My Neighbour Totoro
- Haku (the dragon) – Spirited Away
- Moro (the wolf) – Princess Mononoke
- Howl (the guy) – Howl’s Moving Castle
- Soot Sprites – from Totoro and Spirited Away
This whole thing is just so <heart eye emoji> that I can’t even handle it!
Seriously, go check out his shit – he’s so damn good. He also makes me want to get another anime style tattoo. If I ever decide to expand my half-sleeve into a full sleeve with more Miyazaki characters I am definitely going back to him.
What do you think of the piece? Let me know!
J x
