Tattoo #4

Freshly inked!

So while I was on vacation in Ontario last week, I visited SideShow Tattoo in Georgetown. I had chosen the artist, Shantelle MacDoanld, a month or so before hand after looking at her portfolio online. We had been texting about the design for awhile, and she graciously offered to come in on her day off to work around my schedule!

We created the final design, putting all of the element’s together, once I was at the shop. Shantelle is a perfectionist, and the actual tattooing took about 2.5 hours. Luckily Shantelle was cool; we chatted and listened to my iPod (Rammstein and Metallica). The pain was pretty intense during the last 1/2 hour and I’m sure my finger impressions are still visible on the chair! But as you can see, the final result was worth it!! I couldn’t be happier.

It’s in the middle of healing right now…very itchy and still some areas with scabs. I should also point out that I was bent forward when the picture was taken, so the text is not actually curved, but in straight lines!

The design is based on the song “Rosenrot” (Rose-red in English) by the German band Rammstein. The song is one of my favorites, and has a great video. The line quoted translates as “Deep waters don’t run still”. To me, I feel this sums up the struggles we face on a daily basis…good vs evil, right and wrong, and what are essentially the so-called “deadly sins” (pride, lust, greed, wrath, gluttony, sloth/depression and envy). Because of this I chose to marry the images of the rose and barbed wire. And of course the color of the rose is a tribute to the name of the song quoted.

On a side note, Rose-red is the name of a character in one of Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales. Rose-red is the sister of Snow White. There are 2 Snow Whites in the Grimm Brothers’ stories: Schneewittchen (the one with the dwarves) and Schneeweißchen und Rosenrot (Snow White and Rose-red). The name Snow White is the literal translation of the names, but they are spelled differently.

The story (translation from Wiki):

Snow-White and Rose-Red tells the story of Snow White and Rose Red, two girls living with their mother, a poor widow, in a small cottage. Both sisters are very good little girls, and they love each other dearly. Their mother is very fond of them. As for their personalities, Rose Red is very outspoken and cheerful, and loves to play outside; on the other hand, her sister Snow-White is more quiet and shy, and prefers doing housework and reading.

One winter night, there is a knock at the door. Rose Red opens the door to find a bear. At first she is terrified, but the bear tells her not to be afraid. “I’m half frozen and I merely want to warm up a little at your place,” he says. They let the bear in and he lies down in front of the fire. Snow White and Rose Red beat the snow off the bear; they quickly become quite friendly with him. They play with the bear and roll him around playfully. They let the bear spend the night in front of the fire, and in the morning, he leaves, trotting out into the woods. The bear comes back every night for the rest of that winter and the family grows used to him.

When summer comes, the bear tells them that he must go away for a while to guard his treasure from a wicked dwarf. During the summer the girls are walking through the forest, when they find a dwarf who has his beard stuck in a tree. The girls rescue him by cutting his beard free, but the dwarf is ungrateful, and yells at the girls for cutting his beautiful beard. The girls encounter the dwarf several times that summer, rescue him from some peril, and each time the dwarf is ungrateful. Then one day they meet the dwarf once again; this time he is terrified because the bear is about to kill him. The dwarf pleads with the bear, begs it to eat the girls instead of him, but the bear pays no heed and kills the dwarf with one swipe of his paw. Then the bear turns into a prince; the dwarf had bewitched the prince by stealing his gold and turning him into a bear, but the curse is broken with the death of the dwarf. Snow White marries the prince and Rose Red marries his brother.

And for your viewing pleasure, the song that started it all…