Seems like I've been ink happy recently. Today I had yet another piece added. It's a hometown homage to my beautiful Charlotte, NC. Designed by an amateur (yet extremely talented) artist on reddit that offered to design this for free based on my description via message boards. The crown is the symbol of Charlotte. Quite literally for the crown worn by Queen Charlotte, wife of George III. Thus, our nickname "The Queen City". The '704' is our local area code, and the 'ORIGINAL' is because I am a rare breed of native Charlotte residents still living in the city, not to mention that I am a 5th generation Charlottean at that! I know this place like the back of my hand. And the 1982, of course, is the year I was born. This idea originally came to me in the wake of my fathers death on St. Patrick's Day. Emotionally I wanted something to say that I was proud to be from here, proud to be here currently, and proud to stay here for as long as I can see, and I wanted the design to resemble a sort of stamp, or seal that kinda sent the message of me being a "product" of Charlotte. I think the guy that drew this up pretty much NAILED IT!
This was the original design, but the '1982' had to be moved out of the circle, as you will notice, because the original size of the piece was going to be too small to allow for aging and color run, so my Tattoo guy at the shop and I elected to move the date out, enlarge it, and put it under the proverbial "stamp" to keep it all together, but separate, in that now the design can be for any native Charlottean.