Now that the background on my arm is complete, we're moving on to my chest. The first picture details work from my last session, two weeks ago. The next two pictures are of the entire piece so far. I've been focused on displaying the newest work so it has been a while since I posted pictures of the whole tattoo. Hopefully this gives some of the "context" or perspective I mentioned in my last post.
There really is not a whole lot of background on the front of my torso, so I think from this point on the background is going to go much faster. I'll probably have one or two more sessions near the top of my chest, and then we'll continue working up from the bottom again from where Shinji left off on the right thigh.
Overheard on the web recently: "Japanese is the new tribal".

This picture is from 7/15/07, just before my last session. The background on my arm is finally done! As far as pain goes, we saved the best part for last - I'd say the inside of your bicep is fairly sensitve but further into your armpit is worse. Also, this took a long time to heal and it's still not 100%, especially the area where your arm attaches to your chest since it folds and stretches everytime you move your arm in any direction.
A few people have made comments about how the background takes up most of the space on my arm and there's little room for color. One person went as far as to call it a "negative space tattoo". I suppose you really need to see the tattoo as a single piece covering my entire body to get the right sense of scale, thereby putting my arm into the proper context - it's really just a small part of a larger whole.
In other weirdness: this is old news but in case you missed it the first time around, check out this article about a woman who got an advertisement for a casino tattooed on her forehead. She planned to use the money to send her son to a private school where he "promises to get good grades".

I'm finally getting an internet connection in my apartment this week, so updates should be more frequent after that. Here are a few pics I took on 6/22/2007. I've had some work since then, will post more current picutres soon.