A Year in the Chair: My Biggest Tattoo Projects of 2025

Every tattoo artist has pieces that pushed them. Projects that required something different — a new technique, a harder conversation, more hours than expected. 2025 was a year of those for me. Here's a look back at the work that defined the year. Note: This post is written and ready, but needs portfolio photos to publish. Specific image requirements are listed at the end. ### The Full Sleeve Project This one took the most time — four sessions, roughly twenty hours total, over the course of about six months. The client came in with a concept: Japanese mythology meets Appalachian landscape. Not a typical combination. The challenge wasn't the technical execution — I've done full sleeves before. The challenge was making two completely different visual traditions coexist in a way that felt inevitable rather than forced. The answer ended up being flow: the Japanese elements — dragons, waves, cherry blossoms — wrap one side, and the landscape elements — trees, mountains, mist — wrap the other, meeting in the middle at a bridge figure the client chose to represent connection. First session is always the hardest on a large piece like this. You have to establish the anchor points — the areas that everything else orients around. With this one, it was the dragon at the shoulder and the mountain at the inner elbow. Everything else built out from there. By the final session, we were both tired but the result was one of the most cohesive large pieces I've done. The client cried a little. That's always a good sign. ### The Memorial Piece This one I'll talk about carefully because it involves someone else's grief. A client came in with a request: a piece to memorialize their mother, who had passed. The mother had been an avid gardener. The client brought a photo — just one, a candid shot in her garden, mid-laugh — and asked if we could capture something that felt like her. We talked for a long time before I put needle to skin. What made her laugh? What did she grow? What did the client want to feel when they looked at the piece? The final design: a botanical composition using her favorite flowers — roses, foxglove, some wildflowers I can't name — with a small monarch butterfly emerging from the arrangement. Monarchs had been significant between the client and their mother. The design used a fine-line-realism hybrid style — realistic enough to feel like the flowers, stylized enough to age well. This one took two sessions and most of the second was detail work on the butterfly. Getting that right — the wing structure, the translucency — required slow, careful work. ### The Back Piece Large-scale back work is its own category. You lie on a table for six hours while someone works on an area you can't see, can't move, and can only feel. This client's concept was an eagle — not a patriotic eagle, but a bird-of-prey eagle, something more predator than symbol. They wanted it to feel powerful, not decorative. The technical challenge with back pieces is that skin moves differently than people think. When you lie flat, the skin stretches differently than when you're standing or sitting. You have to account for how the design will look in motion, not just at rest. The solution was to design the piece in two halves — upper back and lower back — that each read independently but create a unified whole when viewed together. The eagle's wingspan crosses both sections. When standing normally, the wings look tucked. When shoulders are pulled back, the wings open. The client didn't ask for this — it emerged from trying to make the design work with how skin actually behaves. Eight hours across two sessions. The standing shot after the final session was the moment I knew we'd gotten it right. ### A Collection of Small Pieces The big projects get remembered, but the small pieces are what keep a portfolio interesting. Some of my favorite work this year was in two-hour sessions. A constellation map for a client who wanted something meaningful but not obvious — each star corresponds to a meaningful date, hidden in plain sight. A koi fish with the client's daughter name incorporated into the water pattern — she was a koi, if you know, you know. A geometric mandala that used negative space to create a second pattern when viewed from a distance. Small pieces, well executed, have a longevity that complex large pieces sometimes lack. They heal clean, age well, and often mean more to the client than they do to the artist. ### Image Requirements for Publishing Full sleeve final photo: from the 2025 sleeve project. Memorial piece photo: requires client consent before sharing publicly. Back piece photo: from the 2025 eagle piece. 2-3 small piece photos: constellation, koi, mandala. --- *Russell Cain IV is a tattoo artist in Somerset, KY. Portfolio work at russellcainiv.com.*