Vancouver Ink exposes you (and your friends') Vancouver-themed tattoos! We have an obvious fascination with pride-of-place and how it manifests, and getting a tattoo showing your pride and love for something is perhaps the ultimate commitment. Click HERE for the growing archive of tattoos we've featured.
Please email your photos and stories of Vancouver-themed tattoos to [email protected] with the subject "Vancouver Ink".
Today we're sharing a couple pieces of Rachel S. Forbes' that she sent in, along with the story in her words. Very awesome stuff.
Every time I experience the City of Vancouver - and especially the downtown skyline - from a new perspective, my adoration for this city grows to new levels. It was in 2009 that I took and edited a photo of the downtown skyline from my then-office near Lonsdale Quay in North Vancouver. It clicked: I was thoroughly *in love* with this place and I wanted to pay tribute to that feeling by getting my first tattoo.
From my photo, one of my best friends, Micah, sketched a stylized skyline that highlighted my favourite buildings (the Wall Centre, Sun Tower, Shangri-La, a not-yet-built Arthur Erickson building that's now somewhat embarrassingly a Trump Tower) and features (the ocean, port cranes, building cranes, Stanley Park).
Originally I really wanted the skyline tattoo along the edge of my foot, symbolizing how grounded Vancouver makes me feel. Tattooing on the foot has obvious limitations, plus then I got a scar on my upper back that I wanted to camouflage, and it was much easier to lay out the design there. I worked with fabulous Rene Botha at Liquid Amber Tattoo and she added some sunset-lit clouds and a moon above the city skyline where the scar tissue was. We inked it on in the spring of 2011, together with a small blue raindrop on my forearm to fully pay homage to the city.
I still love everything about the tattoo and all the things it incorporates for me. The only thing I do not like is how most people see Harbour Centre first and then guess that the skyline is Seattle, Calgary or Toronto. I'm quite quick to correct them though!
