Skin Graphics : Art: A convention of tattoo enthusiasts suggests a world of walking canvases where tigers and dragons lurk under shirts and in more secret places.

If you squinted your eyes, Magoo Boyer looked to be wearing a paisley dress shirt.

Upon closer inspection, it was no shirt. It was Boyer’s skin, virtually every inch of it tattooed with dragons, flowers and scary faces.

Even closer inspection revealed one of the faces to be a snarling dog. This was not a tattoo, however, but Boyer’s Chihuahua, Gypsy, who was tucked into the left inside pocket of his leather vest. Still closer inspection revealed a tattoo inside Gypsy’s left ear. It said Magoo .

Boyer was among about 200 tattoo artists who turned out this weekend for the first Los Angeles tattoo convention. There was nothing conventional about it. The Hollywood Paladium was packed with painted people looking for any excuse to raise their skirts or drop their drawers. And, they contend, there are plenty of yuppies and otherwise uptight professionals out there sporting tattoos in secret places who would be hard-pressed to reveal them, particularly in an election year.

“President Bush has a Princeton Tiger tattooed on his butt,” Magoo Boyer announced with a level of confidence suggesting he had seen it for himself. “I read it in a magazine.”

Tattooing is experiencing a renaissance, if the mob crushing to get into the Paladium was any indication on opening day Friday. There are several tattoo magazines--Tattoo, Skin Art and Outlaw Biker Tattoo, to name a few. Tattoo conventions are held nationwide, drawing artists from around the world. Hanky Panky came all the way from Holland, where he operates a tattoo parlor, museum and library with more than 2,000 tattoo titles.

There are many reasons people permanently stain their bodies. For Boyer, it all began at 13 when he took a needle and some ink and branded the name of his beloved “Stephanie” on his forearm.

“My cousin came back from reform school and showed me how,” he said.

Stan Harrold, a retired civil engineer from Newton, N.J., didn’t get his first tattoo until he was 71.

“My wife and I got into a squabble and I said, the hell with it, I’m gonna get a tattoo,” Harrold said, wearing only a red terry cloth towel, brown rubber sandals and carrying a cane. “So I got a dragon tattooed on my (behind). My wife called up all her friends and said ‘Stan got a dragon tattooed on his (behind).’ ”

Three months later his wife died. Now he’s 74 and his body is covered. We learned this when he dropped the red towel and stood triumphantly in a black G-string.

“It’s addictive,” he explained.

Gone are the days when tattoo parlors were the domain of sailors and bikers. It is true that almost everyone in the Paladium on Friday looked like a biker, but the artists say their clients include doctors, lawyers and financiers. Their work did reveal a certain artistry that suggests they’ve come a long way from Mom and the hula girl whose belly wiggled with the flex of a biceps.

“I did a guy the other day at a county fair. He got a little blue Smurf tattooed on his butt, and he’s a banker” said Boyer, whose tattoo parlor in Grand Forks, N.D., is one of only two such establishments in that state.

“I tattooed a nun once. She wanted a portrait of Jesus on the back of her shoulder,” Eva Phoenix of Tattooland in San Diego said.

A pale, thin colleague with blond hair past his shoulders listened raptly, his mouth agape.

Also known as ink slinging, skin art and dermo-graphics, tattooing today can be an elaborate process involving up to 35 needles, depending on the size of the portrait. Experienced tattooers command as much as $100 an hour.

Boyer likened the pain to “a fly crawling across your skin. It ain’t as bad as a mosquito bite.” But even he admitted it hurt when he tattooed the inside of his lower lip.