The Art of Tattoo

About This Book

In putting together this book, I wanted to create something that shared my hard-won experience and point of view on various aspects of the tattoo industry. While this is a collection of my tattoos and artwork from over the years, I wanted it also to contain information that professional artists, aspiring artists, and collectors could all relate to and pull something from. For the collector, I cover the basics of getting tattooed from the artist’s perspective, and what we as artists need from you to give you the best artwork possible. There’s also a special visual section on the whole tattoo process, step by step, from start to finish. For the aspiring tattoo artist, I include tips on how to get the most out of learning to tattoo. For artists and creatives, I share how I get inspired and how I approach brainstorming, drawing, and developing a style. Of course, this book would not be complete without some advice gleaned from my experience with cover-up tattoos and all the aspects that make them possible or not. Tattooing goes through trends, and that affects both artists and collectors. I want to share with you, all through my eyes, the best advice and experience I can give you.

I should mention, this book will not teach you to tattoo. No book can, because nothing beats the experience of working with someone who’s been doing it for years. There are so many things that only someone who is experienced can know and show you. An apprenticeship is the most fruitful way to learn.

My Tattoos

I got my very first tattoo in 2004, about six months after I started my apprenticeship. Some may find it strange that I didn’t have tattoos prior; the truth is I wanted them, but my mom would never sign off on it. At eighteen, I could finally, legally do it, but I had such a hard time deciding just what to get. To this day I always tell people, your first tattoo is the hardest to choose, but during your first one you’ll already be thinking of the idea for your second, then soon after, your third, and you’re totally hooked. That’s what happened to me! The day I got my first tattoo I hadn’t actually planned on doing it. My boss came into work that day and told me clients were too scared to get tattooed by me because I looked like a little kid. I did probably look about fourteen years old. Also, I had no tattoos. So, by the end of the day I had to pick something and he would tattoo it after work. There were no social media networks to sift through for photos back then, so for ideas I spent all day going through the hundreds of flash pages and dozens of tattoo magazines we had in the shop. At the time, there were sections in the back of some magazines where they would print tattoo flash submitted by artists. In one of those sections I found a colorful anime drawing of a lady cheetah, and something in my head said, “This is it!” Looking back now, I’m like, “What was I thinking?” However, eighteen-year-old me was super into video games and anime and I was stoked on it. That night my boss outlined it, huge, on my right calf. It was quick and easier than I thought. I was instantly hooked. When I got home, my mom flipped on me. Looking back now, I understand why: in the world where we existed at the time, it was a crazy thing to do. Eighteen-year-old girls in small-town Pennsylvania weren’t walking around with huge tattoos. She exclaimed, “How will you ever wear a dress?” I simply thought, “I can still wear it!” She said absolutely no more tattoos.

As the weeks progressed, I had the serious itch to get more work. I was looking for ways to get my mom to be okay with me getting more tattoos. First, I thought I’d let her help pick one for me. We looked through some new flash we had at the shop, and we both liked an image of a samurai woman with katanas and negative flowing hair. (For those who don’t know, negative tattooing means the outside of the image is shaded instead of the inside, which is left blank skin color, and at the time it was all the rage.) I decided to add this to my inner right calf. Next, I decided to get a traditional-style pinup nurse, after my mom’s profession, with a banner that said Mom on it. I put it on the back of my leg, and of course she loved it. Boom, just like that I had a lower-leg sleeve and I couldn’t stop. For my next tattoo I decided on a geisha head with ropes through the eyes, done in a more traditional style. It’s a dark image, butI like dark things. It isn’t about anything negative; to me, tattoos are way more about the artwork itself than the meanings (even though TV will tell you to think otherwise). I knew my mom might not love this one, so I chose a spot I could easily hide from her—my sternum. At the time this wasn’t a typical place to get tattooed, but I guess I got lucky that it’s a very popular place today. Despite my efforts to hide it from my mom, she surprised me at the shop one day while I was walking around with my shirt rolled up. She walked in, shook her head, and said, “Okay, I understand that I can’t stop you, just please don’t tattoo your face!” While she was definitely worried about my getting tattooed when I was younger, I knew she had my best interests in mind, and she was the all-time biggest supporter of my tattooing—especially when no one else was. Some of my family members had a very hard time accepting my new life path and it took some years before everyone really understood that I was doing something positive. It’s crazy to see how things have changed: just within the past few years I’ve been working on a large back piece on my dad and gave my little sister her not-so-little first tattoo.

That first year I got a lot of tattoos. On my leg I added a bride of Frankenstein and some cherry blossoms, and I tried to tattoo a genie lantern under my first tattoo on myself, but that didn’t work out so well because I couldn’t really reach. It is typical for tattoo artists to tattoo themselves while learning, but it’s a hell of a lot harder, so I prefer to leave it up to other people. I also started both arms within the following year. My very first arm tattoo, which felt like a huge deal, was by my boss’s friend. He came to guest at our shop one day and my boss told me that his friend would give me my first arm tattoo, and to just let him do whatever he wanted, which was a little scary. I normally wouldn’t just let someone I didn’t know of well tattoo me like that, but I was young and inexperienced, and I had a lot of trust in my boss, who was also teaching me how to tattoo at the time. He did classic, neo-traditional-style roses.

My boss did a bunch more tattoos on my arms. On my left forearm he did a koi fish; on my upper arm a traditional purple lady head and neo-traditional hannya-type mask. I distinctly remember being so drunk during the mask tattoo that I couldn’t stay on the chair and fell off several times; great life choices. Do not do that! On the right forearm he did a pink cat and bride of Frankenstein. On my right ditch (tattoo slang for inner elbow) he tattooed a girly purple skull.

While at the shop I wanted to do my part to help others learn, as apprentice Timmy had once done for me, and I gave up some skin for one of the apprentices to learn. I made a terrible choice and had him tattoo my hip, with a three-liner (a group of three needles soldered together to create one of the smallest liner needles), which is way too difficult a place and too small a needle for a beginner. This was due to my inexperience, but hey, we have to learn somehow. It was a skull and crossbones, and today it looks like a pirate got it about a hundred years ago. That’s what I get for not knowing what the hell I was doing. It’s hands down my worst tattoo and an excellent representation of a “blowout,” which means the needle went in way too deep and the line bled to a much bigger size. Weirdly, I don’t hate it. I have a strange attachment to it and have yet to cover it—though, actually, I may never; I kind of feel like some of my older tattoos are just good stories on my tattoo timeline.