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7th session. 7 hours of snake scales

My first tattoo from my mentor...took advantage of a cancellation!

It certainly could! I have a butterfly girl in my right ditch (by Chris Brand).

the spot on my arm I hated the most. I appreciate ones that accent the action of the ditch, but anything there that looks good is a tattoo that works. Nothing beats a good ol' hinge but I can't find any good ones. Wish I had ore time to fish around on IG and whatnot but I'm on my way out the door to work. So here's some shit from Google. Sorry for sizing, I'm in a rush. Robert Ryan Someone named Cassy in Bournemouth Person I havent heard of named Kristy Walker Knee ditches are great too. Mitch Allenden I'd post mine, but they aren't stand-alone tattoos; the ditch in an over-all sleeve aren't quite the same in impact.

Look up and to the left. LST logo. That is all you need.

Trust.....you have got to build trust and faith before anyone will do anything for you. I don't normally trust random people.

Dan Higgs design by Dustin Wengreen at Tattoo 13 in Oakland, CA. Super stoked on this one. One of my favorite Higgs designs.

@Graeme Lets convince your friend. I struggled with wanting a negative space design when I was trying to pick for myself this week. SERIOUSLY RON, stop being so good. Its stressing me out. I love the hand with negative space snake Ive seen & that forest skull is one of my favorites too! overwhelmed with awesome.

I am knee deep in working full time during the day and apprenticing to tattoo pretty much full time nights and weekends so I really have been pretty slammed with things to do....BUT.....much like has been said....i only post when I feel there is something that needs to be said or my post contributes in some way here! :) My post count will most likely remain low....but i am usually around!

I think there's a subtle difference between a Swallow and a Sparrow tattoo particulary for someone in the U.K. . I think of a Swallow tattoo as more angular and slimmer and over here it can have associations with someone doing time or a "hard-man" . Swallow tattoo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I already mentioned this in the "Relationships and Tattoos" thread, but now it's official. My plainskin wife has finally (somewhat suddenly) decided she would like to get a tattoo. Seeing the chance for relationship building, and also wanting to get a tattoo by Tim Pausinger for myself, I showed her The Pearl Harbor Gift Shop's website and artist portfolios. End result - on the 2nd of April I'm booked in with Tim (he had a cancellation) and my wife will be seeing Lissa Vino (Tuesdays are her walk-in days so we'll be driving up nice and early). The more heavily tattooed among us probably experience this often, but this is the first time I've had an appointment booked for a significant tattoo (see 6 posts ago) and then squeezed a smaller one in before it. Very exciting!

I have a friend who lives in Providence and has been thinking about getting tattooed, I'll let him know about this. He's doing a masters in graphic design at RISD so he probably wants some pretentious art school garbage, so hopefully he'll act on this and actually get a good tattoo. But I doubt it.

I LOVE this city!!! There is art everywhere! Lots of tattoos! Eye candy to the max! It is also sunny and I've been deep in the dark days of the Seattle winter and early spring, so maybe my sudden and intense (though hardly new) love for this place is influenced by the sun and warm(er) weather... Getting some work done at a coffee shop before a tattoo afternoon...today is a good day! <3 SF and you crazy people who live here. :)

Lol dude Im from the central valley. We love E-40 and Too Short out here... but hyphy died when I started high school. If you like bay area rap, check out Andre Nickatina

YO D! DON'T HATE! :D

This thread goes from gibberish to gibberish. Hyphy?

no tattoo since october definitely jonesing good thing theres LST

Well I never had tattoo's until i met my partner who is covered from head to toe, with very limited space remaining, He encouraged me to get what i wanted and he turned me into a crazy tattoo addict.. So 4 years later Im Being taught how to tattoo by a great mentor and im about 50% covered and dont plan on stopping, Love and relationships dont workout from the way you look, i mean it helps in the beginning but, I get so many comments and people talking to me about my tattoo's! Only place i cop stares is at my sons school lol! Oh, Ive also had my fair share of *plainskins* giving me their imput, asking me how can i dare walk around with these all over my body, The responce well its better than being naked has stopped them talking crap a few times. But the worst was when an old lady asked my son how can he stand to look at me covered in all of this *Mess*, His responce was my mummy's Beautiful and i can't wait to be old enough to have as many as her, Proud moment sure shut the mutton dressed as lamb's mouth quiet quickly :)

I've taken on an apprentice. I'm 12 years in and do not feel like I could've or should've taught anybody before this. First, a little shop background I work in an small isolated area that is expensive and inconvenient. You can't drive in or out and while we have some of the modern conveniences, like costco, we do not have a lot of things, like art supply stores or fast food restaurants. I bought the shop almost two years ago from the original owner, who moved back south. I did not ever expect to take on an apprentice. I also did not think I'd work alone for a year and half straight. I thought I'd make the shop the best I can and some one would slip right in to that glass slipper and it'd be sweet. Well, nobody did. A few artists expressed interest, but costs, inconvenience and ever gloomy weather killed the deal every time. Sometimes the tattooer would be pumped, but their significant other couldn't hang with living a borderline "village" lifestyle. So I worked alone for a while. I wanted the best for the shop, so I didn't turn down anything and worked myself silly. I got a sweet eye twitch out of that that has finally went away unless I'm really tired. So after talking to enough artists about why they couldn't make the move, I started to realize that I may have to grow my own. I took on one of our shop's regulars as counter help. How do you get to work at a tattoo shop? I wasn't looking to hire a friend as I've seen that go bad, so I hired someone that I had built a professional relationship with already, because they were always at the shop getting tattooed. Once I saw that he was doing a good job and began to notice that his other plans (school, etc) starting to fall to shit, I realized that I may be able cultivate a mutually beneficial apprenticeship. It wasn't that I didn't want to mop, or I wanted my ego stroked or I wanted to try and get an extra $15,000. We talked a lot about his future and future plans before we entered in to this and if fulfilled, he will contribute back into the shop for several years as his obligation for having a place to learn and a person to learn from. It was understood that he would not be tattooing for quite a while, it would be the slow road and that he's going to have to learn a lot of things that are other people don't, like needles, mixing pigment, painting flash, taking apart machines, making footswitches and all the other stuff folks with real deal apprenticeships learn. I'm trying to give him a combination of the apprenticeship I had and the apprenticeship I wanted. So far, I'm pretty proud of the little fucker. He filled a sketchbook of traditional designs cover to cover ( most tattooers I know haven't done that), put a machine together, rewired a footswitch, made needles and we've done an oversized split sheet on coquille. He studies a lot. He looks at good stuff. And while we have a pretty good generational gap, I'd like to think we've become friends. Being busy, isolated and working by myself made me feel like I was a little stagnant. He's into it and younger, so he looks at both my influences and shows me the stuff he's into. So it's not out of the question for him to introduce stuff to me, even at this point. When you have to teach, it makes you step back and present things to somebody else. That step can often make you put thought towards something that had previously become automatic. So, in that respect, I get charged up on shit again. That's the new blood factor. Overall, I hired a regular who was already familiar. Not a friend who will break my heart if things didn't work out right away. And I do feel as though there is a need for entry level tattooing at the shop here. That can free me up a little to do the best I can on the bigger projects for now. There is another factor that I don't know if it has been addressed directly (richard's quotes were closest) but yeah, it takes time and a lot of effort to teach somebody right. I'm invested in this shit now. I have a one year old baby and a wife, and I'm sneaking out in the middle of the night to teach him how to make liners at 3am on a friday night. Why would I ever do that for a stranger? I don't know if I could even hang in the same room with the person,let alone have to teach them all these pain in the ass aspects about tattooing in the middle of the night. Also, If I still tattooed down south, I would never take on an apprentice. There was just never a need. ps- I also asked the people who taught me if it was ok for me to teach someone. They looked at me like they had nothing to do with the decision and granted me permission, but the fact it, if those important people to me said no, I wouldn't have an apprenntice right now

Thanks for bringing this up @Shannon Shirley while we've never met, people who I think are awesome tell me that you're awesome. Everyone here should pay attention to what this guy says. I still check the forums every day but I told myself I'd try to only get involved if I could be constructive in some way (even being a dick in a particular way can have a positive outcome). Lately there hasn't been much 'new' information or discussion where I felt my opinion would make any difference. Often someone else gets to the point before I do. I don't want every post I make to be a verbose "Me too." On the other hand... The more help or insight we give, the more help or insight we're asked for. Everyone likes to say they "Did their research" for their tattoo but that often just means looking at pictures in a Google search or checking Instagram. But what about the kind of research where you follow an idea that someone mentioned and find out for yourself? Learning and discovery is fun. Information discovered is more cherished and valuable than information that's spoon fed. Everyone wants a book or website recommendation where the mysteries of life and everything will be explained, with pictures. Explorers will eventually tire of conversing with tourists and consumers but they may feel nourished conversing with other explorers. (I use these terms with their proper, non-insulting intention) If more people try to be explorers (intelectual, spiritual or physical) this site, and the world will be a better place. I've said it before but I don't come here to help with tattoo questions. We have a phone at Frith Street Tattoo. Helpful people are paid to answer it and answer questions. Most tattoo shops work with a similar system. You can get a helpful answer pretty quickly that way. Even if you're in another country. International calls are not very expensive compared to the price of a tattoo. I come here because I realised that it was a place where professional opinion meant something. I only started typing when I knew that nobody better qualified had answered. The turning point for me was Bryan Burk's post about Japanese tattoo politics. Finally we had first-hand, sensible and interesting information or opinion from a reliable source instead of conjecture or wiki-regurgitation. I knew then that I'd beter keep my mouth (or keyboard) shut unless I was sure I could contribute something worthwhile. I'm aware this approach doesn't make for a lively forum but it was great to see it in action earlier this year when Bart Bingham put a halt to some whining about tattooers drawing directly on the skin with a simple, direct and thoughtful post. Sorry for the lack of links to threads and @ mentions. LST seems to be loading extremely slowly so I couldn't check where stuff was. Other that the fact that one of my favourite tattooers started this site, I still like it that real-world experience holds water over post-count here at LST. I also like it that the mods (well, the one's I've met) are heavily covered with genuinely great tattoos. That really makes a difference.

@Delicious god damn, we have a good name. its tough being an "Eternal Ruler" ;)

I have a hinge but it is very untraditional. It's an olive hinge with scroll work instead of metal plates. Take a look, I just got it Feb. 25th.

Hey everyone! My name is Justin and I am an apprentice at south shore tattoo in amityville NY (home of the horror). As I write to you now I am being tattooed by my friend and owner of th shop mike Nomikos who is really talented and I'll post a pic later for you all to see. I should be starting tattooing soon and I figured I'd become a part of this community to share some ideas and photos of my progress, in time hopefully I'll have some of your blessings to tattoo you. If any of you wish to follow my progress and life in tattooing you can check out my Instagram: @Jbulba. Thanks and hello!

i do need a new job. too bad i live on the wrong side of the atlantic and the fact i'm no tattooer...

And yet no one hates on the companies that took advantage of a guy that is bipolar, and trying to survive in a shit economy.

I used "plainskin" at the shop yesterday...all I got was fucking crickets. No one had a single clue what I was saying.

I wish! Actually @jayessebee was the one who originally dropped that on me in a conversation we were having.

I've always said you just can't trust a guy with a nekkid face and no tattoos.

Last Sparrow Fight Club, oh shit I talked about it. I just wonder what we have to talk about that would be so secret. I Also, does it become a popularity contest to gain access, like if Rubendall and Grime (just examples) joined the forum, would we make them rack up some posts before allowing them access to good stuff. But I am really up for giving anything a try.

Hello again! here's a little update after my 2nd session with Valerie at Frithstreet yesterday! One long session left before we finish the first part of my back :D Yay!

lucky man. whenever I mention getting a back piece my girl friend just giggles because she knows it will involve getting my butt tattooed and apparently nothing is funnier than tattooed man butt.

@BrianH I actually have and she's been very supportive with my tattoo projects. Best part is when she helps me out with the aftercare on the hard to reach areas of the back piece!

@Kahlan ......find a good shop....go inside and tell them you want to help with the shop in your free time (scrubbing the toilets, taking out the trash....sweeping the floors....etc.) AND tell them you'll do it for free! Don't even mention you want to tattoo....and definitely that you are doing it at home....even on practice skin!!! Put away your machines doll....it really is disrespectful to those who have earned the right to tattoo the proper way. For over 20+ years i had been getting tattooed and never ever thought about picking up a machine to tattoo someone because of the respect I had for my friends who tattooed and just out of respect for the craft. One day i went into a shop while i was on a "tattoo road trip" and a guy told me he'd "trade tattoos" with me! I explained that i did not tattoo and why i was against this! He told me he had learned to tattoo from bob shaw on the pike in california after the vietnam war and had 40 years in the biz and he wanted me to tattoo him. I was really worried what some of my friends would think about me tattooing him but I figured he had earned the right to tell me it was okay to tattoo him....so i did! You may think it is silly of me to have been scared of what my peers would think....but it's because I respect them.....and they respect me! I didn't want to loose their respect because that is a very hard thing to gain back! You can learn the way you are learning.....BUT....to truly have the respect of your peers you should learn the proper way! And to have the respect of your peers in this craft.....is one of the highest honors there is! I'm not busting your balls doll......just trying to give you a different perspective on why you should learn the right way! I personally think you should be offered an apprenticeship....not ask for one! And why do I suggest you should offer your services to a shop for free and work like a dog for them for free??? Because you will never learn the proper way to tattoo until you earn the trust and respect first....then you learn to tattoo! It took me 20+ years to be offered an apprenticeship that was the right fit for me! My answer to the original question in this thread is....yes....there do still need to be apprentices! But not because you need free help or because the shop is slow and you need the 5-10k you can get for teaching someone! It's because the craft needs quality people in it that are willing to earn it and one day pass it on! An apprenticeship is not about learning to tattoo....it is about learning the business as well....at least it used to be! - - - Updated - - - i had the pleasure of sitting down with Zeke at the Philly Convention and the world is definitely a much more wonderful place with him in it!!!

Remembered I'd posted in here way back in October right after I got the collar rocker about how much I wanted the chest eagle. I was worried if I could sit through it... I could and I did! It hurt just about as much as I thought it would!

I wanted to address the forum as to not let speculation get to out of hand. I am actually amazed that anyone is concerned about me leaving Chicago Tattoo and the amount of support and well wishes i have received is very humbling. I want to thank everyone for reaching out. I spent ALOT of time at CTC ALOT! from the first time I walked in at 15 with Erik Gillespie and was promptly told to leave to the last 18years (almost half my life) I have been in awe of that place. In awe of the history, the stories, the people, the friends, the tattooing, the flash, the neighborhood. Everything was just amazing to me. I always wanted to be there. Always. I treated it as my own and most people didn't even think otherwise. I have met some of my dearest fiends through there and through tattooing and I owe a lot of gratitude to the institution that I believe I helped build and to the owner Dale Grande. Like all people my needs started to change, my family started to grow and my career really started to get in a great groove. It seemed like the hardwork I had put it was paying off but there where issues that needed to be addressed at the shop that couldn't be resolved. I've sat on this decision for quite some time actually over a couple years. I've done a lot of soul searching and confided in my closest colleagues and friends and especially my wife on what to do and I came to the decision to leave Chicago Tattoo. I wanted to move on still in love with tattooing still in awe of the history and still amazed at 18 years of amazing times some great some not so great. I have a lot of things in the works. Nothing to crazy or unexpected but I can say that I will continue to stay to true to tattooing and what got me to where I am without tattooing I couldn't say where I'd be.

I can think of maybe 2-3 artists I'd trust with a portrait. Even ones from otherwise good artists that I've seen.. eh.. not so good as I'd have hoped to see. Rob

My Mom hasn't seen my legs since I just had the one on my calf. My baby sister's graduation is coming up in May and I'm planning on "surprising" the family when I show up in a dress. I'm curious how my Mom will react.

Ahhhh, so lucky to have the job I have. Only rarely do I wake up not excited to go to work. (Not a tattooer, a speech therapist). :)

I'm an apprentice... I started to learn from Richard in 2002, then we all got a long so much I bought his partner Stace out of his partnership, which was Skin & Bones, a completely different business in the same building... As a business minded person I had to set down the apprenticeship, and focus on the piercing business, but knew I would get to be around and maybe get to have time enough to pick up a few things... It never happened, we maintained a partner relationship from then on... In 2009, we were reunited somewhat... after about 6 months, I was his apprentice again, and still am... What I have gathered from my 13 plus years in the body art profession is this, Tattooers or some of them, are a lot like teenage couples that don't think about the big picture, they get all hot and heavy and forget to take that pill or wear a condom, and oops a baby is born, and they themselves are still children... Babies having Babies is not an ideal situation in population or profession control.... Especially if you care about people and people getting good work. And Richard has always ALWAYS said... Taking an apprentice is like getting married and someone taking your last name as theirs.... And there is no divorce, that's forever. Hence even too risky for him to teach or just trust even a friend to tattoo... They are bound to you for the rest of their career, and you want to teach good tattooing, and it's hard to teach something that we should constantly be learning about... especially if you love it.

@Kahlan No lecture here, everyone else seems to have done a great job of that. Just some straight up info: At the shop I work in (Which may or may not have a reputation on being harsh to 'wannabes') we get at least one person each week asking for an apprenticeship. In the summer months we get AT LEAST two per week, often more. Aside from the fact than none of them can draw and most haven't been tattooed at our shop, - I'm not even sure if any of them know what kind of work we do (hint: almost everything) they certainly don't look through any of our folios while they are in the shop. - There is no way that our city can support 52 to 104 new tattooers each year. I've been there since 2007. That would be over 800 new tattooers. But really, shitty tattooers should stop taking apprentices and helping them become shitty tattooers. If a good tattooer won't teach you, tough shit. If a good tattooer does teach you, I hate you because I never got that chance and I did a whole bunch of shitty tattoos while I was 'learning'.

That letter was amazing. - - - Updated - - - This thread reminds me of when I occasionally eavesdrop on my kids from the next room. Sometimes if I don't get involved in their arguments, they figure out how to work it out themselves without me running in and yelling at everyone. I'm not saying that you're like children, I'm saying that I'm so proud of how LST has grown. You guys are awesome.

Tattoo Zeke Owen’s Column ASK ZEKE WITH ZEKE OWEN This one’s from the legendary tattoo artist dates back to May 1998. Dear Zeke: I want to pursue a career as a tattoo artist very seriously. I am currently an aspiring artist with no tattoo training. How do I go about it? —Chris Sisler, Vacaville, CA Dear Chris: I’d like you to know, Chris, that my editor goes through all this mail out in California, picks out the things he wants and sends them to me. So I don’t have a lot of choice with really picking out my mail and the questions that I’d like to talk about. In other words, it’s just random and I don’t say, “I don’t want to answer this, I don’t want to answer that.” I say, “Oh there’s a juicy one,” and go on. I just have to take the ones that he sends. First of all, I’d like to tell you a little story about something that happened to me up in Seattle, Washington, one time. And I might start this little story out with a caption that went, “So you want to be a tattoo artist?” By the way, did you see in local business magazine that tattooing is now the sixth largest growing business in the United States?! Well anyway, next to my shop—my shop was on Skid Road. Skid Road was named originally as the logging road way back in the 1800s when they used to skid the logs down the road to Peugeot Sound to put on the ships. Well, anyway, I was out on First Avenue in Seattle for a little while and it was really neat. One of the coolest things that I used to see up there was that the people from Alaska and all over up north used to come down and put their money in the bank and go to the poker rooms and live in the old, beat up, stinky, I mean really stinky hotels right down there on First near the Pike Place Market and Skid Road. And this one guy used to bring down, every year, a couple of typical sled dog looking dogs and they were probably three years old or right around there. And he’d stay in one of those Skid Road hotel rooms where they let you have anything—I mean anything. And in the morning, you’d see the dogs and this guy from the Arctic Circle or someplace, down on the sidewalk and the dogs would both have collars on and each collar would be attached to the other one, kind of like Siamese-twin collars. So, consequently, he’d have one dog on the port side and one dog on the starboard side and they’d both be leaning in about ten degrees against each other and that’s they way he’d walk. Man, it’d be funny right there at the beginning of winter. They’d be falling, a struggling and a pulling. But, after a while, after a few months, winter would start winding down and they’d go down the steps and outside on the sidewalk just in unison—just as happy as they could be, with their tongues hanging out. And they’d run down the street when he’d call them. It looked like he was training them for sled dog work, but I’d never seen that before. It was really strange to watch them. Next door to my tattoo shop in Seattle was this old bar called the Forty Niner Tavern. And that’s exactly what it was. It was full of all them off the ships and miners. Honest to God they still have mines up there, of course they’d be there for the winter. And Seattle was kind of growing in those days, they were building all over the place, so we had a lot of steelworkers. And the tavern used to open up at six in the morning, and I know that because one of the opening bartenders used to be my girlfriend, Carol. And I’d be over at the arcade—it was open 24 hours a day with a pool hall, and the little guy who ran the grill—and I’d get her home fries and scrambled eggs and coffee and go over to the bar at six in the morning. And the place would be so smoky from cigarettes, it’d be the middle of winter and there was no movement of air in there, and the fire would be going and it was just thick with smoke. And the sun would make rays through the front door and the first few tables had a spotlight like one of the helicopters that flies over the lakefront when you’re out there barbecuing and partying. Anyway, I was in there and it was packed with all the steelworkers in there partying and doing shooters before they went to work up 20, 30 stories. They’re as drunk as hell going off to hang steel up there. Somebody ought to write a book, if they haven’t already, about how these guys used to save each other’s lives from falling to their deaths by catching them on the floor underneath. Anyway, I was sitting there drinking my coffee and I’d just finished my scrambled eggs and home fries when all of the sudden the most horrible, putrefying smell came into the place. God it was horrible, you know? And I looked around. I once had tattooed a South Korean Sailor for two gallons of kimchee because he didn’t have any money—this was back in the 60s—and he brought me this two gallon can of kimchee and I tattooed him and he went back to the ship. I had zero communication with the guy. So I put the bucket of kimchee—after taking out about a quart size jar of it—and put it in the reefer box in the Forty Niner Tavern and we were looking in there. We thought that was it, because it can get pretty foul sometimes. But that wasn’t it. And I looked up toward the front of the bar, and in the middle of this blazing sunlight cutting through the cigarette smoke here sits this old wino. He has a Korean War era watchcap in a shade of green that was particular to that era with flaps hanging down over his ears. And he had two or three suits on underneath his big overcoat, because it was below zero degrees outside. And his hands were just—you couldn’t tell what they were because the guy was so grimy. He had on big, heavy army wool pants and I looked down and I could see steam coming off his right boot, this old army boot. And the guy’s face was leathered and beat up. And he had his hand wrapped around a double shot glass of some kind of wine or something. With the sunlight on him, he’s just sitting there with head down—he’s drunk about half of it. And the steam coming off his shoe was coming off a freshly laid turd. Somehow, before he had sat down, he had crapped in his pants and his turd about the size of a scoop of vanilla ice cream had slid down his pants and landed on the toe of his shoe. Just balanced there. And the stink was just ripe. It was horrible. And the funny part was I was only one who got nauseous—ready to get sick over it. The rest of the seamen that were in there—a couple of guys from the hotel, a couple of Indians, all these steelworkers, my girlfriend Carol behind the bar—when I pointed it out they said, “My God, there it is, it’s on his shoe!” They all turned and broke into a rolling laugh, but they weren’t sick. It didn’t bother them a bit. They thought it was funny as hell. Well, I didn’t think it was very damn funny. So I went over to the guy and I told him, I said, “You’re gonna have to get up and leave this place and take that fucking thing on your shoe with you! Get outa here!” Anyway, he drank his wine, got up and walked out the door real slow, with his head bent down. Poor guy, he looked like a refugee from WWII, with that shuffle, like those guys with the tattoos on their arms, given that number from Hitler. Out the door he went, and that stinking thing on the toe of his right boot. But you know, that’s all part of life of being in a tattoo business. So I thought about that for many, many years. And there’s not a real point to all this that I’m telling you. But before you do anything—before you go about planning a big career move into the tattoo business—you really ought to find out more about what it’s all about. Where you want to go, what you really want to do with it. I mean, do you have any tattoos? In other words, before I give you directions to build a bomb you better know what the hell you want to do with the damn thing after you get it finished. Because most of the people who got into this business have a real kinship with their customers in that it really gets into their blood, so to speak, and you keep coming back for more. They stay in it. And I’ve seen real good tattooers just go nuts. Actually, one of Mike Malone’s that came in my shop, what was his name—from Germany—Freddy or something. Anyway, he went back to Germany and he was one of the very first ones on the crack of the wave of the tattoo scene and he took Germany by storm. It was 24 hours a day and it got to him so bad that he had a breakdown and went off to the hospital. And I haven’t heard anything from him since. Mike will know what I’m talking about. But the point of it is I can tell you right now, don’t take it on your own to try and do this or experiment with anybody. And here I am telling you exactly what I did, and a lot of others did, experimenting on their own. I can’t say it’s a mistake but it’s just a better approach to go into a shop of maybe the guys who’ve been doing your tattoos. I’m sure you have a bunch, right? And talk to them. Bring your artwork in to show. I’ll tell you what, there’s been a phenomenon in this business that went right past me. I missed it. Only just now am I getting to find out about what’s going on. I call them entrepreneurs. They have a job with the transit system or maybe they’re in the bricklaying business in the daytime and they have ten or fifteen tattoos, so now they decide they’re going to have a tattoo shop. They go down to Ocean Boulevard in Jacksonville, Florida, and they rent a little store. They put an ad in the paper and they hire six or seven guys and they give them 35% of the gross to sit in there and tattoo. But if they don’t have the equipment, by God, they send off to somebody up north and buy all the machines and the designs and the tools to do the work with. And that’s one way to do it. And they just get together like a big Chinese cluster-fuck and sit there and mark each other up and everybody else that comes in the place. But that’s one approach, I suppose. I think it’d be better off though if you did find somebody who had a reputation and they would sit you down and let you watch and talk. That’s really the way to get started. Hand to hand—kind of like the old-fashioned apprenticeships used to be at the shoe repair shop. After about a year, they eventually let you put a heel on somebody’s boot, you know? And also, this is another kind of business where you want to get next to the best person you can. If you have some serious art abilities or training and everybody goes “oooh” and “aaah” when they see your painting, then evidently you’ve got the kind of ability that you need today to succeed in the business. Most of the old time guys are what we call mechanics—take a pattern, slap it on your arm and follow it along. There were some guys that could make it look like Rembrandt. You could tell, it was sort of a mechanical follow-the-dots sort of a deal. But today, when you’ve got so many great people, it just blows me away. I never knew Brian Everett was an oil painter or a portrait artist before he got into this. I just didn’t stop to think like that. The scope of the way I thought was pretty much limited to the tattoo community that I developed myself in. And it didn’t include people like that. And today Mike Malone says I’m the last guy to find out anything. I don’t know—he’s probably right. But today I’m beginning to find out these people in fine arts are getting into tattooing. I’m beginning to think, is there more money working in tattooing than there is working in the art department at some big magazine? And evidently some of them actually like tattooing. So then again, you have to think very carefully about what you say or what you do around this or any other business. But especially in tattooing, because most of the people who are in tattooing are pretty down to earth. There’s not a lot of fiction in tattooing like a lot of people would think. When a guy comes in and you work on him two or three hours and he gets up and runs out the door with your money, that’s pretty real. It’s not a real good example either but—also I don’t just sit there when I’m tattooing somebody. I’ve got something to say. I ask them what’s going on and you get to hear a lot of what’s really happening in the rest of the world. The kind of people I work on are everything from deep sea divers to CEOs of major corporations. But again, you need to learn or find out more about what tattooing’s all about before you decide I’m an artist and I want to be a tattoo artist. Find out something about it first. Go to a tattoo convention. There you go. Hang out with all those drunks after the tattoo room is closed and they’re all in the bar slinging shit at each other, wrestling around in the parking lot like Bob Shaw and I used to do, drunk as hell in the grease. Things like that. Then that’ll give you more of an insight and whether you really want to be a tattoo artist or not. See ya. —Zeke.

I think we can be blasé and attribute the reasons to whatever but that's just speculation , what we do have is feedback from the artists that remain and should entertain the possibility that each of us is slipping and take it upon ourselves to do something about that . Remember the words of my man Jimi Hendrix " Knowledge speaks but wisdom listens " or that other hippie Arthur Schopenhauer " Treat a work of art like a prince : let it speak to you first "

My name is John, I don't tattoo I just get Tattooed, but only Old Skool !!!!!

I was 18 and i had over 10 tattoos before my parents found out, better get your moms name somewhere, if you want it to go over well

That's because your back is weirdly sensitive. Ever asked someone to rub your shin? Nope. But back rubs are awesome because your back has a million sensitive spots, all of which feel super fucking awesome when getting tattooed, especially the lower back. You already know that tattoos hurt, and you seem to be acutely aware that the back will hurt, too. You also know that you're already on this path (didn't you just get your hand tattooed?) and that the back is the ultimate canvas. you just need to figure out what you're getting and who's gonna do it, although something tells me that you have more than a few ideas in mind. While I did find the process to be painful (and expensive), I have no regrets at all about doing it. It was so exciting to see it come together, session by session. There's something about having a full back piece. It's something that I've always admired, but for years, I didn't think I'd be able to make the physical/financial/mental commitment to go through with it myself. Completing it was a big milestone for me, and I have a beautiful souvenir of the experience that I get to wear for life.

i was 16 or 17. i got a small tattoo on my calve. back then i never wore shoes or socks. as soon as school let out the shoes and socks came off. so the day after i got it done i was in the kitchen and i had socks on(to hide the tattoo) and the conversation went like this mom "so letes see it" me "see what?" mom "the tattoo. dont play dumb" me "i dont know what youre talking about" mom "BS, youre wearing socks. youre hiding something."