Stewart Robson

I agree with Mario (again) but I'm trying to ignore most of the back-and-forth boring shit about encouraging beginners like it was some kindergarten project and just say: Price is dictated by demand. That's it. If people want your stuff they will pay whatever you ask. Regardless of quality. But you did lay out your work before some of the best in the world (I don't mean me, btw) and expect it to be well received. Even after you declared it your first attempt. Sell something when you've learned to do it properly, not the first few clunky attempts. I went to art school and worked as a professional designer/illustrator/etc for almost a decade. I don't think it helped my tattooing too much. I learned how to take a brief from a client as a professional. I learned a bit of art history at university. Those were plus points. For me the worst influence art school has on potential tattooers is the sense of entitlement that it fosters. Art school 'kids' are taught that they have a special vision or gift. Taught that hey have a duty to broadcast their vision to the world and the world should think itself lucky to feel the rays of brilliance from a living genius. Tattooing and drawing tattoo designs teaches you (if you are lucky) that you are the current incarnation of an artistic lineage and that you are borrowing everything, attempting to take care of it for a while, to pass it on to a later generation. It also teaches you humility and the value of hard work, in spades. If smiling.politely had wanted advice, they would have asked how to improve the drawing before painting it. Instead they chose to seek acceptance and a confirmation of the 'special vision' probably with the hope of an offer of a tattoo apprenticeship. Genuinely, I wish you good luck with all those things but if you expect people to pay you money for something, it better be the best you can do. Especially in a saturated market. Be that tattoo style 'art' or whatever you choose to pursue.

Now the party starts!

Nobody who tattoos simply to make a living, to put food on the table becomes 'great'. Maybe it's starts that way, but somewhere along the line something will change. Anybody who became 'great' at anything sacrificed a lot to get there. That's where the respect comes in. Tattooing isn't just another artform to 'express' yourself. It's something very different that has similarities to other crafts and arts but it's something that stands alone. You can draw similarities with other fields (and it can be fun to dream them up) but in the end nothing else has the same mix of craft, decoration, artistry, service and an emotional connection. The respect doesn't come from the amount of tattoos someone has. The lack of respect comes from the hypocrisy to dare to do to others what you cannot allow to be done to yourself. A subtle but very definite distinction. I would like to add that ANY craft is sacred. The time and energy spent perfecting any craft is akin to spiritual devotion. Anybody who fully understands their craft deserves respect. It's impossible to fully understand tattooing without having tattoos. One or two small ones doesn't count. I understand that visible tattoos are not for everybody, but that's not what's being discussed here. Anybody who buys supplies, attends conventions, buys magazines etc, serves the 'industry'. Those who get heavily tattooed and take their shirt off for a photo shoot, serve the 'industry'. - I never mentioned them, or the industry, as they are a different argument that I have no interest in. Tattooers who aim for quality and get tattooed serve the CRAFT. They also HAVE respect for the craft, so they deserve nothing but respect in that regard. Being 'cool' has nothing to do with it.

For those to whom it's not obvious and for clarity: The picture I posted above is from the blackheart blog. BlackHeart Tattoo San Francisco

THIS is a tattooers uniform! Maybe it should be in the "Tattooers with little or no tattoos" thread too. :p Awesome photo.

That doesn't worry me so much, but I know it's important to lots of people. Disabling hot-linking would keep visitors here at LST instead of all over tumblr. A screen grab will catch anything displayed in a browser though. Thanks again for trying to make this place super-cool.

Ha, I guess we are all cheesy at Frith Street Tattoo. Bummer. We have about 4 different designs each year, in small runs. Most are never re-printed. Designed by people we respect. Why would I not wear them? I hardly ever wear the shirts I design, because they suck. I wear the other guys designs as well as shirts from other shops and tattooers we like. In the past we have had a limited run of 15 shirts printed just for the guys and girls at the shop and their friends. I agree with pretty much everyone else. I didn't start tattooing to wear a uniform. But if you enjoy wearing the same outfit to work every day, that's awesome. It worked for Seth Brundle!

There are sometimes exceptions to any rule and I agree with Tim but I would go much further and use the term parasite. They are feeding off something and giving nothing back. I fail to see how any tattooer can understand what they are doing to people if they have no tattoos. Yeah there's the pain side. Mostly it's not that bad, but if you're tattooing ribs, chests, backs etc you should at least have empathy with your customer. But more than the sensation of being tattooed, there's the mental and emotional side to being a tattooed person. The way it feels to have made a deliberate choice to get a tattoo, placed a certain amount of trust in a stranger (usually) and to have the results with you every moment of your existence. To know what it's like to live with a tattoo, to see it age with your body etc. Not forgetting the social side, the way other people interact with you, either positive or negative. All these things cannot be understood without having tattoos. Being heavily tattooed is certainly no indicator of the quality of a tattooers work, but I have zero respect for tattooers with no tattoos.

Now that Steve has fixed the problem so that you can just cycle through the same user's gallery it seems a lot easier to use. Lochlan, I fully agree with your points and the original manifesto of this site, which is why I joined in the first place, although I don't usually participate in threads on internet forums. The interesting discussions and photos, by and from tattooers I admire keep me coming back. I guess any problems I have are down to the way the site could be used, not how it's designed. Too many people don't want to be educated about good tattooing, they just want to print pictures to take to a shop and get the same tattoo. A searchable database, organised by subject feels a little too much like online shopping, rather than research to me. I know I can't stop people doing that and it's been happening via google for a while now. The idea of a high quality online community/magazine is awesome and I hope this continues to be that. But one problem with aiming for quality is editorial control. Someone would need to decide what is worth inclusion and what isn't. Sadly, that's not the way to build a happy online community that people want to be part of. If anyone can join and share their views, then it's closer to public access television than an informed documentary or arts show. It's a pickle for sure and it's also the blessing and the curse of the internet. Good luck!

I'm so stoked that Valerie and I will be working this! I look forward to seeing some of you there.

I only just realised that the galeries were different by accident. I don't check every new post or thread here so this almost passed me by. The points you mention, Lochlan, are cool and will be helpful for sure. The categories thing I'm not so sure of. If the user places things into categories, that's cool, but having things labelled by a staff member isn't. Maybe Im being over-sensitive about this but I'm not comfortable with my work being part of a fully searchable catalogue by subject or style. I know that once it's on the internet, you can do that via google anyway, which is why I stopped being so descriptive with the blog entries on my website. I could see from the search engine terms on my website that visitors got to my site by searching google for things like "gypsy girl tattoo on arm with day of the dead makeup" or "fox and cherry tree tattoo sleeve". Terms so specific that it's obvious why they are searching for tattoo photos. I'm trying to showcase my work and to share it with my friends, peers, customers and future customers. I'm not interested in being part of a bank of resource material for people to search a database for all the separate elements of their tattoo, print their 'inspiration' and take it to their local shop. Maybe I'm over-reacting here. I know I'm no big fish and nobody is copying the tattoos I do but I'm still not comfortable with the categorised galleries. Recently a tattoo magazine that I read and occasionally submit photos to, started doing a similar thing on their website, labeling every image according to the design elements, colour, style and placement. Then they charge a subscription to that online database. Now it's a ready tattooed 'try-before-you-buy' gallery of tattoos. With that subscription you can search for exactly the elements you want and chances are, you'll find just the tattoo you described, on somebody else, that they paid for and some tattooer put together, solving all the problems of placement, layout and readability etc, so it can be printed and taken to anybody who is ok with copying a tattoo verbatim. That also prevents the person from going to tattooer who's work they like and describing what they want. All they can picture is that tattoo they fell in love with on the internet because it fit their search criteria. That made me re-think if I wanted to submit work to that publication at all. I know that what you're doing here is not on that same scale and it seems to make sense from a usability point of view but it's the very thin end of the same wedge. I know that I can't stop this happening and it makes a lot of sense to a web developer who cares about usability. I just don't want to be part of that. So I guess the point I'm trying to make is: I would prefer to be able to opt out of having my work categorised in this way. It would have been preferable to opt-in to the new gallery system, or maybe to have a catch-all category or 'uncategorised'?. If that is not possible, I'll need to re-think if I want to keep a gallery of my work here at Last Sparrow and just stick to reading and occasionally posting in forums. That would be a shame as it's a great site/forum and I'm happy to be a part of it and share my work here, particularly because I thought this place was different from other social networks, a place where the users could have some control over how their images were used and not a place for people to easily trawl for their next tattoo. Aside from my own personal, possibly anti-social reasons, I find the new galleries confusing to browse. While browsing one artist's work and clicking 'next' I'm suddenly looking at something else, uploaded by another user. That's not how I expect to view the gallery of an artist's work and seems counter-intuitive. Is your eventual goal to have one giant gallery that is only navigable by subject or search terms rather than from within an isolated users profile? I'm a lazy web user (possibly old fashioned) who likes to point and click instead of typing to browse sites. Maybe these are teething problems that can be worked out easily. Maybe I'm being over-sensitive. This post was not intended to be a rant, so here's an honest question because maybe I'm missing something: It's easy to see how having our work as part of a searchable database is good for the site visitor, but how is it good for tattooers?

Tattoo Life and Tattoo Energy feature many US artists. Most recently Dan Wysuph, Chris Magnotti, Chad Koeplinger, Adam Barton. I think some tattooers from the USA write for it too. Chad and Taki have written for it. Pre MySpace, it was the only place I'd get to see tattoos from Scott Sylvia, Jeff Rassier, Tim Lehi, Jef Whitehead, Grime, Chris O'Donnell, Mike Rubendall, Filip Leu etc. I didn't mention Tattoo Artist Magazine because thats kind of by tattooers, for tattooers. So the direction of the content is slightly different. But some issues have been amazing and there's always something worth reading in there. I think it's important that we've kept the discussion to print magazines. I've yet to read an online mag that was worth a shit. If I'm clicking links I'd rather do it from the blogs of people I admire and look up to. The links from the blogs of Thomas Hooper, Daniel Albrigo, The Blackheart guys individual blogs and a few others take you to some pretty fantastic places.

Like bigjoe said, Tattoo Life/Energy are good magazines. Tattoowier seems ok, although I can't vouch for the writing quality, as I can only read English. The only magazine from the UK worth looking at is Total Tattoo. Sally, Perry and the gang are a rarity in tattoo magazines (along with Mikki Vialetto's Tattoo Life crew) because they can (mostly) tell what a good tattoo looks like. But most of all, they actually like tattoos and get tattoos by some great tattooers. If your favourite tattooers write articles and send photos to a magazine, it's probably worth taking a look. My rules of thumb for a magazine being shit are: Poor quality control, including spelling. Photos of shitty tattoos. Interviews with shitty tattooers. Repeated articles about 'women in tattooing' or 'women with tattoos'. Mis-spelling tattooers names, especially well-known people like Filip Leu, Ed Hardy, Freddy Corbin etc. If more than 10-20% of the content is colour realistic tattoos. If more than 50% of the content is any one style/school of tattooing. If there is an abundance of fetish-style photography. Interviews with freaky people with shitty facial tattoos. An editorial lean toward controversy, smut or celebrity. Re-prints or articles with content just cribbed from the internet. There are many more things that I personally dislike, but I think that these things are too common in tattoo magazines. I'm guessing that none of this will help you decide which magazines you want to work with, just my 2p. But as your question was more toward which magazines to avoid outside of the uk, we (Frith Street) had a bad experience with Skin & Ink, but i think they have a different editor these days and they did have a cool article about Chicago Tattoo Co a couple of months ago. Tattoo Savage used to fulfil almost all of my crappy criteria above but I haven't looked at it for years. International Tattoo Art has gone through periods of being cool and being crappy but I don't know what it's like now. You probably know this already, but very few tattoo magazines have full-time writers. They mostly use freelance contributors. I'm friends with a few magazine contributors and most of them are photographers/writers, rather than specialise in just one. This works out cheaper for magazines. The best ones conduct interviews face-to-face and visit shops and conventions. Some tattooers and shops are hesitant to allow strangers to interview them so it would help if you are likeable in person and seem to care about tattooing. Expect it to be very different from blogging or writing for an online magazine as you will be creating content rather than commenting on existing content. Good luck. This was supposed to be a quick post, but it almost turned into a rant. Hopefully there is something useful here.

I don't have any cover-ups on my body but I tattoo a hell of a lot of them. Most of the larger work that I do (bigger than 1/2 sleeve) usually incorporates some kind of cover-up. I started to make a point of NOT taking a 'before' picture. Sometimes I do, but I found that the cover-up requests got bigger and bigger the more cover-ups I showed. Covering a half sleeve sized tattoo with a full sleeve compromises the end product but I sometimes enjoy the challenge and the problem-solving aspect of it. This is one of the more tricky ones from last year or so, when I used to take 'before' photos: I got an email today asking if I could cover a full sleeve - with a sleeve.

Thanks. Although I'm a little embarrassed that my mane came up with the whole forcefields thing, I'm on Mario's side of the fence with this one. I stole that from the old photos of Bob Shaw by Bert Grimm. It's pretty much the only way to cap an arm with web and not fuck up the silhouette. Those legs by Cripwell are an amazing example of how great well-placed traditional tattoos can look. Great design choices, placement and rhythm of negative space. A lesson to us all (especially me!) I like some of Simon Erl's work, but the photo above has to be the ultimate hipster tattoo. Avoiding criticism through irony while embracing the thing you are being ironic about. It's the finger-moustache of the tattoo bloggers. He could have got a "pigs is pigs" tattoo in that space instead. that would have been funny for the rest of his life, without a tiresome explanation of an internet trend.

A woman who's name I can't remember at Ruby Arts in York, UK Norman Tattersley Steve Byrne - around 60-90 hours, maybe more Ian Flower - around 40 hours Valerie Vargas - a bunch of smaller stuff Gerry Carnelly Chad Koeplinger - x4 Steve Boltz - x2 Bert Krak Eli Quinters Thomas Hooper Mike Wilson Alex Reinke Dante DiMassa Naomi Reed Craig Burton Jordan Teear Soap Antony Dickinson Electric Rich Tim Hendricks x 2 Jeff Rassier Oliver Peck Nikki Balls There's a few more people I plan to get tattooed by in the next couple of years as well as some more from the folks on this list.

Thanks for visiting us Mario. It was great to have you here. Video looks cool too, nice feel of London and our shop. See you in San Francisco.

Currently my most hated request is something that the client/customer doesn't give a shit about. They just want 'the look'. I used to hate spiky random tribal that was copied from a gay gym flyer (an actual gym for gay men, not just 'lame') that was doing the rounds a few years ago. Now it's an arm full of mashed potato looking clouds with a cherub and/or angel, usually hiding it's face. I love doing large tribal/blackwork and I love doing religious or quasi-religious black & grey but when the person getting tattooed doesn't give a shit if I try to make it look good, then that is my most hated tattoo request.

The second photo in the first post isn't an American prison photo. It's Jay Read from Birmingham, UK. jayread.co.uk He's certainly a tough motherfucker, but not American and not in prison in SF.

Hi, When I do backs, particularly in a Japanese style, I don't consider ending higher than the ass, especially if there is background.` But the question I ask everyone who is not sure if they want to include the thighs too is "If it ends on your ass, what will you do on your thighs?" Personally I love the look of the full back and thighs, which is what I have myself. For easy-to-find reference, check out Taki's book 'Bushido' if you haven't already. There's some cool diagrams at the back that outline the shape of Japanese bodysuits. There are other, more comprehensive illustrations in harder to find, Japanese language books, but Bushido is great. Good luck getting your ass tattooed though!

Man, everybody already used my smart-ass answers but the Greg Irons quip was funnier than I could have come up with. But back to the original question. This is one of the newer approaches to tattooing that makes me slightly uncomfortable to be honest. Myself and a few tattooers I know and work with have noticed the trend of customers finding a sense of pride in how long they had to wait for their tattoo. As if that makes the tattoo more worthwhile. With some of the currently living/working tattooers mentioned in this thread, I personally know people (not even on the internet) that have tattoos from all of them. Filip, Horiyoshi III, Shige and Mike Rubendall. Yeah, they had to wait a little while for some of them but not as long as you'd think for others. Mike Roper is a different situation because he makes it deliberately difficult to get in touch with him, which answers the question posed above. But that wasn't really the question that was asked and it's rarely the question that gets asked. The question, or at least the implication, is "who has the longest waiting list' or "who has appointments booked furthest into the future". If I were to be snarky "who gives me the most bragging rights". For me the hardest people to get a tattoo from are the tattooers who are located furthest away from me. The ones where I have to get off my ass and do something about it. Time is easier to overcome than distance although patience is a different matter. It astonishes me that people call our shop from the outskirts of the city expecting us to change the way we work because they are catching a train to get here. On the other hand, we are humbled and honoured by the people who cross seas and continents to get tattooed regularly with us. But that's aside from the issue. Why is it a trend that makes me uncomfortable? Because I've heard people brag about how long they had to wait for 'x' artist and wear that information like a badge of honour. It feels almost as distasteful as bragging about who charges the most. Yeah, tattoos are for tough guys and tough buys like to brag and maybe that seems harmless, but it makes me uncomfortable and I have trouble clearly explaining why. Maybe it's because it's a phenomenon spurred on by the internet and the gossipy world of hearsay. Nobody calls and checks with the artists or shops they want to get tattooed at. Nobody travels down to the shop to ask the question. They just ask random strangers on the internet who have a lot of time on their hands and like to talk about something they know nothing about. Then the reality gets lost or twisted and in the end the real information is lost. I see this a lot with regards to the shop I work at. Forums are (or certainly used to be) bursting with 'facts' about how much we charge, how long we take, how far 'x' and 'y' are booked or how long their waiting lists are. Nobody calls the shop to ask and nobody suggests that the person calls to ask. I know that happens with a lot of things but it seems like this is starting to have a real-world effect, however small. People who wanted tattoos that we would love to do heard that we wouldn't tattoo them at our shop because we were so cool and busy and booked up for decades and rolling around in money 'n' bitches or something. We've heard of this a few times and it seems to be happening more. Yeah, we're busy, you may have to wait a little, maybe not. If someone has contact information, especially a phone number on their website it means that they want you to call. I'm not really going to touch on the tone of the "are they a fad or are they really worth it?" comment, except to say that if you have to ask, the answer is "no". Sorry to jump on this fun thread with a rant. I look forward to more witty quips.

Awesome interview. I'm glad that Tim said some of the things he did here. I have learned fantastic things about applying tattoos from watching Tim work and getting tattooed, but I've learned a hell of a lot more watching him interact with his customers/clients with humility, dignity and most of all grace. Thanks to Scott for helping that come across in this interview. Looking forward to the next one!