4/20/11 Tattooing...I just wanna be good at what i love doing!

  As far back as i can remember I have always loved tattoos. The idea of covering your skin in artwork was very appealing to me. At a pretty young age people would request my artwork as tattoo ideas which was very flattering but I never felt very confident in my skills. I have been seriously drawing since I was very young, probably about 5 years old. I spent a lot of time drawing people, there is rarely a lack of examples considering we are living in heavily populated area. It wasnt until I got older that I started drawing inanimate objects, I wish I would have tried to draw everything around me and everything I could think of while I was still in the early development of my drawing style.

   If I had a dollar for every person who said " You should become a tattoo artisit" , I could have purchased a top of the line tattoo machine....and a rainbow of inks. I always wanted to buy the things I needed to start tattooing but everytime I had a little spare cash something came up or I drank the money away.

  One day my boyfriend and I are headed out for dinner and he is pretty giddy about something, so I inqure about his giddyness and he says he got something for me and he couldnt keep it a secret much longer. Once I found out there was a surprise for me I had to know what it was, and he had no problem telling me. It was a Basic tattooing kit and I was shocked! I believe I teared up a little because of the excitement, so I spent the next month or so researching everything I could about tattooing, blood born pathogens, cross contamination, technique and history of the art. It was pretty overwhelming and my confidence level was pretty low after realizing how much responsibility is involved.

  I hadn't touched my machines until I had a good idea of how they worked and how to put them together. My first tattooing experience was on fruit and I thought I was awesome! I had pretty good control over the tattoo machine and  felt on top of the world as soon as i heard the buzzing of the machine. After I was finished tattooing a rose on a grapefruit I looked over it and im very glad that wasnt someone skin, the line work was good but i tore that grapefruit up soooo bad.

  It took me a while to work up the courage to tattoo myself but when I did it was incredibly nerve-wracking. I had "set up Shop" at my roommates dining room table. I sanitized my work area, layed all of my equipment on my paper towles and as I was assembling my machine, my hand was shaking a bit... great. When I tapped the foot pedal it took me probably half a dozens times to actually touch the needle to my skin. I took a deep breath and made my first line and it was awful! Unfortunatly for the lines I was trying to achive required many passes which caused me to tear up my skin a bit, but I had to learn. In my first session I "fixed" my ankle tattoo which was my name done with a needle and thread back in like 1999. Above that I tattooed a large rose and surprisingly it turned out rather well.... I couldnt stop... after that I tattooed a star above my knee all in one stting.

 It didnt take long before my friends were lining up and it was pretty awesome. I wasn't asking for any kind of payment, just guinnie pigs. My first tattoo on another person was pretty intense as well, when you tattoo yourself you can feel how deep you are going with the needle, on another person you really have to pay attention, you can either not go deep enough and have to do several passes over an area or go to deep and scar the person up pretty bad, the idea is to leave a beautilful peice of artwork... not battle wounds.

  I was pretty much sticking to basic line work for a while. I wanted to have a firm grasp on lines before I moved onto shading and solid color. My confidence level went up a little everytime because my friends were more then enthusiastic!

  Sometimes in life we come across people or situations that try to make us believe we cant do things or we arent good enough, there is always someone who is trying to rain on your parade. When I talked to tattoo artisit about apprenticeship they basically talked down to me, it was pretty frustrating... why would I wanna work in a field where the people are so stuck up?  Maybe if people were more willing to share their wealth of knowledge there wouldn't be so many "scratchers" out there. But I didn't let other peoples negativity stop me.

    After a few months of tattooing somewhat regularly I found out I was pregnant and I wasn't willing to put my childs health at risk with the slim chances of cross contamination, so I put away my tattoo gun and became a oven for a little baby bun.  A little while after my big bouncing baby boy was born, my boyfriend starting asking when I was gonna start tattooing again, it didnt take long before I was "setting up shop" again. 

   I have a few ideas im throwing around with a few people about tattoos they want and it feels good to be doing what makes my adrenaline pump. I really dont care if I ever work in a tattoo shop, I just want to be good at what i like doing  I may not be very good right now but in a few years who knows where ill be.


  ( all tattoos on this page are done by me, but they are in no specific order as to when they were done)