April & Needles

Some pieces I been working on. Animals and pets!

Giving you all some more oranges with ink. I need to take new photo's now the skin has dried, they look a lot better now. My mentor reviewed them this week, he never used oranges before and thinks the are a good practice media. The lines bleed more then human skin, which gives a good impression of how your work will look in a few years there for it teaches you to keep enough space between lines for work to age.

Color practice on fake skin. Well, that was awful. Let's start with the issue of cleaning practice skin. Nope.. vaseline might help you get it partly off but first it will have you rub all the inkt out of your lines. Great. So leave your fresh tattooed areas to dry before attempting to clean. I had to reline this piece 3 times, messing up a large number of lines on the last try, I had given up hope of this ever working and stopped putting effort into it. Coloring went alright as long as I didn't clean my work. If I did I would rub different colors into other areas. Which unfortunatly happened to all my white areas even after a 2 hour dry time. Last but not least practice skin doesn't absorb ink at all. Where oranges absorb a lot and have quit a lot of line leakage, on practice skin you can see every single dot you stabbed into it. It's annoying and looks messy on line work as soon as you use bigger then a 3RL. This how ever gave me a better understanding of another aprentice in the shop. She has only worked on practice skin and is convinced she can't tattoo even the shortest of perfect lines, but practice skin doesn't allow this. Next time I might just bring her some oranges. My mentor told me to look for a human canvas now, he is convinced I'm ready. I will probably pick up a piece of pig skin thursday and do my last practice before trying on a person on the media that felt the most real.

Pig skin! It's upsetting how gross it feels to tattoo this. It's just a piece of meat, like you buy at the store. I get mine from the local butcher for free, he prefers to cut the skin from the belly meat himself. So it's waste to him. This is probably the closest you can get to human skin. It's really sticky and oily and impossible to clean all of that off. So prepare to get a bit dirty working with pig skin. Also, it's impossible to get a pen to work on it, I ended up painting a fast sketch causing the piece to be a bit off. Tattooing on it was a bit of a shock. It was so soft.. It feels like cutting butter compared to practice skin and fruit tattooing. I had a enormous piece and trouble getting in the right position to draw on it, you can't smack it onto a drawing table and I found myself in strange positions and sore muscles before I could finish. So cut it in smaller pieces. A few days later I had to trow it out. Because it was smelling up the fridge... So unfinished effort. It's a really nice to practice on, it feels so natural/real/friendly but then again it's dirty, smelly and all your gear will need cleaning.

Fruit tattooing. Fruit tattooing was probably the one that taught me the most. At least I made most of my progress on oranges. The surface is harder and uneven, so getting a straight line on one proved to be tricky. The surface damages quickly and if you go to deep you will get an eye full of juice. They defiantly helped me on my lines.. I wanted to practice some coloring but oranges turn everything orange... so mwerp! But this is a good way to practice, I promise!

Practecing how to hold a tattoo machine in a way that works well for me. Wish I had a inkt pen to put in my machine so I wouldn't have to sharpen te tip every 10 cm I draw.

Ah yes, I got 2 tattoo machines for my b-day. Need to wait for them to arrive from their builder. Sad me, because it's eastern weekend so I will have to wait 4 extra days UGH! Same go's for a power supply. Take this piece for now.

I have never found a good description of this, I have had a bunch of artists online scream that tattooing isn't like drawing on paper and that it's all sorts of hell. So I am gonna tell you how it is, exactly how it is. Now do please take in account I have been drawing since I was as high as my knee. I have a steady hand, but it doesn't change the overall sensation, it just means I can cope with the weight and the cord a but better... apparently. Vinbration Like me I'm sure everyone would expect this to be a vibrating media, like you will have to correct for a constant movement in your media. But this is not true, this is probably the only issue I had while tattooing. Your machine is not really moving all that much, it kinda feels like pushing the back of a electric toothbrush against your skin. Your needle, how ever, is vibrating. You can try a tighter elastic, but still it won't hit the same place twice. You can't compensate for this in anyway, because the machine isn't moving enough for you to read the movement. This is why bigger needles are more forgiving. Learn to live with it I just had to accept the fact that making a good clean line with a tiny needle was gonna take practice. I decided to stop trying to fight it after 2 lines and practice needle depth and how to hold the machine in a way that made me feel comfortable. Smooth After about 15 minutes I found a good way to holding the machine while at the same time supporting it. After that it took a few minutes for my body to somehow adjust to the vibration by itself. Now I ain't sure if that would work for everyone as I have been drawing on a high level for a long time switching between media's all over the place, Somehow somewhere my brain apparently has some sort of stabilizing software installed that kicked in as soon as I started actually drawing rater then questioning things. Other, just hell annoying, things. I can imagine a lot of people having an awesome fight with the power cord! Hell you just wait until you have plastic around it it gets worse. My teacher stuck it on right away because he had the hardest time r-adjusting to it when the laws changed and he was forced to use them. Now another thing is the power supply, don't be scared to try it. Put the volts a bit higher and lower. I was scared at first to, and I ended up having half arsed lines because I was moving to fast and the needle didn't hit the skin fast enough. The higher you set it the more hits you will get per second, but if you move to slow you cut up skin if it's set to fast. You can adjust it anytime you want so why not fiddle with that dial a bit. Last but not least is the weight, I think this will bother most people more then the constant vibration. If you aren't used to drawing for 10 hours straight I can imagine the combination of the weight and the vibrations is gonna give you a cramp beyond all reason. Not only that, I think a lot of people will be fighting a double fight for control because that weight is gonna trow your hand balance off even more. So is it nothing like drawing on paper? Hell it actually is like drawing on paper, but it's like drawing on paper with a very temperamental, overweight fine-liner that is stuck to the wall with a rater hefty piece of rope. And with temperamental I mean, if it was a horse it would try to trow you off.. if it was a car it would try to kill you in every corner. But you can certainly learn, and by the looks of it the hardest things will come to you by nature if you are used to drawing. If you are not, start drawing a whole hell lot in the few weeks before you try just to make it easier on yourself, maybe strap a hammer to your pen just to train yourself to work with the weight. I hope this gave some aspiring tattoo artist and curious people some information I wasn't able to find. You may always ask if you have questions :3

First time tattooing, the artist that is teaching me has been asking if I wanted to try since I started my apprenticeship and he was all happy when I said yes today. I guess I have ended in a interesting apprenticeship.... Sorry for the blurry photo.

Tattoo design 5009 My own take on a Japanese dragon and his own fantasy queen to guard.

Tattoo design number 5008