#capy.talks

A few things to consider:

- This is not a tattooing tutorial, the purpose of this guide is to serve as a realistic base for creative writing only.

- I've been a tattoo artist for a few years and am extremely nitpicky with rules, so your personal experiences with tattoos might be different. I base myself off my formal-ish education on my profession and my day-to-day on the studio i work at :)

Now back to the topic:

Don't call it a tattoo gun. Please. It helps maintain the stigma that tattoos = violence/violent people, so please call it a tattoo machine instead.

Most of us are not actually going in blind and creating a design directly on the client's skin. There are freestyle artists who draw the art directly on the person with a sharpie before tattooing or more traditional methods like printing out the stencil and passing it onto the skin. Making up the art directly with the machine on the person's bare skin seems like the most sure way for them to get a fucked up tattoo lol. We're artists but we are human too!!

Most tattoo machines are activated by a pedal on the floor. There are some power supplies that have a toggle button on them that makes your machine work without having to use a pedal, but since it envolves touching it all the time, people usually use this feature on bigger and darker pieces that take more time and the machine running continuously.

I know this one is easy to push aside for the sake of storytelling so take it with a grain of salt, but not all scars can be tattooed over. When a client wants to cover a scar, serious studios will require a doctor's approval to do so. Tats are very invasive and aggressive on the body procedures, at the end of the day!

Biosafety is a whole cultural thing, but as a former healthcare student and a neat freak, i should tell you it's no joke. In an ideal world, every tattoo artist will have a separate room for procedures, wrap all the surfaces with plastic wrap, desinfect it all with alcohol and for FUCKS sake wear a mask. Your tattoo artist au can have as the mc the hottest guy in town, i don't care, make him wear a goddamn mask. Gross! Also, gloves.

It's 3 am and these are all i can think about rn lol. Hope this helps a struggling writer out there <3

Tattoos aren't meant to bleed. Normally, at the depth the needles go in and if the person has more sensitive skin, it releases a clear liquid that's called lymph. If their skin is bleeding, someone should take the machine out of the artist's heavy ass hand asap!

As a general rule of thumb, big tattoos are considerably easier to do than smaller ones. The tinier, the easier it is for the artist to mess it up.