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personalportfoliohd · 5 years

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How to get into the tattoo industry

Be an artist. This is the first and most important step. You can't become a tattoo artist without first being an artist.

Build a portfolio. I mean a tattoo apprenticeship portfolio, not a tattoo artist's portfolio. They're different. Learn more below.

Find a certified tattoo artist-mentor who will take you on as an apprentice. This might be tricky. Learn how to approach a shop below.

Learn the trade. During your apprenticeship, you'll do a lot of menial tasks, but you'll also learn professional business skills, best hygienic work practices, and tattoo design.

Get certified. Every state has its own requirements; learn more and find links below.

Find a shop to work in. After your apprenticeship and certification, you'll be ready to start getting paid! But first, you'll have to find a shop to work in.

So the next part of my research about becoming a tattoo artist is actually about how to get into the tattoo industry so conducted a lot of research onto how.

https://tatring.com/getting-tattooed/StartCareerTattooingOne

1) The skin of the human body has no straight lines on it.

So how does this affect you and your drawing style? It affects you plenty if you use a ruler to create most of your drawings, because the last thing you want to put into a tattoo is a lot of straight lines. The body is in constantly flexing and contracting its muscles, as the human body is always in motion. So straight lines will almost always look curved.

Another thing you will want to stay away from is perfect or concentric circles. They are way hard to tattoo, and most shops won't touch a piece that is reliant on more than a few perfect circles (which, for the same reason you shouldn't have too many straight lines, circles get distorted when the body flexes and relaxes).

2) Does your art look like a bunch of tattoos?

While there are many styles to tattooing today, there is still the old stereotype in existence about what tattoo art on paper should look like. I do not recommend that you copy anyone's work to put into your book, but I do recommend that you look up artwork by Sailor Jerry or (the REAL) Ed Hardy, and see if you can emulate their styles. Look at the lining, where are the lines thicker and thinner? how much coverage do the utilize in the color and in the shading? Look at the pieces that move you, and try to look at them from a mechanical point of view.

3) DO NOT use someone else's work, especially someone famous, and pass it as your own.

If you decide to copy these pieces to learn the basic stylization techniques, that's cool (after all, mimicry is the highest form of flattery), but don't even think about putting them into your book. Because you have to remember, the guys you are going to look for instruction from have already seen a LOT in the way of other people's work. They know the intricacies of a Jerry or Hardy copy, or something that is meant to tribute them.

Keep your work your own, as you will get tired of copying flash to stencil before you know it. Besides, stealing is stealing, and if you're willing to steal someone else's work, the shop owner will assume you'd be willing to steal from the shop as well.

4) Create work that is shape-appropriate for body parts, and label them accordingly.

This is one of the times a ruler will come in handy in creating portfolio pieces, and having friends of various shapes and sizes will help as well. This technique is not in very common use, and I'm really shocked it isn't. Read on . . .

Pretend that you are a tattoo artist already, and have two female friends, both of different height and build. Imagine that they are both in your shop to get lower back tattoos, also commonly referred to (inappropriately) as tramp stamps, and follow these steps to document a logical method to your design capabilities

Get your camera and ruler ready. Have each woman hold up their shirt to reveal their lower back, while the other woman holds the ruler to the other's back as you snap a picture or each woman's lower back. Print this as a half page, leaving the other half of the page blank.

Get proper measurements of the top and bottom of the tattoo-able area (I call it the boundaries) using a tailor's tape measure. Note that the measurements you'll be taking both start at the spine, and work their way out toward the hips. Since the typical lower-back tattoo is symmetrical along the spine, you will only need to draw one half of it.

Use the measurements to create a bounding area on a piece of paper. BE SURE to take into account the shape of the top of each woman's behind and the angle at which the trunk transitions to the hips. Not all women have the same figure, and in designing the tattoo, you will either want to enhance her shape or play down her shape, depending on what she wants.

Go to the drawing board, and create one half of the tattoo on a sheet of paper in a black and white outline. After you ink up the outline, take your trusty ruler, photocopy it at 100%, and cut it out. Paste the ruler to your drawing to show its size without covering up any of your work.

Write a few comments about your design method, and why you came up with that design on the page you printed out the picture of each girl's lower back with the ruler. In this essay, you want to basically state the measurements you took, the figure she has, and why you believe you have designed something sufficient. Be sure to ask each lady if she liked this design the way you drew it out for her. If she does, allow her to write her name and a short statement saying that she would get this tattoo as you have designed it underneath your essay. If the lady does not like your work, well, its time for you to draw something else up for her, because, just like in the shop, everything you draw is not always going to be accepted as-is. It does help you to be humble once you get your apprenticeship, so be humble while building your portfolio.

https://www.tattoodo.com/a/2018/11/in-hentai-heaven-with-brando-chiesa-an-interview/

What are you doing when you are not tattooing? Beyond creating art, what are you passionate about?

When I am not tattooing I am drawing (!) or working on digital illustrations...I have a solitary and hermit life, I dedicate my time to drawing; I am devoted to my work like a Monk lol; this is my religion. Recently I have been working on a new personal project of mine; my personal streetwear brand.

https://99designs.co.uk/blog/designers/design-spotlight-jordan-mitchell-tattoo-artist/

When did you know you wanted to become a tattoo artist?

I knew I wanted to be a tattoo artist when I first started seeing people with tattoos that looked really nice. I never really cared for it until I came across tattoo magazines at a store one day and saw the stuff that could be done.

I guess before that, in my mind all that could be done with tattooing were simple designs. I was ignorant to how amazing the older traditional and newer modern stuff looked. That was a real wake up call. I immediately told myself “WOW I need to learn how to draw that well, and WOW I need to learn how to tattoo that good.”

Do you think there are challenges in being a tattoo artist that artists who create for themselves don’t face?

I feel like the challenges are the same, but in a different context. I think the challenges probably differ from client-to-client and the project they are asking for, whereas the challenge during your free time is just to figure out what you’re going to paint. You have complete freedom as an artist on your free time, and that can be a challenge in itself. Each tattoo has its own little challenge just like each painting or project has its own challenge that needs to be complete – but that’s the fun part.

So what I’ve seen from my research, theres a lot more to it than just illustrating- you also have to have an understanding of how the human body is shaped so that you can create your art that works on certain body parts, for example a tattoo put onto a leg would have to be designed differently for someones stomach because its shaped completely differently. Also, with the two interviews of the tattoo artists above, they are still illustrators in their own time and do that on the side as well as tattooing.

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