How do you become a tattoo artist?

August 18, 2016 10:00 PM

What are things you can do to make yourself an attractive candidate for an apprenticeship? How do tattoo artists get their start? How do you market yourself? Outside of an apprenticeship what are the sort of things you'd recommend for cultivating skills necessary to become a tattoo artist? Recommended youtube channels, podcasts, learning resources, agility exercises? Any inside knowledge about the industry would be appreciated.

My boyfriend and I are cooks trying to transition into new careers and he wants to become a tattoo artist. He's already a pretty accomplished artist in several mediums like inks, oil painting and portraiture. He's tattooed himself before and he took a fundamentals of art class this summer.

posted by leafallsonelines to Work & Money (2 answers total)

Best answer: 1) Get certified and take the safety courses - even if they aren't required in your state. Being sterile is the number one thing you need. Do not pass go until you fully understand cleanliness and have all clean equipment and sterilization procedures down.

2) Practice, practice, practice and start a portfolio. Most artists' flash is ink and watercolor (or ink on ink) depending on their style. Create a digital and physical porfilio. Most artists use Instagram for this lately but a website would also be nice and it can have a custom URL. There's plugins that can automatically put your Instagram feed onto your website.

3) Become a sponge. Soak up everything. Keep practicing. Seriously. Trace. Lettering. Anatomy. Color theory. Tattoo on fruit. Watch people tattoo on Instagram and Youtube. Do not stop. Drawing is a lot of muscle memory and noticing what looks good and incorporating (not plagiarizing) into your work - though there's nothing wrong with tracing to get your muscles working that copied work should never end up in a portfolio.

Depending on the style that they want to tattoo that will inform searches for art resources.

A good drawing is the basis for a good tattoo. If your drawing sucks the tattoo will suck.

4) With a solid knowledge and portfolio he can start looking look at being an apprentice. Have a card with where they can find the online portfolio as well as a copy of a physical one they can drop off. I have not looked into doing it myself and I think the culture will vary depending on each shop in terms of requirements for an apprentice and what they would need.

You can also call around and ask the local shops what they look for in an apprentice.

Again, I'm not a tattoo artist, but I do plenty of art and have lots of tattoos and follow quite a few artists on Instagram. The thing that has improved my art is watching others and doing it over and over and over and over. (Same with tattooing fruit which I do for art but haven't put as much work into lately for personal reasons.)

I have some tattoo and tattoo marketing related things linked in my profile on my website link that you may find helpful.

This guy on Youtube talks about apprenticing and has some drawing tutorials. Though he uses Copic markers and I like using ink lining and ink color or watercolor over Copics. This is a good tattoo flash tutorial. Though I personally prefer using ink color over my black shading because I find it to be slightly more transparent than liquid watercolors. The liquid watercolors are better for areas of full, saturated color without black shading though. I also use Arches cold press 100% cotton paper. (I just barely started in spit shading, personally, but I LOVE it.)This guy has some okay stuff about the actual tattooing process. This Tumblr usually shares some really great work from lots of artists and updates regularly. Plus there's quite a few flash and tattoo related Instagram accounts that constantly share high quality work from many artists.
posted by Crystalinne at 10:22 PM on August 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Oh and after writing that last night. Learn how to build and tune a tattoo machine from scratch. Seriously. Know the machine in and out. That will allow you to know if it's running properly and give you the best chance of making sure the tattoo turns out amazing. Plus it is impressive to a potential workplace because I'm sure so many artists now just pick up the thing without thinking how it works.
posted by Crystalinne at 11:11 AM on August 19, 2016 [4 favorites]