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Set Up a Tattoo Workstation

Posted on February 14, 2013 by admin

When setting up a workstation to tattoo, your key focus is creating an aseptic area. You want to limit the possibility that anything you do or touch will lead to the contamination of your tools (beyond the tattoo), yourself, and your client. Because of this most pressing need, a proper workstation is only possible in a licensed tattoo studio. Even when extraordinary measures are taken to set up a station elsewhere, the risk remains greater than with a studio where strict guidelines are in force. A space dedicated to tattooing where procedures are regularly followed to avoid cross-contamination is ideal. Even in a studio, the space used to tattoo should not be used for any other purpose.

A tattoo workstation should be a clean area. It is not an office, not a drawing room, and most definitely not a cafeteria. Drawing, paperwork, discussions with clients before and after the tattoo, Internet research, and other business functions of the studio should be performed outside the station as much as possible. While this may not always be practical, it is the best possible practice. The minimal required items for the tattoo process should be kept in the station. Everything else should be stored elsewhere. Eating and drinking should never occur in a station.

A workstation begins with a clean, non-porous work-surface. All furnishings within a station should be non-porous; metal, glass, plastic, vinyl, etc. Furnishings should be clean and well-maintained. Torn vinyl, for example, should be repaired or the item replaced. The regular maintenance of furnishings also prevents issues arising with those furnishings which might delay the tattoo application or cause the tattooist to touch things during the tattoo he or she might not have touched. Keeping the furnishings and area clean, disinfected, and dust-free will protect yourself and your client.

Clean, non-porous work surface.

Knowing what, and when, to touch items reduces the likelihood of cross-contamination.

Begin by thoroughly washing your hands. Wash with anti-bacterial soap and warm water between your fingers, on the front and the back of the hands, and up to your elbows. It is a good idea to keep your fingernails trimmed.

Put on a new pair of medical gloves. Many stations mount a glove box near the entrance of the station in order to facilitate the donning of gloves when entering, as well as a wastebasket near the entrance for removing gloves before leaving the station.

Spray all work surfaces; tables, chairs, and trays, with MadaCide or a similar, medical-grade disinfectant. While some states require it and others do not, it is a good idea to label all bottles containing liquids in your station, if only to allow the client to ascertain what is being used. Allow the MadaCide to sit on the work surfaces for 3 minutes before wiping the surfaces with clean paper towels.

Treat with MadaCide.
All bottles and containers placed on your table should be made of non-porous materials and should also be cleaned with Madacide. Again, place only what you will need for the tattoo on the table; ink cap jars, rubber band jar, green soap bottle, other spray bottles (depending on your process), inks, ink cap tray (if you use one), paper towels, power supply, clip-cord, etc. The foot pedal will be plugged in and placed on the floor.

Clean equipment and non-porous containers.
All liquid containers should be full before being placed on the table, as a measure to avoid the need to refill the bottle during the tattoo.

Bag or place barrier film on all surfaces that you will come into contact with while doing the tattoo; green soap bottle, other bottles, power supply, clip cord, and work lamps tend to be the most common items touched.

Bags and Barrier Film.
Place a dental bib, plastic-side down, on your table or in your work-tray. In a pinch, a layer of plastic wrap topped with a layer of paper towels can also be used. The plastic protects the surface it is on, making clean-up easier, and the absorbent side helps manage the spill of fluids that will inevitably occur.

Place dental bib for added protection.

Ideally, ink bottles should only be touched with gloved hands, and then only with clean gloves. Only place on your work-table the bottles you will actually be using, if no other convenient options for bottle placement exist. Ink bottles should be opened and closed with a clean paper towel to absorb any excess ink that may spill out of the bottle when pouring ink. Ink bottles should be cleaned with disinfectant like all other surfaces in your work area when the tattoo is complete.

If you do not have a paper towel dispenser in your station, separate a stack of paper towels from your paper towel roll. It is better to over estimate the number of paper towels needed than to under estimate. This prevents you form having to touch the roll with potentially dirty gloves during the tattoo (should you forget to remove them). If you do touch the roll with dirty gloves, assume the entire roll is contaminated and discard. Discard any excess paper towels not used during the tattoo.

Stacked paper towels.
Tattoo machines should be kept clean and well-maintained. When not in use, they should be stored in a container. Avoid handling your machines with your bare hands as much as possible. Remove your machines needed for the tattoo from storage and test each machine to ensure function. Then place the machines on the dental bib. Lay out machine bags and rubber bands to be placed on the machines prior to starting the tattoo.

Tattoo machines, bags, and rubber bands.

Place needles and tubes needed for the tattoo on your dental bib in their blister packs or autoclave bags. Leave them sealed until the client is present for their tattoo, so they can be assured that they are getting a clean or new tube and new needles.

Tubes and needles should remain unopened until needed.
Place the ink caps required on the dental bib face down. Any ointments used during the tattoo should also be placed on the table. Place a new razor for shaving the tattoo area and a cup for distilled water (for rinsing your needle if changing colors) on the dental bib.

Keep your sharps container nearby but away from the rest of the tattoo area.

Used needles, razors, etc.
While the exact set-up varies from artist to artist, the above is fairly common. The focus of the process is to avoid cross-contamination. The more you can do to protect yourself and your clients, the better your business will be.

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Terms and Equipment

Posted on February 14, 2013 by admin

Aftercare—The process of caring for a new tattoo for the first two to four weeks after getting one. This usually consists of washing it with unscented soft soap, applying hydrating ointments and lotions, and avoiding exposure to sunlight and bodies of water for long periods of time.

American Traditional—One of the most popular styles of tattooing based on black outlines, a minimal, yet bold color palette, and iconic tattoo imagery.

Apprentice—Someone who has been taken under the wing of an established tattooist and is learning to tattoo under their guidance. Typically an apprentice works under a tattooist for several years learning how to properly use and build a tattoo machine as well as how to apply ink into skin and skillfully design a piece based on body flow and skin type.

Autoclave—A machine that uses steam and high pressure to sterilize tattoo equipment before and after each tattoo session.

Biomechanical—A style of tattooing also referred to as “biomech” in which a tattooist designs a piece (usually freehand) based on the client’s body flow in order to recreate a robotic or cyborg-like aesthetic to the client’s skin.

Black and Grey—A style of tattooing that consists of using only black ink and water. The black ink is watered down in order to create softer shades of grey for shading and highlighting. Nowadays, it is also common to see tattoo artists use black ink and premade grey washes when working in black and grey.

Blackwork—A style of tattooing characterized by using only bold, black geometric shapes to make various images or designs.

Blowout—This is what occurs when a tattoo is not applied properly and goes too deep into the skin. This causes the ink to “settle” strangely creating a minor cloudy effect around the initial design.Body Suit—When the majority of someone’s body is covered in tattoos.

Canvas—Also known as “a skin” is another name for a client about to get tattooed.

Coil—A tattoo machine that is powered by an electromagnetic coil. This is the most commonly used type of tattoo machine.

Collector—A client who gets tattoos in the same way an art collector would go after art, by searching out and getting tattooed by highly qualified custom tattooists.

Cosmetic Tattoos—Also known as permanent makeup or medical tattoos, this tattoo technique adds pigmentation to client’s skin for various cosmetic purposes. Standard cosmetic tattoos include having one’s eyebrows tattooed on after chemotherapy, having discolored skin re-pigmented due to skin conditions like vitiligo, or having breast reconstruction after mastectomies.

Cover-Up—A tattoo designed on top of an older tattoo in order to cover the older one up. Good cover-ups usually camouflage the old tattoo through a use of line work and strategic coloring. Many tattoo artists specialize in cover-ups.

Custom Work—A tattoo that has been drawn, designed and tattooed specifically for one client by his/her tattoo artist.

Dotwork—A style of tattooing consisting entirely of dots in order to create various designs and images. Mandalas, sacred geometry and stipple portraits are common forms of dotwork.

Flash—Pre-designed images that can be purchased by tattoo artists or clients as templates for tattoos. Most flash comes as a collection of images to choose from on sheets and is most commonly used nowadays for wall displays in shops, choice designs for charity events, and to teach apprentices.

Free Hand—When a tattoo artist draws a tattoo design directly onto a client’s skin without using a stencil.

Fresh—The term used to describe a brand new tattoo before it has fully healed.

Geometric—A style of tattooing based solely on the use of geometric shapes and lines rather than shading.

Healed—The term used to describe a tattoo two to four weeks after the tattoo has been applied giving the client’s skin time to accept the now-settled tattoo.

Horror—A style of tattooing that consists mainly of dark imagery. This style can be prominent in either black and grey or color, but typically features fabricated creatures or characters taken from famous horror films.

Illustrative—A style of tattooing that combines aspects of American Traditional and realism typically using bold outlines and realistic shading to depict illustration-like designs.

Maori—The indigenous people of New Zealand known for their use of extensive body markings to represent cultural identity and status.

Neo—The prefix used to describe adding more realistic depth, shading, and detail to an older style of tattooing. Neo-Traditional and Neo-Japanese are the most common forms of “Neo-“ tattooing.

New School—A style of tattooing similar to the illustrative style but focused on a more cartoonish and exaggerated aesthetic. Most New School pieces depict personified animals or dramatic characters in bizarre situations. Animals in fancy clothing and bobble-head pin-up girls are common New School images.

Ornamental—A style of tattooing that is based on decorative design, geometric shapes, body flow and color scheme more so than an actual subject.

Pin-Up—A classic style of tattooing images of women derived from, but not limited to, American Traditional.

Portfolio—The collection of past work an artist has for his/her clients to view in order to get a feel of their particular style. Many tattooists nowadays have both hard copies of portfolios in shops as well as online via their websites or Instagram pages.

Realism—A style of tattooing in which tattoos are depicted as they would be seen in real life. This style focuses more heavily on shading than it does line work. One of the most common styles of realism is portraiture.

Rotary Machine—A tattoo machine that is powered by regulated electric motors.

Sailor Jerry—The nickname given to Norman Keith Collins, a tattooist who helped popularize American Traditional tattooing through his work with inking sailors in the 1920s and 1930s. He is one of the most iconic tattoo artists in history.

Saturation—A measurement of the level of ink and color in a tattoo that has absorbed successfully into a client’s skin

Scarification—A form of body modification in which the skin is burned, scratched or cut leaving the wearer with a healed, raised scar of a particular design

Scratcher—Someone who tattoos without any training, health code regulations or the proper use of equipment typically causing damage to the skin of people they ink.

Shop—Typically a shop is a place where a select group of tattoo artists work and allow for walk-in tattoo sessions.

Sleeve—When someone has his/her entire arm tattooed, typically wrist to shoulder. Sleeves can also be found on legs and are referred to as “leg sleeves” which include tattoos from the ankle all the way up the thigh.

Stencil—A transfer of a design from paper to skin in order to give the tattoo artist the basic guidelines for placement, line work and shading when tattooing. It is is most commonly used when tattooing pre-designed pieces, such as custom work or portraits that are not freehanded.

Stick and Poke—A method of DIY tattooing in which a single needle is dipped in ink and then poked through the skin repeatedly until a design is completed.

Street Fighter Tattoo—A slang term given to optical illusion tattoos in which the limbs of tattooed characters are incorporated into the wearer’s limbs. This style was first popularized by using characters from Street Fighter as the subjects, though any character can be used for the illusion.

Studio—A place where one tattoo artist or a small collective of tattoo artists work typically on appointment-only custom tattoos.

Ta Moko—This is the term commonly used for traditional Maori tattoos or body markings in which chisels and pigments are used to bring about these uniquely designed patterns. Ta moko are still prominent to the Maori culture today.

Tattoo Gun—An incorrect and highly disliked term for a tattoo machine.

Tattoo Machine—The proper name for the device used to apply tattoos based off of Thomas Edison’s design for the electric pen. The most common forms of tattoo machines are coil and rotary.

Tebori—An ancient form of tattooing that originated in Japan and is still used today. It literally means “to carve by hand” in which each tattoo is actually carved into the client’s skin rather than tattooed with a standard machine.

Traditional Japanese (Irezumi)—This is a style of tattooing popularized in Japan most prominently by the Yakuza, the criminal underworld. This style typically features bold outlines, minimal shading and imagery that includes mythical beasts, koi fish, flowers and Japanese folklore characters.

Tramp Stamp—The slang term given to tattoos on someone’s lower back.

Trash Polka—A style of tattooing done solely in a black and red color scheme that is characterized by collage-like imagery, incorporating scattered moments of realism, lettering, abstract and geometric styles.

Tribal (modern)—A style of tattooing imitating traditional Maori or Polynesian body art. It is characterized by thick lines and semi-organic shapes that are filled in almost exclusively with black.

Watercolor—A style of tattooing that imitates the brushstroke aesthetic and color palette of watercolor paintings.

Yakuza Style—A style of tattooing based off the tattoo aesthetic used by the Yakuza, the Japanese criminal underworld. This style is typically inked in a body suit-like fashion, however it intentionally leaves any visible skin while clothed as well as one panel of skin going down the wearer’s stomach untouched. Standard Yakuza style pieces also feature full themes or stories carried out through a traditional Japanese style and imagery.

Yantra—An ancient form of tattooing that originated in Southeast Asia and is found predominantly in Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos. This style of tattooing uses a sharpened bamboo stick to tap the design into the wearer’s skin. Yantra tattoos are typically designed by ruesi (hermit sages of Southeast Asia) or Buddhist monks and are believed to be magical symbols of protection and power, and thus are typically traditional images reminiscent of Southeast Asian folklore.

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Basic tattoo practice

Posted on February 2, 2013 by admin

Practice on fruit. Fruits have a challenging contour that will mimic the clients that sit in your chair for a tattoo, and are cheaper and more readily available than other options. Some fruits that you should consider for tattooing practice:

Bananas
Melons
Grapefruits

Practice on synthetic skin. Synthetic skin is a relatively new comer to the tattooing scene. Practice skin is relatively easy to order from online sources, but many tattooists criticize this false skin as too far from the real thing. Synthetic skin can:

Be useful for starting out and getting a feel for your tattoo machine.
Provide you with practice for building your hand strength.

Practice on pig skin for a realistic practice experience. Pig skin is a close approximation of human skin, and can give you a more realistic trial run than you would experience with fruit or synthetic skin. Pig skin is also the traditional practice medium used by tattoo apprentices, and due to its similarity to human skin, will train you to have better control with the depth of your needle.

Pig skin can be bought expressly for the purposes of tattooing online, but as many butchers end up throwing it out, you might find a cheaper more plentiful alternative at your local butcher.

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Making a real tattoo

Posted on January 15, 2013 by admin

Things to know before

1. Being good at drawing doesn’t make you good at tattooing. You can think about it like the difference between drawing something on paper and then carving it onto a pumpkin. It helps to have a natural aptitude for drawing, but it takes a long time to understand the difference between what you can draw and what you can tattoo. Like anything, your tattoo drawings will get better over time, but it’s critical to start out with simple designs.

2. Plan to work for free for at least a year. Nobody’s great at tattooing until they have practice, and you can’t get practice without tattooing flesh. Some people practice on grapefruits, but a grapefruit isn’t even remotely like a nervous, sweating, breathing, vulnerable human being. So instead, you have to start as an apprentice, which is basically like unpaid training. At my shop, we tattooed for free for the first year, just doing very simple designs — you’d be surprised by how many clients you can get when you’re offering your services for free. Even a year or two after I started, I was still tattooing at a heavily discounted rate, because I wasn’t as fast or as good as other artists. Unless you’re independently wealthy, you do have to work a second job for the first couple years. I was a nanny and then a waitress; other tattoo artists I know worked as an EMT, a high school art teacher, and a barista during their apprenticeships.

3. There’s a huge upfront investment in equipment. You need at least two tattoo machines, a starter ink set and tubes (which hold the needles in the tattoo machines) and disposable supplies, including needles, gloves, rubber bands, thermafax paper, skin pens, and so on. All in, it can cost upward of $4,000 in equipment to get started. In states where tattoo schools are regulated — like Oregon, — apprenticeships cost somewhere around $10,000, and on top of state licensure fees. Even after you start making money from your tattoos, the salary isn’t all that flush — the median salary for a tattoo artist is around $30,000 — and you still have to pay for all those supplies on your own. So if you want to be a tattoo artist, don’t do it for the money.

4. Your artistic medium is a living, breathing thing that changes. Skin wrinkles and stretches and gets sunburned and scars and heals. When you paint on a canvas, you can preserve the way that painting looks for hundreds of years. But tattoos look drastically different even two weeks after the ink has settled in and your skin has healed. Sometimes, people don’t take care of their tattoos and they get ruined, which feels a bit like someone buying your painting and then leaving it out in the rain. We try to be really clear with clients about aftercare — no sun exposure for three weeks, only use hypoallergenic products, etc. — but sometimes things go wrong, and that’s just part of working with human skin.

5. Sometimes you’ll feel like a therapist. People will bring you their most painful moments and ask you to turn them into artwork. During the Iraq War, I tattooed an active member of the military who was home on leave. He was so raw and wounded, and he wanted a tattoo of his company insignia to mark how he was never going to be the same person. Sometimes people talk through those kinds of memories during their appointments, but there’s also something inherently therapeutic about the process — it can feel good to have care and attention for a few hours. So as a tattoo artist, you can’t really bring your own emotional shit to the tattoo parlor. It doesn’t matter if you’ve had a stressful morning; you need to learn to leave that stuff outside the door and be completely there for that person in the moment.

6. There’s a much bigger emotional exchange when you work with custom clients. There are two traditional models for tattoo parlors, with various combinations between the two: First, there are walk-in shops, where clients are primarily asking to get a tattoo on the spot. They choose from pre-drawn designs in the studio and after the appointment, you might never see them again. Then there are all-custom shops, where artists work with clients ahead of time to design something original. It can take months of drawing and talking through the tattoo before someone eventually gets it done. The shop I work at now does mostly custom tattoos and the process can be incredibly rewarding, because of the profound relationships you form with your clients. At the same time, it can be a relief to meet a walk-in where all I have to do is put the ink on someone without having to invest in creating the tattoo over an extended period of time.

7. You’re going to mess up sometimes. When you’re first starting out, it can feel like almost all your lines are crooked or inconsistent. Even once you get good, you’re not immune to mistakes. Spelling errors can happen with text tattoos if the artist and client don’t triple-check. I know someone who tattooed the Superman logo on someone and when he finished, he realized he’d put it on backward. When something like that happens, you can’t reverse it. You just have to apologize and offer to cover it up for free.

8. If someone comes in with a bad idea, you have to tell them. There’s no way for a client to know what makes a good tattoo — that’s something you can only learn from years of tattooing — so it’s your job to provide guidance and feedback about the tattoo they want to get. Of course, some people are stubborn about what they want, and if you can’t visualize a way to make their idea look good as a tattoo, you should turn them away. I don’t do tattoos that I find offensive or in poor taste. I don’t do tattoos that I simply think are a bad idea. I’ve also turned down tattoos for other reasons: For example, I won’t give an 18-year-old a giant, visible tattoo, like a full sleeve, because people change so much — physically and emotionally — in their 20s and I don’t feel like someone so young is ready to make that commitment yet.

9. You’ll watch women’s relationships with their bodies change. If they get a tattoo on their hip or their belly—or any part of their body they’re not super proud of—they’re sometimes like, “I guess I need to lose weight now that I’ll have this tattoo.” But once they get the tattoo, they suddenly become very proud of that part of their body. You don’t really get to choose the body that you’re born into, but you can [help someone] choose to change it in this permanent way and in a way that they feel makes it more beautiful, and that’s the coolest gift to give.

10. You have to cultivate a zen-like ability to only focus on the thing right in front of you, and nothing else. There are moments when you’re working on a big tattoo that you’ve been tattooing for hours, and you look at the amount of black you have left to fill in and it looks absolutely infinite. You can start to panic, so you have to develop a laser-like focus on the millimeter of skin that you’re working on. There are many ways in which tattooing has made me a better person. I get a lot less stressed about what’s coming before or after; I just focus on the present moment.

11. You can only tattoo for so long before your body gives out. You’re basically sitting hunched over and holding a static position for upward of 10 hours a day. It’s really common for tattoo artists to have back problems; I eventually developed tendonitis in my arms, which got so bad that I can’t tattoo full-time anymore. It’s a repetitive motion injury, so you can’t really prevent flare-ups unless you stop doing that motion.

12. Tattooing is still a heavily male-dominated field. If you want to be taken seriously as a female tattooer, you really have to carve out space for yourself. I didn’t expect the industry to feel so much like a boy’s club, but it does. Historically, men have always set the tone of what constitutes a “good” tattoo, and more “feminine” tattoos are sometimes looked down upon. That’s starting to change, though, as more young women are getting into tattooing and there are more online spaces (like Instagram) for female tattoers to connect. In my shop, we’re all female artists, and I feel so lucky to be surrounded by so many supportive women.

13. Even after giving thousands of tattoos, you’ll still find flaws in your work. If you’re self-critical like most of the tattooers I know, then this can be a challenging line of work. There are little things I would’ve done differently in even my favorite tattoos. But there’s something incredibly satisfying about watching someone go to the mirror and look at their tattoo for the first time. They’re not criticizing all the tiny details; they’re marveling at how you turned their idea into art that they’ll carry with them for the rest of their lives.