January 2012
14 posts
in your opinion what is the most difficult thing about tattooing ?
Hi! I don’t normally answer questions publicly, but I thought this one might be worth sharing.
This is an easy question and a hard question at the same time. The easy answer is, “everything in tattooing is hard.” Tattooing is honestly one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
This question becomes difficult when trying to decide the most difficult thing. Pulling just one clean, even, steady, solid line is very difficult because you have to be aware of so many things at once… needle depth, speed of your machine vs. how fast you are pulling the line (if you go too fast your line won’t be solid, and if you go too slow you can overwork the skin and it won’t heal well), whether you have stretched your client’s skin properly, whether they are moving a little bit while you are pulling the line, whether the skin is going to be different halfway through the line like when tattooing from a soft spot where there is give to a boney spot like over an ankle… to name a few (haha).
Then there are things like how you treat your clients. Are they whining, or are they asking what line you’re on every five seconds? Are they squirming? Do you give all your friends discounts because they are your friends (for me, most of my first tattoos have been on friends who “volunteered” they’re skin for me to learn to tattoo on)? If/when people start to think you are the coolest person ever because of the tattoo you just gave them, how do you stay humble? A lot of tattooers can be really arrogant people because they are just “so cool.” When (yes when) you make a mistake, how do you fix it and still execute an awesome, dynamic, piece of art that a customer/friend will be happy with for the rest of their life!!?
Anyway, now that I’ve just spewed out way more than you were probably looking for… I hope this answers your question!
