Customizing the Body (PDF file) - Print My Tattoo

74 The Tattooist
The next stage in the learning process typically involves the apprentice
doing a limited amount of work on one of the host tattooist's
clients. Since it presents fewer opportunities for irremediable
error, the novice is usually allowed to color in part of a design that
has already been outlined. A fine art oriented tattooist described
how he trains initiates.
If you were my apprentice you would not do a tattoo. Let's say I
felt you knew everything there was to know about the machine
and now it's time for you to actually make a mark on human
skin. Ok, here's a leaf. I do the outline, I do the shading. Now
it's time to color. I do most of the coloring except for a little
patch nowhere near the edge and then I might let you do a
little piece of this. After you learn this I might let you color in
the whole leaf. So it would be so gradual that you would never
be in the position to hurt the client. U would be a very slow,
gradual orientation. If you were an apprentice I would take a
pen or a pencil and put it in a machine rather than a tube. Ok,
now we put a piece of paper on the bottom of a table. Now,
draw a picture there using the machine so you get used to the
weight and get used to working in odd areas. When you can do
things like that and the tattoo machine becomes an extension
of your own hand then we will talk about skin. Tattooing
grapefruit and things like that doesn't teach you anything
because you aren't developing the feel. U's not real skin. I was
talking to one guy and I told him ... he owned a few
machines ... get up in the morning on a Sunday when you
don't have to go to work and put that tattoo machine in your
hand and keep it in your hand for the rest of the day. Whether
your watching TV, whatever you're doing, learn to flip it
around. When you can use it with ease and confidence, when
you have developed the muscles in your hand-now go draw a
picture with it. If I gave you a pencil with a fine tip and taped
on half a pound of rock on the back of the pencil you would
find it very difficult to control, to twist in your fingers, to work
upside down or around corners-very uncomfortable.
Once the tattooist is satisfied that the novice has achieved some
modest level of technical expertise, he or she is allowed to do a