**** AS A NOTE I AM FULLY OPEN FOR COMMISSIONS PM ME FOR DETAILS **** First week of the apprenticeship has come and gone! I am still extremely excited to be doing what I am doing. For any of you that want to know what it’s like to apprentice in a tattoo shop, I figure I will keep a running weekly log on all the sites I am a part of so you guys can keep up with me and my progress! Week 1: A lesson in cleaning and pain. The first thing anyone needs to know about a GOOD tattoo shop, is that everything is clean. The floors are mopped, and vacuumed, and everything is dusted, re-dusted, and dusted some more. Every Surface that comes into contact with a human getting tattooed is sterilized. And anything that you are doing the tattoos with (if you are in a good shop) either gets Sterilized, or tossed away. Unlike some horror stories I have heard, everyone pitches in. If there is a dirty window, someone notices it, and they clean it. If you need help with setup, or need a second set of eyes on things, there is always someone there to help and look for you. Our shop is unique among shops I have visited, in that we do not re-use needles. Period. Every needle we use comes in contact with a grand total of one person, before it is tossed into the sharps container and given to a medical waste facility. This is the same for the needle tubes as well, they are one use, and then tossed. This is one of the Primary reasons I chose this shop in particular. I have been learning most of this week to set up a tattooing session (setting up the workstations for both my direct boss, and one of his underlings) and tearing down a tattoo session (How to clean surfaces, how to take the needles and tubes off the machines ect.) There is a LOT of cleaning that goes on. My only Gripe is that I am the only one in the shop that is actively allergic to latex, so while I have my gloves on order, I am currently using a set of very much too big for me Nitrile gloves to clean everything, and it makes me clumsy. :/ Another thing I have learned is the fact that you are not allowed to touch ANYTHING after you wash your hands to get ready for a tattoo. For this reason we have an open door to a sink, so the guys (and me) don’t have to go into the bathroom to wash our hands and then ask for assistance to get the door open. I had never really appreciated how much being a tattoo artist is like being a doctor. Along with the cleaning, and sterilizing, and such, I have actually been sitting in on clients, as well as drawing for clients, and stenciling for my boss and his underling. We don’t do anything by computer other then look up reference, and we don’t have ANY flash work in our shop at all. We are the only fully custom studio in this area that I am aware of. As a note to anyone who hand stencils… BEWARE THE BLUE INK. This stuff gets everywhere if you are unprepared for it. I just rested my hand on a part of the paper that was exposed and my hand was then covered in an extremely hard to wash off blue ink. So now my shoes, and one pair of my pants has little blue ink stains on them, that will come off eventually… but it took some epic scrubbing on my part to get the stuff off my hands. Now onto the pain. I have seen several tattoos put onto people this week. And I have learned that pain, and areas of pain, cause many people to do different things. The biggest one, and probably the bane of most artists out there, is the involuntary twitch that happens when you run the needle over a nerve or a tendon. I have also learned, that almost everybody is able to tolerate most of the pain from a tattoo if A.) The tattoo artist lets the needle to the work for him and doesn’t press down, B.) The tattoo artist cleans with a damp cloth and does so lightly as to not irritate recently tattooed areas and C.) they have someone to talk to. Having someone to talk to, has wound up making a lot of the people I have seen, tolerate the pain much better, and go much longer with multi session tattoos. Since I am the apprentice, if the person is alone, they seem to be more comfortable talking to me, so I talk! I have also learned that there is such a thing as a bad friend when it comes to tattoo clients. Bad friends, are people that have no idea what tattoo etiquette is (which mostly consists of Don’t mess with the artists’ shit while they are tattooing). I have watched someone yabber and blabber on to their friend, while getting a tattoo behind their ear! They wouldn’t hold still, and any time the Artist said “can you be quiet so you don’t move your head” The friend wouldn’t wait but a couple of seconds before starting to blabber again, thus causing the person getting the tattoo to react. Another one had a friend in, that got into all the places that “I” was supposed to be in (aka directly behind the artist so I can see what he is doing) They flitted around, bumped into the chair, and the final straw was stepping on the artists light and turning it off. SERIOUSLY. But all in all it was a good experience! Here is hoping that this next week goes just as well! Also if you have any questions feel free to ask!
Posted on: Wed, 11 Sep 2013 13:52:57 +0000
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