Danny's Mil-Dot Tattoo

Here's the one I did for Danny. This is the back of his left calf.

Finished Clint's Tattoo

OK, Clint decided he wanted flames - so I gave him flames. FLAMES ARE COOL. I think it looks great. I still need lots of practice with the equipment and need to find a mentor.

First Tattoo Pictures

OK, here are the pictures from my very first tattoo. Clint was a great sport about the whole thing and has actually said he wants me to do more for him...so I guess that's a good sign.

First Session:


This is his tattoo that we are covering up. You can see the stencil that I layed over it. It's a pretty good size.


After the outline.
You can see where I crossed over the lines. Not a good thing. It's hard to see exactly where the needle is when you're going, so it's something that will come with practice. I'll get a feel for where my needle is - kind-of like how you know how wide you car is once you've driven it a little bit. You can also see towards the bottom lines of the cross where my hand was really shakey and also where I didn't put the needle down far enough.



Filling in the cross. Not so shakey and nervous anymore.




We stopped here for the night. Took three hours. Of course, a lot of fumbling with the gun in the beginning and a lot of breaks. :)



Second Session:


"Haziz - LIGHT!"
I needed more light so we clipped a little LED Flashlight to a baseball cap. Clever.


I was much more comfortable this time around, but I did fumble with the pedal a couple of times...again. But I found that I was much more aware of it.




Here it is...semi-final outcome. I already know that there are "ghosts" in the solid area and we are planning a third session after it's all healed up to touch it up a little. I think the red looks cool, but I wanted to add some shading in those areas to cover up more of the original tattoo. As is you can still see the black outlines through the red colors.



So, I'm very pleased with what I was able to do. Don't get me wrong, it could have been so much better if I had more practice. But I think for having 30 minutes of experience on a practice skin with a liner and no experience with shading or coloring in solid...I did pretty good. And, I do have to say that I think this is a HUGE improvement to what he had before! HAHA!

First Tattoo EVAR!

I know, I know. I wasn't planning on doing a "real" tattoo for a long time. But one of our good friends, Clint, was absolutely convinced that he wanted me to give him a tattoo on Sunday night. So after much protest, I decided "what the heck". If he wasn't worried about it, then why was I worrying so much. I plan on doing a lot more practice, but what better practice then to have a real go at it. I got a few pointers from one of Danny's other friends, Bo, who is a tattoo artist. He said "practice skin can only take you so far, you have to just do it". So...I did. Poor Clint. LOL.

I spent about the first 30-45 minutes trying to get my hand under control. It was shaking like I had been floating in some ice cold water. It was really annoying. Even after I got control of my nerves, the hand would still shake. Sheesh. Once I started the solid area, my hand calmed down and I was able to work a little better. The hardest thing for me so far has been to remember to keep my foot down on the pedal as I am tattooing. Once again – poor Clint! There were multiple times that my foot just released the pedal and I ended up catching him with a needle that wasn't moving. NO FUN for either of us, but especially for him. I feel really bad about it, but I was having to concentrate really hard and if I stopped thinking about keeping my foot down - well, it didn't stay down. DOH!

Oh, did I mention it is also a COVER UP!! LOL. Not only do I have no experience, but I was trying to do a cover-up tattoo. No idea what I've gotten my self into. The tattoo is a cross with a circle behind it. The circle was placed there mainly for cover-up, but it's actually a pretty cool design for something simple and fast.

So, I spent about 3 hours on his tattoo. We placed the stencil twice to get it in the right spot. I fumbled around with my shakey hand and then I did the outline and filled in the center portion of the cross. We decided to save the circle for this weekend since it was already getting late. And we wanted to see how what was already done was going to turn out. So I bandaged Clint's arm with some saran wrap and A&D ointment. While we were taking some pictures and saying our goodbyes, Clint's wife, Jessie, noticed that the top portion of the cross didn't quite match up with the bottom portion. Something none of us had noticed when it could have been fixed. UH OH!! Somehow the cross was skewed when we placed it the second time. And with the akward way Clint had to position his arm for me to do the tattooing, it didn't look like that until his arm was in it's normal position. I went back and checked the stencil - straight. I checked the progress pictures....sure enough - skewed. Not sure how it happened or how to prevent it in the future, but it's something I'll definitely be looking for in the future. Good thing is it should be a fairly easy fix by just adding some more to each side of the cross. We live and learn.

Once again - I knew I wasn't ready, but i think I learned more from just that three hour experience than I ever could have with practice skins and grapefruits. Thanks for being such a sport, MY CLINTON! We'll get it fixed up. Hopefully I can talk my foot into staying put on the pedal. I'll do some kegels or something. maybe that'll help. Ha Ha!

I'll post pictures once we're done.

Business Cards

So, I got an offer from Vista Print for FREE business cards, so I decided WHY NOT! I should have them by the end of the month. I don't really have a need for them yet, considering I'm still only practicing, but I'll be ready to go if the need ever arises!!

Check 'em out!

Front

Back

First Attempt....

Well, Last night I finally had a chance to put one of my guns together. It was really easy. I had one little hicup when for some reason I wasn't getting power to the gun, but Danny helped me tune the machine and got it working great. Here's my first attempt at using the gun on practice skin. Keep in mind that the tattoo machine is much heavier than a pencil and will take a lot of getting used to. I just wanted to practice a little to get a feel for it and how to load ink and use the foot petal. It's different. LOL. Not as hard as I thought it would be, but definitely something I need to work at. This was all done freehand, so don't judge the bad proportions and the bull's lazy eye. LOL. Not so great without an eraser. It'll get better though. Practice makes perfect. After I've filled up my practice skin i'll move on to the grapefruits!

Comments welcome.

In this one you can see the thick and thin lines. Shows where I went too deep or didn't use enough ink. I was really just trying to work with line and practice circles and straight lines.

This was the second side of the practice skin. I used the same needle (5RLiner) which probably shouldn't have been used for the solid portions. I was just being too lazy and didn't want to set up my shader. Like I said, I was just trying to get a feel for the gun. There are spots of the bear face that you can see where I chopped the skin a little. That probably wouldn't have happened if I had used the correct needle. I won't be so lazy next time. :)

I'm actually really excited I can't wait until I get really good. Might take a while, but I have all the time in the world. I'm not doing this for anyone but me!!

Welcome to my NEW BLOG!

My newest venture is to learn how to tattoo. I've always admired the art of tattooing and decided that teaching myself how to tattoo would be a great outlet for my creative mind. By taking this on I have committed myself to start drawing again and learning new mediums. My creativity has been lacking for a long time - I seem to have gotten a little lost and life somehow got in the way. My remedy...making art a part of my daily life.

I wish I had time to apprentice under a great artist, but with a full time job as a Graphic Designer and being a full time mother to my beautiful baby girl, India, I don't. So most of this will be a slow learning process. I received all my tattoo supplies and will probably be practicing on some fruit this weekend. I know how to put my gun together, now it's just becoming a master of the art. Wish me luck!!