Progression In The Art Of Tattoos

A novice tattoo artist shares the progression of her education and pictures of her work.

Still working the hand, strengthening and it’s getting there. Hopefully, will be up to par in strength soon.

It’s been about a year since I’ve had a tattoo machine in my hand.  I’ve been dealing with cervical spinal stenosis from a car accident that occurred in 1980 and it finally caught up with me.

The doc said the issues are permanent so I decided to see if I could “retrain” my hand and regain ability to do what I love again, tattooing.

Yesterday, machine in hand, I began the rehabilitation of my art:

Not as good as I used to be, but this is going to change.  Tattooing on fake skin or plainly put–rubber, is always more difficult than actual flesh.  It doesn’t take the ink as well, the needles do not always travel smoothly no matter how much petroleum jelly you spread on it.  The transfers don’t take worth a damn either so it’s a rather frustrating way to practice.  At the moment though, I’m not going to dare my hand on any person’s body until it is up to par.

“Failure is not an option.” – Gene Kranz, Apollo 13 Flight Director.

If anybody knows of any decent alternative to “Almost Skin” or a better brand to work with, please comment on here and let me know.  I’d surely appreciate it.

So life has been real hectic, what can I say?  Had to move my stores to another server, etc.. upgrades… traveling…

Hand was back in action today though working some temp tattoos.  Going to pick up the machine this weekend and work the hand some more.  It feels good.

I also have a wacom drawing pad now and that is a trip.  Been working with it  a bit.  Hand eye coordination between a screen and the pad in your hand is wild.

Back to real flesh…

So the house was empty and I had a few Mich Ultras…  Picked up the pencil and worked on this a while.  Not sure where it’s going but I’m enjoying the ride there!

Finalized this practice…the scan finally came out closer to the actual coloring of the tattoo.

a lot of fire in it… just hope I can manipulate the existing piece to a resemblence of this.

(not such a great scan though)

So as the machine is making it’s beautiful song, my grandsons overheard the action…  needless to say, their requests for temporary tattoos followed shortly afterward and this was the result:

The full size pics are available if you click on the image– they are very large though, fair warning…
As always, it was a challenge and good practice working on wiggling subjects.

Now, back to work with the machine…

I know this may bore some of you but I just wanted to show somebody the different stages in a tattoo like this. Beginning to add color now…

If you look back in my blog, there are previous posts in reference to this project.  I laid down some ink in preparation for the resurrection of James’ jester.  This is the initial shading work on fake skin.  Still working my hand back into the groove.  It feels fantastic.