Hey, guys and gals. I just joined to update you on the hard life of someone desperate to be a tattooist ;D
I'm seventeen and living in the uk and, as you may have guessed, I live, eat and breathe tattoos, but anyone who has tried even briefly knows how difficult it can be.
Somewhere between my part time job and my art, graphics and animation classes I seem to spend all my time hanging around the local places, doing odd jobs for them and hovering over them like a hawk. Lucky me they're tolerant, I'm sure a few people have been chased out by angry owners just for asking for a job!

It dawned on me yesterday that everyone in my home town seems disillusioned with tattooing and there's no passion in it anymore, so I'm moving my search further afield to London this time. Wish me luck!

Obviously I've got sketchbooks full of doodles and drawings and images I've collected, but the wall I've run into again and again is no ACTUAL tattoo experience so tonight I'm gonna buy me a tattoo kit off the internet and get hold of practise skins, fruit, dried meat, whatever, and start practising. Obviously they don't heal so it's not going to give me a perfect example, but I will NOT be a scratcher and do awful little doodles all over people's arms. Perhaps when I feel really confident a small one on myself, under trained eyes obviously, but anyone considering doing bad tats all over their legs, just don't! It looks terrible and no real artist will respect it, that's just common sense.

Well, onto another day of hoping and praying that I'm talented and persistant enough to get some real training ;D
Tell me your stories!

Okay...this may sound a little on the "odd" side, I guess? But the best way to get to know human skin and how to tattoo it correctly and safely, I would start on pig skin. Gross, I know, but it's the closest you will get to real skin and better to mess up on that than your friends, or even yourself!!

i don't think i can do that, i mean tattooing people, i'm not that brave to study tattooing. well i just have my first tattoo last june 27 2009 i'm from philippines by the way and my artist name is sammie he is 21 years old much younger than me i am 24, i just thought that everytime i scheduled my tattoo session i always end up cancelling it ,so after my night shift work that is saturday morning i asked my friend mel to come with me at the tattoo shop,and i called sammie and wake him up... sammie does not have his own shop ,the tattoo shop was owned by eric (i haven't met him he's in korea tattooing koreans ) he is the one who thought sammie to tattoo. on the process i think sammies hand were light, because i was not hurt that much.i picked my design at www.wowtattoos.com this website has a free ambigram generator so what i did is i mixed my name Angeline and my Boyfriends name Archie and the result is a good ambigram. it was my first tattoo it was located at my upper left back i can't believe it ended up 11 inches in length and 4 inches width not bad for the first time. and i'm planning to connect black goth roses to fill my whole back. sammie did a great job so he will be the one to finish up everything.