I was curious if you had any tips/advice for a tattooer in their first 1-5 years of their career? Any words or processes that helped ground you in tattooing?
[Image: a screenshot of my Co-Star notification for the day telling me “It’s always a process of learning, dismantling what you’ve learned, and learning again.”]
The more I write this advice column, the less I feel like I know about the current state of tattooing as an industry. I started in a self-taught, DIY way at a time when there was simply no information or access available online: no Amazon tattoo kits, no online workshops, no YouTube tutorials. It wasn’t until Instagram became popularly used (a couple of years after I started working in a shop) that I began to gain a wider view of tattooing as a whole, and a sense of where I landed among all of it.
In a way, it felt simpler to ground back then because most of what you had was all around you. Your shop, your local community, your clients were all right there, more present than strangers on the internet in your phone all the time. It wasn’t like tattooing didn’t exist online, but Tattoo Instagram™️ wasn’t the economy it is today, and there was less anxiety in trying to appeal to an unseen base of potential clients-to-be across the globe or satiating a punishing algorithm for visibility. The more I try to keep track of everything happening in tattooing, the less grounded I feel, and the less understanding I end up with. I often doubt if my personal experience is valuable or even relevant to people new to tattooing today.
Whenever someone tells me they’re in their first three years of tattooing, I have a visceral reaction, simultaneously one of excitement and dread. I feel my chest tightening and get a pit in my stomach when I think back to that time in my life. That period is so thrilling and so much hard work. In my first three years of full-time shop tattooing, I developed tendinitis, ulcers, and massive anxiety. I also learned more than I ever thought I could about tattoo technique and social interaction, and in many ways, those years shaped who I am now more than any time in my life. I’d change a lot about that time, and I also hold onto the complexities of the experiences that still feel unresolved.
One thing I remember struggling with early on in my tattoo practice was wanting to advance my skills and abilities as quickly as possible. There was a “hustle culture” mentality that eschewed sleep, recovery, and balance in favor of advancing your craft. Omerta published a tattoo art volume with the name Nunquam Dormio, Latin for “never sleep.” A google search yields unending results for shops and publishers under some variation of “No Sleep.” The idea was that you could overcome the processes of time by sheer will and determination. After all, there are 24 hours in a day, right?
André Malcolm was the person who told me that you can’t fast-forward through the progression that comes with hours of practice. I think I was lamenting to him that I hadn’t started tattooing earlier (I started full-time at age 21 and laugh at that perspective now). I had a deep anxiety that any lack I saw in my ability was a result of my not working hard enough. André patiently explained to me that developing any skill happens with hours of practice, and that there’s no cheat sheet to fast-forward through years of experience.
Even this advice requires nuance, though. Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers: The Story of Success popularized the idea of 10,000 hours to mastery based on Anders Ericsson’s research. But Ericsson characterized this reading as “a provocative generalization,” one that’s catchy, but neglects the quality of practice, and the difference that practice with the guidance of a teacher or mentor can make. What I take from this is that the idea of mastery is an arbitrary one when measured against outside metrics, and that focusing on your own goals and milestones, feeling supported and having resources when you need them, and giving yourself time to work at your own pace are all important ingredients towards balance and long-term growth.
I also learned as I went along that it was futile to try to replicate someone else’s career trajectory. There were so many people who I looked up to and tried to emulate, but as time went on and I reached certain goals, the places where my needs and values diverged from theirs became obvious. The examples I had for what a “successful” tattooer and especially tattooer/visual artist looked like were limited, and the more I shaped a path based on my own personal choices, the more I realized that there is no recipe to duplicate another person’s successes. This also applied to developing a visual style of my own. Something I love about tattooing is that the hand of the person who applied it is always present, even if you’re repeating an existing design or working from someone else’s stencil. Taking inspiration from work I admired, then bringing my own unique experience and knowledge to it, was what yielded the best and most authentic results.
One other piece of advice I can offer is to develop a well-rounded, balanced life. Tattooing shouldn’t be your whole world. Maybe a spicy take, but it does a disservice to both you as a person and to tattooing as a field and practice to silo yourself within it. Living a full life injects tattooing with the inspiration and energy that pursuits outside of it bring, even if they might seem unrelated. When I interviewed tattooers for my book, people spoke of the valuable skills and knowledge they gained from pursuits as varied as medical foot care, wildlife preservation work, and makeup artistry and described the ways they were able to apply it to their work in tattooing. I talk in my writing about the emotional toll being present as a tattooer can take on its practitioners, sometimes even to the extent of compassion fatigue and vicarious traumatization. The trauma researcher and author Bessel Van Der Kolk describes “stress-resistant persons,” people who are able to be resilient in the face of emotional challenges, as engaging with a sense of personal control, pursuit of personally meaningful tasks, healthy lifestyle choices and social support. Having those structures outside of tattooing will benefit you in showing up in the workplace.
[Image: a photo of a marquee reading “It’s back! Pumpkin spice oil change introspection”]
An exercise I offer in my book (and one that I’m overdue to revisit) is to write a list of personal values and boundaries—a tattooer mission statement, if you will. What is it that you want to offer? What belief systems and ethics help ground you? Write it down. Write it again if you need to update it. Look at it when you need to. Being part of tattooing asks a lot of zooming in and out of us, between the industry as a “whole” (whatever that means) and ourselves in our microcosmic corner of the world. Looking out at the world is important, but so is seeing our interiority. Sometimes this requires a withdrawal- a break from social media, some extra time off, making some drawings you don’t show anyone. Fall is here, winter is coming, and it’s a perfect time to turn inward and gestate unseen for awhile.
My book Could This Be Magic? Tattooing as Liberation Work is available via Afterlife Press.