Do you reckon my tattoo artist will be mad at me?

If I have spots where I'm getting tattooed, will it make it difficult for her?

How do you get rid of acne on your body please?

Your tattooist, I hope won't be mad at you.

You can't help blemishes, but in some cases it can restrict what we can do and it can affect how it heals.

And if you get a tattoo where you don't have blemishes or acne and you develop it, it can actually push ink out.

This is what that looks like.

There's a spot here that's missing.

This is certainly from a pimple or getting scratched.

There's another one right here.

See a dermatologist, see if you can take care of it and then get a tattoo whenever there's some question like that were like, see the doctor and see if we can take care of it from little ink stain.

Sounds like we can be friends.

There has to be a better way to practice tattoos besides fruit and just people.

It's pigskin, isn't it?

Oh God, that makes me gag.

It will pigskin doesn't smell good.

My apprentice used to have to go to the butcher and pick up pig scraps and skin and tattoo it and she had to do it quick because we had to get it out of the store cause it's smelly, there are now like artificial body parts of silicones that you can tattoo on and fake skin?

That's really good for kind of getting your hand used to the weight of a tattoo machine drawing with something vibrating, keeping your depths consistent.

So just warming your hand up to using the Tool, you can't learn how to drive a car in a video game, like you have to get behind the car and drive.

So first off you should tattoo yourself when you're learning so you can feel what it is you're doing and yeah, I mean if you don't trust yourself enough to tattoo yourself, why should other people trust you?

So I've tattooed myself a dozen times.

I still tattoo myself.

Yeah, I did my little 14 left handed, I did my little number two.

It's not that good.

Not a cry for help.

What's the best way to do a stick and poke tattoo?

I've tried in the past and only gotten two dots that stayed.

Don't do that man, You don't know what you're doing, don't do it.

I don't know how to answer this question.

It's like how do I go get in a car accident like don't from mia.

Okay, but how do tattoo artists do shading?

Like I can hardly do it on paper?

How do you do it on skin magic?

Pure magic.

There's a lot of variables that go into tattooing the needle densities, how they're laid out depth and pressure speed of our machine and then also how dilute The ink is.

So we use several different tones to make it happen and we kind of all blended together.

Let me show you how that's done when we're tattooing.

We use several different types of needles, different groupings, different sizes.

One that's most specific to shading is called a mag and it's very much like a brush.

This one is 15 needles and they're stacked on top of each other.

The technique is really to move that across the skin evenly consistently without damaging it.

So that's the task.

We use individual grips each time that we tattoo.

So this stuff is all disposable.

And another interesting thing is they don't have to be.

These things can be made out of stainless steel and cleaned and reused in many states.

You can even reuse the tattoo needles.

So it's really important to ask, We really recommend.

People always use brand new needles every time.

This is the fun part.

What I'm doing right now is not necessarily like solid line.

I'm trying to kind of brush in with my liner, make sure I keep that realism because things that are realistic, don't have hard lines all around them.

So I have to make sure I just put the contrast just where it goes to make sure it still looks realistic.

There's all different kinds of like how sharp it's tapered, there's different bluntness is and different sharpness is of the needles, different groupings and how close they are together the different gauges are, how thick each needle is when tattooing started, there was no companies making tattoo needles.

So you had to make your own.

So the grouping is specific to the artist.

So as I'm shading, I can dilute my inks of water and I can also move my hand a bit faster to change that tone.

I can use darker inks and get this area completely to black if I need to, can I use a sweeping motion.

So it has to be in the skin the same depth and time in the forward motion as the backward motion.

The depth is really important.

That's how you can kind of create one tone of pigment over a really large plane is move your hand the exact same way for several hours in a row.

My tattoo is starting to peel and a piece of completely black skin just came off of it in the shower.

Help.

Yeah, it's normal.

You'll be fine.

It's not skin that came off its dried plasma or you know, your scab, your body is regenerating and you have seven layers of skin.

We're putting ink in between the 3rd and 4th layer.

If it's done successfully, you will shed your top layer.

It's totally normal.

How do you fit a skull, rainbow and a black rose on one tattoo.

It's really like the balance you need to find in any design that will make it timeless.

I feel like almost any subject matter.

You can piece together as long as you can make sense of it, you know when you're old and gray, you're still gonna have your skull, black, rose and rainbow tattoo.

How do we make it pleasing to the eye?

This is how I would do that.

So first I'll pull the client's body part into Photoshop and then organically laying each image on to see which ones, you know, gonna kind of be the dominant image and which ones are gonna be backgrounds.

I want to work with the client to make sure they feel comfortable in the design and people are going to just understand when I tell them what I'm gonna do.

I want to give them a visual representation of it.

Almost every larger tattoo I make, I will work in Photoshop with people, not everything that I try I like.

So this is very much the sketch process.

So, if we want to do any really fine detailed stuff will do all that by hand really close.

If I want to add any motion to that, that's all.

Something that I can add just with some of my smudge tools and we can carry some of that background to fit the body part.

And this is all something that I wouldn't necessarily map for myself before I tattoo it.

But it's something that helps clients get an idea of what I'm going for on their skin.

So now we're really close, I can just put a filter on these that will make it look like a finished tattoo and then I'm gonna pull that rose just in front of that rainbow and I think that's gonna do it right in that rose up a little bit and there you go, there's a rose and a rainbow and a skull.

It doesn't always work, but I think it's pretty cool.

I thought it would be worse.

Yeah, I want to make that tattoo.

So holla tattoo myth or fact color ink hurts more than black ink.

Certain techniques hurt more than other techniques.

Sometimes color needs more effort from the artist, skin needs to get beat up a little bit more for that color to put as much pigment in your skin as possible.

If a pigment is thicker, it's going to take longer and be a little tougher to get into your skin.

So different colors have different consistencies through different companies and brands that make them white hurts because we're drilling it, we're trying to get as much in there as possible tattoos at the insanely itchy stage.

Can't decide if best technique is blowing, tapping itching around it or distraction through alcohol.

Sounds like we can be friends.

Yeah, slap it.

That's the best one.

If you itch it, you can force off scabs or affect it.

If there's no scabs on your tattoo, go for it your way, enjoy if you have little scabs or it's still healing very fresh within the 1st 10 days or two weeks, don't itch your tattoo, your nails are also gross.

So you know, if it's killing you, like smack it, um, ice helps, you can put ice on it.

Friends with tattoos, I have a question, what's the best way to wrap a fresh tattoo?

My santa, Durham fell off and it hasn't been a full 24 hours.

I got a significant amount of color done and I'm way worried about leaking plasma and my tattoo scabbing, attaching itself to clothing.

It is on your tattoo artist to make sure they educate you when your tattoo is done and that they're there for you when you do have questions when I do a highly rendered full color tattoo that's more trauma to skin than any other style because it's very densely tattooed, trying to make color very solid.

Your tattoo will use more, it'll scab more wash your tattoo, all that plasma and gross, that's gonna come to the surface and leak, should be washed off gently with warm water and soap and let it get air.

I rap tattoos for 2 to 24 hours.

Your body really does.

The healing.

The things you put on top of your body are not going to hell you, your body is going to hell you, there's things that can promote healing and there's things that can restrict healing, Let me demonstrate that I'm going to do one final wash of his tattoo, I'm gonna apply some ointment and I'm gonna put plastic on top.

We're gonna make sure the tattoo is really clean before we wrap it after we wrap it, we'll go through the next steps in a couple hours.

This will all be absorbed by the skin.

And when he takes his bandage off he'll wash this all off appointment is not helping your tattoo heal in any way.

It's just keeping your skin protected or moisturized so your body can do the work.

I'm gonna use your chest first.

I personally don't use scented ERM it's essentially a little bit thicker plastic wrap with glue all over it.

It's applied to the skin, it sticks on almost like a secondary skin.

So you can you can touch it similarly to this but it won't come off.

You don't need to tape it on the healing properties are gone within 24 hours.

So you really need to remove that, wash the area and you can reapply Sanader.

Um It's sticking to a tattoo is not the best for what I do.

So I use plain plastic wrap and I think it works pretty well.

For example, if the shirt he wore into the store, if there's any sweat in that shirt, there's bacteria in that we don't want that in contact with his tattoo.

If when he gets home he takes that shirt off that brand new tattoo gets scratched by his, his nails, his watch, even the shower curtain as he's entering, we want to keep it really clean, he's gonna get in the shower, he's gonna remove this, he's gonna wash his hands, wash his tattoo, had it dry with a freshly cleaned towel and let it get air, let it breathe.

And if your tattoos breathing your tattoos healing, what's your favorite tattoo on?

Justin Bieber?

I got to tattoo his torso and fill in a bunch of gaps and that was really fun.

He had a son of God written on his stomach and it looked like it said send food.

So I text him right away, I was like, man, we need to work on this.

He had so many tattoos on his stomach of so many different varying subjects.

It was like, how am I gonna tie us together and make this one story.

So he had a big cross, send food, an eagle, a bear and a lion.

And I was like, all right, how do we tie all this together?

So, we used some reference of old renaissance paintings of religious works, try to tie a story of religion and spirit treating these animals like they are his spirit animals or his protectors.

Um, and then treating the rest of his torso in the subject of religion that was challenging.

I wish that I could have a blank slate and tattoo him without all the obstacles, but like, I kind of like the challenge.

So I think that's my favorite, he's got a bunch of crummy ones and he knows it.

So do I when you have a bunch of tattoos and you're kind of a little loose about, you're gonna get some crummy ones.

How do you tattoo artists learn and practice their craft?

It's a really good question.

There is no standard format or education for tattooing.

The traditional method to getting into tattooing is to find a great tattoo artist and have them teach you.

So, an apprenticeship program, it's tough work.

You have to draw and draw and draw until you don't want to draw any more.

Your art has to improve.

You have to show that person who's teaching you.

You are worth their effort and that you deserve to be a tattoo artist that you love tattooing so much that you'll work your fingers to the bone to become a great one.

Hopefully, someday there'll be a format to tattoo education.

Do tattoo artists ever just refuse to do a horrible tattoo idea because they know the client will regret it later.

I will refuse a tattoo if I don't think it's gonna be a great tattoo, so I can't see it in my head or if the idea isn't there for me, it's certainly not going to be good once it's on you.

If I'm not confident in it, I am not going to make it for you.

People don't design tat for a living.

I do.