A few weeks ago I wandered into the Black Lotus tattoo shop to find an artist. The initial meeting between you and your tattoo artist will always be a little awkward. I think solely because they expect you to blurt out something to the effect of "yea I wanted to get Jerry Garcia's face tattooed on my ass" or "I wanna get a butterfly on my lower back". Random tattoos of ridiculous things are inevitable, but there is the occasional customer that is in for the long haul. I would like to think I'm in this group. First of all finding an artist you like is fairly easy. You just travel around ask to see their work and then have a short chat with them. I was lucky in that I found a great artist who was excited about working long term with me on several projects.
This is Autumn. She helped me with the exact designs and placement. It is important that you allow your artist to make suggestions to you about different things concerning your tattoo. They will know how tattoos sit on the skin how color works in different areas and how to add depth and life to your tattoos. Autumn is very detail oriented and has made this a pleasant experience overall. She has what they call in the business a "light hand" We have yet to come up with a cool nickname including Autumn and light. She likes to give me a hard time when I'm under the needle, I am starting to think I'm a masochist for going back to her, but I give her an equally hard time. That brings me to developing repor with your artist. It will behoove you to make friends with them since:
1. You hopefully like them anyway.
2. They are putting something permanent on you.
3. You want to develop a long term relationship.
Picking a shop can be a daunting thought. There are many shops with many different people. I recommend asking around with people that have tattoos first. Black Lotus has been a really cool shop all around. Felix the Tat is a cool guy that has been with the shop a long time. He is a wealth of knowledge and great to have as a second opinion on art. He is a great artist as well. Brian is another guy that does some work there. I haven't gotten to speak to him alot but he has as well had some great input on the work being done. You will know it's a good shop if the artist will take a minute to sit and discuss how best to approach what the customer is wanting them to accomplish.
Next up on my hit list is Monica. Shes a little firecracker of an apprentice. Her reputation for outstanding pencil drawings and her dedication to keeping a clean shop show an artist in the making. She also likes to team up with Autumn and verbally accost me. But I guess I deserve it even though I did bring her a push pop.
This is my first day under the needle. This is a religous symbol called "Agnus Dei" meaning Lamb of God. I came up with the symbol after seeing it on the wall in a church. The line work is very important to getting the tattoo to look right in its finished form. This usually doesn't hurt very much and heals very quickly with a short turn around to get more work done.
This is the next week The first picture is just the line work for the Chi Rho. This has it's roots in Greek and as you can see inside is flanked by the Alpha and Omega.
The second picture is the finished work of that day. It is possible to do a whole piece in one day but this is gonna be on you forever so I recommend to take your time. This hurt a fair amount and took a little longer to heal up.
This is my third week of tattooing. I switched back and forth between shoulders to be able to go every week and allow two weeks to heal in between. This was a VERY long process and was quite painful at certain parts. That said it was nice to sit through a long session, 6 hours, because you kinda hit a wall with the pain and then you kinda forget.
This is the Final touches on the Chi Rho. It's kinda hard to see in this picture but I had a matching grey with white accents put into the outside.
My next post will be sometime next month as I am working on a piece toget the two pieces linked. Untill next time remember to Tip your artists!
