Good god, it’s April already?

People often ask me to explain what a tattoo apprenticeship is like, but there are few words for comparisons.  ’Intern’ is the closest term that most people seem to understand, but ‘indentured servant’ is probably closer.   In all senses it’s an apprenticeship in the traditional sense.  I trade my time and dedication to learn a craft, but I can’t help but feel like I’ve admitted myself to the strange, esoteric lifestyle choice of the tattoo artist.  I’ve taken a vow of poverty, humility and perseverance.   I spend 50 unpaid hours a week at the shop:  I mop floors, clean up after other artists, I’m  a secretary, a handyman, a janitor, a shop bitch.  The tattoo apprenticeship is an old school system to weed out flakes and bandwagon-hoppers, it’s designed to wear you out for the long run and those who can last can make it.  All tattooers have gone through an apprenticeship in some form, it keeps tattooing esoteric and it keeps tattooing special - something that’s hard earned for those who are dedicated.  And the more I read into tattoo history, the more fall in love with it.

It hasn’t been easy.  I am a proud person,  with a salty personality, a certain sense of artistic entitlement, and a bad case of stink eye.   I feel like the life has been sucked out of me, and I owe formal apologies to all the friends I haven’t seen in months.  But I’ve learned to shove that all aside and watch, and learn, and ask questions.   I’ve been lucky too:  I work at a custom shop, there’s no flash to copy, and in the scheme of things, I’ve been given a lot of liberties to draw my stuff.   This set of flash was supposed to be an assignment, but I turned it around to be a dictionary of images for myself, a way to have my own set of flash to tattoo and a starting point in creating an aesthetic for myself.   These twelve pages will be colored, eventually, once I wrestle my watercolors into submission and work them the way I want them to.  I like these.  They’re a little bit traditional, a little bit campy, and done nicely enough to be appealing to me, and other people.  Exhibit A:

I’ve begun to tattoo friends, which is a great relief from assuming all tattooing is like tattooing yourself (see also: awful).  But the disconnect between drawing and tattooing is still so vast for me.  Tattooing is very physical: bodies move, skin stretches, swells, and bleeds.  I’m waiting for that sweet moment when I feel like my skills as a draftsman connect with my abilities as a tattooist.  It’s like unlearning and relearning all at once.  Since my personal work has come to a screeching halt since I’ve started this job, I can’t help but feel like I’m being reprogrammed.  Graduating straight from a heady, conceptual art school that tried it’s hardest to breed all illustrative instincts out of me - to tattooing, which indulges all the skulls, snakes and dragons that I’ve been repressing since I was probably twelve years old.  These backgrounds meet somewhere in the middle I’m sure, I just haven’t found that bridge yet.  I imagine that will happen somewhere down the road, where I find out what niche I fill with my clients, what people ask of me, and how they react to what I’ve given them.  That’s the nice thing about tattooing in a shop - it forces talk to a lot of people, build relationships with clients, and out of my natural mode of solitary homebody with a Netflix problem.  Netflix is putting up quite the fight lately…Twilight Zone, Twin Peaks, James Bond, Pushing Daises, and X-Files?  I really can’t resist.  Anyway.

Things are looking up!  I haven’t mortally wounded anyone, all the tattoos I’ve done I’ve been very proud of, all things considered.  I’ve gotten wonderful, encouraging feedback from everyone and I’ll grasp onto that the best I can.  I haven’t updated poor blueskycomplex.com in ages, because I’m not sure where to start.  Everything has been turned upside down and I’m finally finding my footing, just in time, too.