Making the transition from drawing onto paper to tattoing on fake skin is not easy. It is a different ballgame and it can make any artist feel like a rookie.
On the internet you will see many people recommending you to start practicing on grepfruits, bananas and oranges. I did my due diligence and used the pour fruits as guinea pigs.
But first let's start with the beginning. A couple of months ago I have traveled to Bucharest to first get a glimpse of how tattoing really looks like. Through a friend of mine I discovered a tattoo artist willing to give me a free weekend seminar where I could see a real tattoo session taking place. I felt in love with it and I knew I had the virus in my blood haha.
Now , months later, destiny has worked its magic. I have a beginner level tattoo machine for exploring this on fake skin, there is no reason to throw a lot of money at first without trying. I also have some coil machines but I have to admit that I am not keen in wraping my head around the intricate world of the coils, which is for many artists a part of the past.
A Mast Pen from Dragonhawk will do the trick. I also have needles, ink and all sorts of miscellaneous things used in tattoing on fake skin.
At first I was annoyed by how different I have to draw. The first grepfruit suffered well as I went too deep. RIP. Lol. After a while I thought that it would be better to try the fake skin. I did some freehand design and went with it. Hours passed by. It's like therapy.
In tattoing you have to move slower than in drawing. A line...takes time. It is also about hand to voltage speed. But I loved the process.
I am also enrolled in a tattoo academy , taking a course which covers all of the theory and I can get feedback on my work.
For this butterfly I got a lot of positive feedback while others have said it would be a tough design to sell to a customer due to the crazy color scheme lol. For an A4 sized piece of tattoo art I received a lot of price quotations ranging around 4.000 Euros for this piece. Price is subjective. But usually a tattoo apprentice can work for free, or for 50-70 €/hour or 100€/hour if they are really good. I did not care so much about these details but boy did I had fun doing this.
I will have to have patience with myself in this as I will have to get used to transferring my skills from paper to human skin and I must admit that it can feel intimidating despite my talent because I have to get to know my machine very well.
Overall I am proud that I have not chickened out and that I can see how my dream pushes me beyond my comfort zone.
This design took a couple of hours as I had to do the black and grey work before colouring.
