Journals161
Newest
I am going to be streaming this evening to negate the costs/lessen the costs of a car repair
If you have ever wanted to get something from me now is the chance!
Stream starts at 9:30 and I will post more info on the where, and how much when it gets closer to time!
If you have ever wanted to get something from me now is the chance!
Stream starts at 9:30 and I will post more info on the where, and how much when it gets closer to time!
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
STREAMING TODAY!
1 min read
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Thinking about streaming some simple sketch commissions....
20 for a rough sketch, 40 for a cleaned up sketch and 60 for a flat colored sketch...
anyone intrested?
20 for a rough sketch, 40 for a cleaned up sketch and 60 for a flat colored sketch...
anyone intrested?
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Tattoo apprenticeship week 4
4 min read
Week 4:
This week has been in turns, fun, thoughtful, full of computer dumbness, and boring.
To start off this week, just about everyone in the shop has been complaining about our computer lately and how god awful slow it is. Complaint after complaint lead me to investigate it, and it was chalk full of random crap that it didn't need. So I spent all day Wednesday, de-bugging, de-botting, de-virusing, and in general just performing maintenance that should have been done on the thing a while ago.
In a shop full of dudes, I am the only one that REALLY knows their way around computers. I have never had the tables so turned on me in my life, but needless to say, after a good scrub, the computer is now running as mightily as a 5 year old computer can.
After the scrubdown, I drew some more with my "Tattoo pen" (mostly dinosaurs… because FUCK YEAH DINOSAURS). And In general just kept working on working with the weight of the pen. It was dead till about 7:30 when our first and only tattoo for the day came in. It was a lovely lady and her friend, and I got to hear one of the most awesome stories ever. The tattoo the women was getting was two names and a Rose, and she was telling us about her daughters. She said that she had just gotten one of them back in April, and how she got her was, sad, but at the same time, an amazing thing.
She had a daughter, and couldn't have any more. She was convinced that she would adopt but was waiting for the right time. Flash forward 12 years later, and one of her co-workers informs her that she has a grandchild, that is getting ready to be released into her custody. But she can't take her. So this women jumps on the chance. The girl is 12, was abused, her mother was a whore, and was arrested in a heroin sting. She had been in a foster home for abused and neglected children for 2 years. It was amazing to hear the story, and hard not to cry during parts of it. It's amazing the stories people come through here with, from the silly, to the amazing.
Talk around the shop has turned from running me ragged to drilling me on the NC laws regarding tattooing. Most of them are no-brainers. Like how old someone has to be to get tattooed, and why pregnant women can't get tattooed and the like. But some of the stuff are things I haven't picked up before. Certain processes I am learning about. It's an amusing bit of legal limbo we have to walk in order to keep Legit. Silly rules we have to follow include "Dogs are not allowed in the tattoo rooms. They can be everywhere else in the shop, but not in the rooms." And apparently things like that are extremely important, because they are constantly asked. (or some dumb idiot gave a customer Parvo).
This week has also been one full of difficult customers. The guy we wound up tattooing the shark I drew on, was an epic smoker, and kept on moaning in My bosses face every chance he got. We also had a women that was supposed to come in for an all day appointment and be early last Thursday. She showed up 4 hours late just about, and they had to reschedule. He wound up doing her again on Monday (his normal day off) She is getting an epic touchup and then eventually adding to it. She is a talker so her and I blabbed at each other while Tom got the work done.
Speaking of work, My boss tattooed probably one of the most awesome tattoos, Yesterday. Darth maul… It was awesome MUAHHAHA.
Ok hopefully this next week will be fun!
This week has been in turns, fun, thoughtful, full of computer dumbness, and boring.
To start off this week, just about everyone in the shop has been complaining about our computer lately and how god awful slow it is. Complaint after complaint lead me to investigate it, and it was chalk full of random crap that it didn't need. So I spent all day Wednesday, de-bugging, de-botting, de-virusing, and in general just performing maintenance that should have been done on the thing a while ago.
In a shop full of dudes, I am the only one that REALLY knows their way around computers. I have never had the tables so turned on me in my life, but needless to say, after a good scrub, the computer is now running as mightily as a 5 year old computer can.
After the scrubdown, I drew some more with my "Tattoo pen" (mostly dinosaurs… because FUCK YEAH DINOSAURS). And In general just kept working on working with the weight of the pen. It was dead till about 7:30 when our first and only tattoo for the day came in. It was a lovely lady and her friend, and I got to hear one of the most awesome stories ever. The tattoo the women was getting was two names and a Rose, and she was telling us about her daughters. She said that she had just gotten one of them back in April, and how she got her was, sad, but at the same time, an amazing thing.
She had a daughter, and couldn't have any more. She was convinced that she would adopt but was waiting for the right time. Flash forward 12 years later, and one of her co-workers informs her that she has a grandchild, that is getting ready to be released into her custody. But she can't take her. So this women jumps on the chance. The girl is 12, was abused, her mother was a whore, and was arrested in a heroin sting. She had been in a foster home for abused and neglected children for 2 years. It was amazing to hear the story, and hard not to cry during parts of it. It's amazing the stories people come through here with, from the silly, to the amazing.
Talk around the shop has turned from running me ragged to drilling me on the NC laws regarding tattooing. Most of them are no-brainers. Like how old someone has to be to get tattooed, and why pregnant women can't get tattooed and the like. But some of the stuff are things I haven't picked up before. Certain processes I am learning about. It's an amusing bit of legal limbo we have to walk in order to keep Legit. Silly rules we have to follow include "Dogs are not allowed in the tattoo rooms. They can be everywhere else in the shop, but not in the rooms." And apparently things like that are extremely important, because they are constantly asked. (or some dumb idiot gave a customer Parvo).
This week has also been one full of difficult customers. The guy we wound up tattooing the shark I drew on, was an epic smoker, and kept on moaning in My bosses face every chance he got. We also had a women that was supposed to come in for an all day appointment and be early last Thursday. She showed up 4 hours late just about, and they had to reschedule. He wound up doing her again on Monday (his normal day off) She is getting an epic touchup and then eventually adding to it. She is a talker so her and I blabbed at each other while Tom got the work done.
Speaking of work, My boss tattooed probably one of the most awesome tattoos, Yesterday. Darth maul… It was awesome MUAHHAHA.
Ok hopefully this next week will be fun!
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Tattoo apprenticeship week 3
5 min read
Week 3:
This week has been a little bit interesting mostly due to the fact that I was gone two days, due to Aros (my husband) getting Lasik, and The boys tattooing at the Ray Price Harley Davidson Event all this weekend. However it has not been without it's learnings…. Oh no…. In fact! This week has been full of learnings and I think I made a couple of very big steps on my journey!
Taking apart, cleaning, learning all the parts, and properly reassembling tattooing machines! Tattooing machines (at least the older ones) Are finicky beasts that don't take shit from anyone and will happily not work right if you don't have them tuned right. Well, having now taken them apart, I know why. What I thought was a solid piece up on the top of the machine, is in fact, just a giant Spring. A giant spring that more or less goes willy nilly and hits on everything else under the sun, and is stopped by a screw that more or less prevents it from flying off into space.
Everything wears on these machines. Really, the more I look at them, the more they look like someone just stuck crap into them till they started doing what they were supposed to be doing. Dongles, wires, and an O-ring where you wouldn't think an O-ring would go… and BLAMO it works!
I am lucky that I have a visual memory, and one that randomly makes up shit so it's easy to remember what things are. Like 3-2-1-contact screw! Or Clip board, clip cord, upper and lower clip cord posts! (I blame this on the fact that I have been watching children's educational TV since I have been tiny and I have to make up little jingles to remember anything important, or associate it with something else.)
Another thing I have learned this week is if you are getting text on you… MAKE SURE EVERYTHING IS SPELLED RIGHT, AND IS THE ACTUAL WORD YOU WANT.
Also…..
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT USE SIRI TO SEND IMPORTANT E-MAILS…. SHE WILL FUCK THEM UP.
Case in point, one of the cool tattoos my boss did in the first week I was there, was this cool looking star thing with words like "Respect, Family, trust," Ect in it, recessed into this guys arm. Well, it was the guy's wife who was ordering it and she ordered "respect, family, trust, faith, and Hobart". My boss was confused at this, as was I. So, we asked, many times, if it looked right. We got approvals every step of the way, the sketch, the tight line work, the stencil, and then the tattoo itself. The guy was super happy with it!
Then when he got home and started cleaning it, he saw "Hobart" and freaked out a bit. He showed his wife and asked her to look at the E-mail. At that point she was so freaked out she couldn't speak to him for an hour. She had indeed sent "Hobart". What she wanted to send was "Honor". So he called us and let us know about the mess-up. This was a big mess-up, but the end result was my boss adding cracks to change the B to an N, using white ink to change the letters and in general just adding more detail. It's going to take a couple more times with the white ink to make the bridge of the B go away, but the end result is worth it. Lesson learned… don't trust Siri.
Because of the Harley bikefest, I got to see a couple more of the guys tattoo, including this really awesome gothic tree all over this lady's back. Everyone tattoos a little differently. It's interesting to watch!
I also learned that when you tattoo people, they lose skin cells like it's going out of style. This creates dust. All of the dust, everywhere. Right now I am cleaning my bosses room, and it feels like withinan hour of dusting, there is dust on everything again. Dust dust dust. Did I mention that we clean, a lot? All the time? Every surface? And that paper towels add to the dumbness of the dust because they leave little pieces and parts of themselves behind .
After I wrote that bit about the dust part we figured out part of our problem, one of the air intakes's filters hadn't been changed in who knows how long, so we decided that now was a good time to re-dust everything again (a day after writing that first bit) and change all the air filters! What a change that makes!
Today specifically was another big step because I have begun to work with a tattoo machine to draw with. My boss me a ball point pen that had been stuck in the business end of a tattoo machine, and told me to practice. So I did. I drew a couple flowers, then some horse parts (which I always default too when left to my own ends), and then I turned the page and decided that I wanted to do one of those really spiffy tattoo roses. Somewhere in the middle of that I was like OH GOD I WANT TO DRAW A GEISHA (these moods hit me). So… because nothing I draw has to make sense, I stuck the giant Rose on the Geisha!
Tattoo machines are heavey, and bulky, and in general, akward to work around. But I made it work!
YAY!
Here is hoping that next week holds just as much interesting fun as this past one!
This week has been a little bit interesting mostly due to the fact that I was gone two days, due to Aros (my husband) getting Lasik, and The boys tattooing at the Ray Price Harley Davidson Event all this weekend. However it has not been without it's learnings…. Oh no…. In fact! This week has been full of learnings and I think I made a couple of very big steps on my journey!
Taking apart, cleaning, learning all the parts, and properly reassembling tattooing machines! Tattooing machines (at least the older ones) Are finicky beasts that don't take shit from anyone and will happily not work right if you don't have them tuned right. Well, having now taken them apart, I know why. What I thought was a solid piece up on the top of the machine, is in fact, just a giant Spring. A giant spring that more or less goes willy nilly and hits on everything else under the sun, and is stopped by a screw that more or less prevents it from flying off into space.
Everything wears on these machines. Really, the more I look at them, the more they look like someone just stuck crap into them till they started doing what they were supposed to be doing. Dongles, wires, and an O-ring where you wouldn't think an O-ring would go… and BLAMO it works!
I am lucky that I have a visual memory, and one that randomly makes up shit so it's easy to remember what things are. Like 3-2-1-contact screw! Or Clip board, clip cord, upper and lower clip cord posts! (I blame this on the fact that I have been watching children's educational TV since I have been tiny and I have to make up little jingles to remember anything important, or associate it with something else.)
Another thing I have learned this week is if you are getting text on you… MAKE SURE EVERYTHING IS SPELLED RIGHT, AND IS THE ACTUAL WORD YOU WANT.
Also…..
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT USE SIRI TO SEND IMPORTANT E-MAILS…. SHE WILL FUCK THEM UP.
Case in point, one of the cool tattoos my boss did in the first week I was there, was this cool looking star thing with words like "Respect, Family, trust," Ect in it, recessed into this guys arm. Well, it was the guy's wife who was ordering it and she ordered "respect, family, trust, faith, and Hobart". My boss was confused at this, as was I. So, we asked, many times, if it looked right. We got approvals every step of the way, the sketch, the tight line work, the stencil, and then the tattoo itself. The guy was super happy with it!
Then when he got home and started cleaning it, he saw "Hobart" and freaked out a bit. He showed his wife and asked her to look at the E-mail. At that point she was so freaked out she couldn't speak to him for an hour. She had indeed sent "Hobart". What she wanted to send was "Honor". So he called us and let us know about the mess-up. This was a big mess-up, but the end result was my boss adding cracks to change the B to an N, using white ink to change the letters and in general just adding more detail. It's going to take a couple more times with the white ink to make the bridge of the B go away, but the end result is worth it. Lesson learned… don't trust Siri.
Because of the Harley bikefest, I got to see a couple more of the guys tattoo, including this really awesome gothic tree all over this lady's back. Everyone tattoos a little differently. It's interesting to watch!
I also learned that when you tattoo people, they lose skin cells like it's going out of style. This creates dust. All of the dust, everywhere. Right now I am cleaning my bosses room, and it feels like withinan hour of dusting, there is dust on everything again. Dust dust dust. Did I mention that we clean, a lot? All the time? Every surface? And that paper towels add to the dumbness of the dust because they leave little pieces and parts of themselves behind .
After I wrote that bit about the dust part we figured out part of our problem, one of the air intakes's filters hadn't been changed in who knows how long, so we decided that now was a good time to re-dust everything again (a day after writing that first bit) and change all the air filters! What a change that makes!
Today specifically was another big step because I have begun to work with a tattoo machine to draw with. My boss me a ball point pen that had been stuck in the business end of a tattoo machine, and told me to practice. So I did. I drew a couple flowers, then some horse parts (which I always default too when left to my own ends), and then I turned the page and decided that I wanted to do one of those really spiffy tattoo roses. Somewhere in the middle of that I was like OH GOD I WANT TO DRAW A GEISHA (these moods hit me). So… because nothing I draw has to make sense, I stuck the giant Rose on the Geisha!
Tattoo machines are heavey, and bulky, and in general, akward to work around. But I made it work!
YAY!
Here is hoping that next week holds just as much interesting fun as this past one!
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In