Become a Tattoo Artist

Viper65

Posts: 19

Joined: Tue Jun 28, 2011 11:12 pm

Thu Jun 30, 2011 9:58 pm

apprentice or not?

Let’s see…..sweep the floor, take out trash, scrub the toilets, clean the counter tops, do any other

Bullshit jobs that some lazy a$ doesn’t want to do, share all your work for someone

To potentially steal it? All to learn how to tatto, probably from some idiot that can’t

Draw a stick figure…nah….ill pass. I just don’t get it….do you seriously think your mentor

Will really share his secrets? I’m a artist and have a few of my own and I don’t care

If you come clean my house every day of the week…your not getting them.

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Viper,

Most skilled professions require that the individual who wants to learn them goes to a vocational school. There are no real secrets in the tattoo industry any more. The information is available for sale in countless books and DVDs. You could consider these things tattoo secrets I guess. If you are an artist and you utilize your apprentices for labour and you are not teaching them anything then you are a pretty lame example of a mentor.

Tattoo apprenticeships are not really supposed to be slave labour. The reason so many of the old school artists would haze their apprentices, using them for excessive chores and things outside the shop was because tattoo was once a VERY guarded profession. The artists did not poses very much artistic skill, only technical knowledge. There is a big difference in tattooing. You should be an artist before you become a tattooist. If you are very secretive and guarded about your profession it is typically because you are worried that the apprentice is actually a better artist – and if he grasps the technical skills that you might have – then he might open his own shop or take clients from you (insecurity leads to secrecy).

The reason that I advocate an apprenticeship is not because I feel that you have to “earn your stripes” so to speak, but you can not learn all of the technical stuff simply from books and DVDs. You might get the gist of it – but you really need to see the hands on first person view of it. This can just as easily be done by paying an artist to tattoo your arms for 20 hours while you take notes mentally. I have had a few apprentices, and I am not an amazing tattoo artist by any means. I look at it as a symbol of success if my apprentice is better than me after 6 – 12 months of actual tattooing. I tried to take on apprentices who were already established artists and had a giant ability – they just needed to know the technical aspect.

That should be the mentality of the mentor who is training an apprentice. I am friends will all the individuals who (I like to think I helped) I have trained. I believe that says a lot about the way they apprenticed under me. Sure they were setting up my tattoo station for a long time, and broke down the station – an cleaned the bathrooms. I was lucky and I had a really good mentor myself – who never asked me to clean or break down anything… it was implied. I always had everything done before I was asked. This was because I was so eager to learn the trade and improve my own skills.

I have a degree in graphic design, which cost me around $50,000.00 – I have another degree in Information Science, which cost about the same. I could have just as easily worked for a graphic design studio and looked over a senior artist’s shoulder and done all the “bitch work” in the studio. Either way – you have to pay to learn. The apprenticeship is not meant to be degrading, it is a way for the artist to have hired help in the studio – the payment is information and education. If you are an apprentice and you are constantly being told to do things – then you are not a good apprentice. If you are a mentor and you are not sharing any “secrets” then you are not a good mentor.

You get what you put into this industry, and to me it is more important to share the information and make friends – than it is to belittle someone and make them my shop slave, running my personal errands. With that being said, any one of the individuals who at one point called themselves my apprentice – would gladly run to the store for me – or run personal errands (had I ever asked them to). That type of respect is earned, and it takes a certain level of life experience to respect the apprenticeship process and maturity to call yourself a mentor.

There is a lot more on this thread you can Read More Here.

Why is a tattoo apprenticeship important?