Big Shifts

by Steve

 As most of you probably know, I write. Like, novels and stuff. :)

 (Don't worry, this really *is* about tattooing, I promise)

 Eight or nine years ago, more or less, I wrote my first novel. Blood and Skin was a paranormal thriller(like a ghost story, but with more action) set in a tattoo shop. (See? tattoos totally figure in here!) That first novel written was not the first novel published - these things happen. However, this year I pulled it out, dusted it off and gave it a good thorough rewrite.

So much has changed in the last nine years: My cellphone references were laughable. A trip to the bookstore had to be replaced by the gift of a Kindle. And virtually everything about the way I tattoo is different now.

 For a long, long, long time, I was what you might call a Classic Tattooist.

 -Work the whole tattoo over in a black outline, then color it in.

 -Smaller work, mostly. Bigger pieces, sleeves and the like, got done an hour or two at a time.

 -The tubes were metal, and they went into an autoclave for sterilization between uses.

 -Most clients picked designs out of flash books. It was just the way things were done.

Now, there are still plenty of studios out there like that. Probably will be forever. But rewriting that old novel I saw that nowadays I:

 -Rarely use a hard black line, and often do the entire, nearly finished tattoo in a single pass from bottom to top.

 -While I still enjoy the odd small piece, full-day bookings are the norm. Half-finished work rarely leaves the studio.

 -Like our needles and bags and inks and everything else, our tubes now are also disposable. The autoclave still gets used for piercing, but we run a clean, safe and hygenic tattoo studio without having to do our own sterilizing.

 -All of our work is custom now. When you come in, don't expect a bunch of design books. Do expect a conversation about what you want, how you see your art looking, etc. That's just how we roll :)

 It seems like tattooing is changing. Except that tattooing doesn't change, not exactly. From 90's tribal designs to hundred year old traditional Old School to folks tapping a mallet on the back of a stick full of needles, nothing in tattooing has gone away. We just keep adding to it, making room for more. And in recent years, this art I love finally made room an artist like me...