This may be a bit different from what most people submit because this is primarily for those who wish to gain an apprenticeship in either tattooing or piercing.
At A Glance Author Prick Contact [email protected] Artist Prick Studio All You Can Ink Tattoo Location Wisconsin Well, I don't know how most places train their artists, but the people who trained me claimed to use the theory and practice from the "old school", which basically consists of breaking your spirit with extremely hard and strenuous work until you eat, sleep and breathe the tattoo shop.
I was hired in January and in Wisconsin. The winters are slow in a shop that just opened for business, so I spent most of the days in the basement with the needle block and soldering iron, breathing in fumes and having the liquid flux splash up in my mouth from building tattoo needles all day. Your fingers cramp and turn silver from the shavings off of the metal files, shaping and polishing needles to precision. For those of you who don't know, the most basic and general duties of an apprentice are usually setting up and breaking down work stations for artists; walking to Walgreen's in any kind of weather for Vaseline, rubber gloves, razors, paper towels, paper plates, rubbing alcohol, stick deodorant, rubber bands and tooth picks, sandwich baggies and antibacterial ointment; or to Ace hardware for corks, distilled water and Pine-Sol (depending on your floor cleaning preference). Sweeping and mopping many times a day, hours of tedious line drawings from bad photo copies for some idiot who wants "this dragon's head on that dragon's body" along with learning how to use the Autoclave and heat sealer for the needle tubes, forceps, tapers, piercing and tattoo needles, metal cups for the Listerine and sometimes jewelry if you cut and anodized your own like we did were more of the daily activities. You'll always remember the first time when you forget that you set the Autoclave on "FILL" and walked away to get your next batch of crap to stick in, only to return for a nice wet surprise and how you learned the Xerox machine inside and out because you will be sent to Office Max to get toner and paper when it runs out, and trust me, it will.
I lived with my two bosses because I was not welcome at home or any relative's house, which meant even more work after coming home, such as spending your one day off a week going to your boss's girlfriend's father's house to clean out his garage, or helping your other boss move his 38-year-old big-toothed girlfriend out of her parents' house. We lived in a three room apartment and I slept on the couch. It didn't matter if everyone else stayed up until 5 a.m. watching Swing Kids or Titanic every night because they didn't have to be at the shop at 8 a.m. to make needles. So needless to say, I worked hard for my job and I loved every minute of it.
Now if you are like me and had no real discipline or work ethic or respect for any sort of authority whatsoever then you will have a very hard time coping with these things. Most of the time it is probably a good idea not to develop a personal relationship with your boss because if you hang around them and do drugs all day, then when he tells you to make needles you will probably put it off like I did many times. You work and work for months and months, setting up and tearing down, watching tattoos until your eyes hurt from the glare off the Vaseline on their skin, watching piercings and people's kids or dogs (depending on the boss) until you're ready to fucking crack. And then one day after handing out business cards to all your friends from high school or wherever, someone comes in and wants a piercing and your boss says, "Go ahead, you know what to do, welcome to the fold brother." You fill out the release form, photo copy his ID and lead him upstairs where you begin to try to remember how to set up for an eyebrow piercing, even though you've set up eight already that day. Your heart sinks, your palms sweat and your mouth goes dry. You run the steps over and over in your head: paper towels, ointment for the needle, 14 gauge needle and the same size taper just in case, square slotted forceps, rubber band, Listerine, gloves, and marker; sit the guy down, mark him and hold your breath because you're about to fuck up.
Let me just get back to something quickly, prior to this moment I have done everything there is to do except run the gun and needle, which includes make stencils, shave the fucker where they need to be shaved, apply and reapply the stencil until your boss says its straight and says those words that you will be saying over and over for the rest of your life, "Is this what you want, and where you want it? Are you sure?" After about 1,000 or so customers, you are ready to take on anything. You're smug and arrogant after all those nights of going to parties and having people say, "Oh, you work where?" and inflating your head like a hot air balloon. You think you are ready for anything.
But nothing can prepare you for the moment your boss comes up behind you to watch you run your first needle in a deaf guy's eyebrow and stop halfway because of sheer terror. So what happens? While the guy in the chair is bleeding all over his Tu-Pac shirt and saying, "Ow ow ow", your boss pushes you aside and runs the needle for you. Your whole body is tense and your endorphins and adrenaline are making a nice cocktail that's getting you higher than you've ever been off any drug. At the same time you are utterly devastated that you've blown your shot and are sure you've lost your job. He lets you follow with the green soap and all you have to say for yourself is "I'm sorry."
But it can only get better from there. I was lucky and the next piercing I did was a La Bret on my girlfriend at the time and it turned out picture perfect, except I may have missed the cork and pricked her chin with the needle, but that's neither here nor there. My first tattoo was the same way. It took me 30 minutes to set up and 15 minutes to decide to try and run my first line, which my other boss had to do for me also but he fucked that up so it wasn't my fault. Nevertheless, my first tattoo turned out very good. It was just a very small and simple black tribal that my good friend picked out. Having friends who say, "Hey man, you can practice on me" is a blessing since they, in their own right, can never hold a grudge against you for poor work. I think it had to have been my proudest moment ever after my boss saw the result and the generally macho and distant man said, "Good job, I'm proud of you. I don't think I've seen a better first tattoo." The fact that I started owing money for my apprenticeship and having to work to pay it off by giving all the profits for the tattoos and piercings I did back into the shop and deducting it off my 3,000 tuition and dealing with the shit I got from people after they say, "Wow, you must make a lot of money working there," and me telling them I've been flat broke for eight months was all made right by that one moment of gratification.
This isn't something you read about in any tattoo magazine. They don't tell you how much you have to fucking bust your ass and that you sweat buckets and bleed gallons for these people. All you see is the finished result on some idiot with some lame description like "This is Amber. She listens to Led Zeppelin and lives in Santa Cruz. Her sleeve is done by blah blah blah blah..." It is something they don't tell you, for what reason, I don't know.
There's one more thing I'd like to talk about. Every person who has ever wrapped thread around a sewing needle and poke poke poked a smiley face with a joint in their leg will come into the shop telling you they know everything there is to know about tattooing. It may sound like an exaggeration but it is really not. Anyone who has worked in a shop knows this. I keep thinking about this greasy cross-eyed redneck who came in one day and said, and I shit you not, "Hey man, I've got tattoos..." lifting up his shirt sleeve to reveal the word "SEX" scrawled into his flesh in such a pitiful manner that it still haunts me today. The redneck from the movie Trekkies whose shameless bragging about his Klingon tattoo and how it took "Two hours of working with a homemade pen to get it inked in" is another example of this horrifying phenomenon. There is a lot of shit that I went through to get where I am and there is a lot of shit I'm leaving out.
I don't know everything and I know I never will but all you can do is try and learn the correct way. There are a lot of people out there who have the wrong idea of working in a shop because of the way tattoo magazines display the lifestyle. It's like "Hollywood" to these people-all flashy and glitzy and one big party. That's why a lot of people come in to the shop asking for a job apprenticeship thinking they can hack the discipline and I've seen it many times. They just stop showing up for work one day or mouth off and get fired. There were many nights I just sat down and cried because of the stress and anger I had for some of the people I worked with and the feeling of hopelessness I had. I thought I was doomed to apprenticeship my whole life. It's not flashy nor glitzy nor glamorous. It was the single hardest year of my life and if I had it to do over again I would in a heartbeat.