How to Start Practicing Properly- Tattoo University
Nick Duran here with
tattoo
University
and today I'm going to talk about the proper way tostart
tattoo
ing there's a wrong way in a right way some of you guys want to just watch videos with peopletattoo
ing and if I did that I'd be like every channel that's out there they're showing you how totattoo
but they're not teaching you how totattoo
what's happening is if you are watching those videos and trying to learn advanced techniques but you don't have the basicsdown you will never be able to
tattoo
like the professionals and that's not something you can just pick up atattoo
machine andstart
doing you can mimic it but you're not gonna get it because you don't know the proper machine to use you don't know how to tune your machines you don't know the proper needle setup you you need a solid foundation you need the groundwork to be able to do thosetattoo
s eventually I will be showing you guys how totattoo
but I want to make sure youhave the groundwork down first so that it will all make sense once you get to that point so the worst thing you can do is go out buy a
tattoo
kit slap thattattoo
machine together andstart
tattoo
ing on somebody you do not want tostart
tattoo
ing on people and hope that you get better the more youtattoo
on people there's steps you need to take before you get to that point the reason why that's such a bad idea is that a lot of your business comes from word of mouth it comes from peopleseeing your
tattoo
s and asking that client where they got theirtattoo
s from so that's either gonna help you or that's gonna hurt you if you are putting badtattoo
s out there people aren't gonna say hey go to this guy he does badtattoo
s they're gonna see thosetattoo
s and they're gonna ask where you got them from so that they don't go to you and they don't get a badtattoo
from you I would say pretty much a hundred percent of the business that I do is through word ofmouth and through the
tattoo
s that people see on other clients and they asked them where they came from and if you're doing good work you'll get more business so you don't want anytattoo
s that are bad out there floating around that someone can say this badtattoo
came from you and if you're at the beginning stages oftattoo
ing you're not going to be doing good enoughtattoo
s to where you're gonna be getting a lot of business another problem that I see a lot is thatpeople
start
tattoo
ing and they have no art background so know our background equals badtattoo
s if you don't know what looks good you're not gonna know what a goodtattoo
looks like and you might think it looks good but when other people look at it they're gonna see the flaws in thattattoo
especially if it's somebody who has an art background and they know what it should look like before you ever put a needle to somebody skin you should focus on how to do flash work you shouldmaybe pick up some watercolor paints some markers take a couple of college courses in art or watch a whole bunch of YouTube videos and read a whole bunch of books and just self study art before you
start
doing it on peopletattoo
s are just like artwork there's an aesthetic to it and if it doesn't have a good aesthetic people are not gonna like it and until you get that art background you're not gonna know what that is you might think you know it looks good but you're kind ofmissing that training that lets you know what looks good and what doesn't so if you're absolutely dying to
tattoo
on somebody thentattoo
yourself and do it in a spot where not a lot of people are gonna see it where you can cover it up if you have to not everybody believes in selftattoo
ing because it's a little more difficult and some people don't have the pain tolerance where they cantattoo
themselves but I believe that selftattoo
ing is a good tool to teach yourself how totattoo
and if you're gonna mess somebody up then you need to do it to yourself and not do it to other people a good tool is to have a mentor through this process and if you don't have one in person you can use the internet you can go on Facebook pages liketattoo
University
Hands where a lot oftattoo
artists go to that page and they can leave comments they can give you advice you can post yourtattoo
s and see what people think about them and if you post yourtattoo
s and you get a lot ofnegative comments that might tell you that you're not ready to
tattoo
on other people yet and you might need to take a step back and rethink things and practice some more before youstart
tattoo
ing on people again when your selftattoo
ing there's a way to do it you don't want totattoo
in difficult spotstattoo
ing on your arm is doable but it is not gonna come out well because you need to stretch and on your own arm you need two hands to stretch and you can't do that on your ownarm so you can get a decent
tattoo
out of that but after a while you'll see where it's not quite solid and it's gonna fade out because you're stretching wasn't good usually your calf or your thighs good area to selftattoo
and don't do an entire side piece or sleeve all at once you want tostart
off justpracticing
on your line work you can find a cartoon character which is really good something with a bold outline something simple you don't want tostart
off withsomething really technical the first thing you want to do is get your line work down focus on your line work don't focus on anything else get a liner machine figure out how to tune it correctly practice the lining until your line work is impeccable once that is done you have these
tattoo
s with the line work completed but they can be colored in then you go to packing color and then after that after you get your packing color down you go to shading and then you would go to blending colors youget a little more complicated as you go so don't take up your entire leg with your first
tattoo
come up with a plan with sometattoo
s that you can build on almost like a sleeve andstart
simple and just focus on one thing at a time another problem I see is people trying to figure everything out all at once instead of figuring one thing out understanding that and then moving on to the next thing so first thing you want to do is if you'retattoo
ing yourself just focus on line work andgetting that line work done and after every
tattoo
show it to somebody who knows what they're doing and ask them what's wrong with thistattoo
or what how can I improve thistattoo
posted online you're gonna get a lot of negative comments from people but you're gonna get a lot of positive comments from people you're gonna run into someone like me who's gonna critique thattattoo
in a positive way I'm not gonna give you a negative feedback I'm just gonna tell youyou you need to adjust your machine or your deaths isn't correct you know I'm gonna give you some positive feedback so you need to find those people who are willing to give you positive feedback you know I can look at at a tube and see what's wrong with it and see what you're doing wrong while you're
tattoo
ing and all I have to do is looked at the finished product of thattattoo
so if you're learning how totattoo
you need to show thesetattoo
s to someone you need to showthese to somebody who can look at