Two Generations of Tattoo Artists on the Evolution of Tattooing | Back in My Day

I need to keep my dentures. I am restless. I am 27 years old. I have been

tattoo

ing for six years and work at Dharma in London and in Skin Yard and Southend-on-Sea. My name is doc price. I am 85 years old. I have been

tattoo

ing in Plymouth for the last 50 years. I have made a living every day since then. So what led you to get tattooed? Where is your motivation? Some different places. My father is very tattooed. He was a motorcyclist and then. He joined the paratroopers and he has tattoos from all over the world so I used to be really obsessed with his tattoos when I was little and then I was really into the idea of ​​prison tattoos and gang tattoos and that kind of stuff is my story and Ya I don't know how long ago Atreides was, but I work with a guy who had butterflies sitting on the

back

of him and I thought it was amazing, how can you and being make something that fits a human being?

It worked like that and that was a little start yeah, then when I saw old Billy Nights sign tattoo, that's where I had to go and get a tattoo. I could not write. He knew me very well when I was young. a tie, yes, that was my information, what the apprenticeships were like, because there is the term of having an old school apprenticeship, which is what I have always said. I've done an old school apprenticeship, none, none, at all, how did you learn? tattoo, you clean, you pick up, you've met other

artists

and follow them like Al, but you would learn everything you could from each other, some of the best activists in this area.

He used to come to my shop and learn and he used to say. Oh, that looks good, how did you do it? I wouldn't tell you and eventually I'll tell you and stuff like that, most of the tattoos I knew were self-taught and we thought we could make a living because I can do 20 tattoos. It's in the day if you were working after 15 shillings ready to go like a rabbit yes that's how it was you just made a living you didn't we will never be rich but allow you to support your children you could have quality for home and that would have been my state which is very different there oh absolutely yes would you believe it?

So you know, well, tattoos are incredibly expensive, there are two different groups, right? There are still working class street shops where you can get the more affordable side of

tattooing

and then it's like custom tattoos. Good work attracts clients. Clients are attracted to good work. It's the simplest sign, so it would have had to be word of mouth. Word of mouth is nice and you would also see the visual. Look, someone is at war. I like that traditional person. I'm not really into modern things, so this sometimes takes me a bit, but you may not be very good at

tattooing

, but nowadays you have a very good following on Instagram.

It may be enough to be like our famous tattoo artist, as long as you have good numbers on Instagram you will be good to go, so yeah, yeah, what's your tattoo style? Because mine was always the color, as always, popular and now. It was a very, very personalized job. Now I don't do anything traditional at all. I do a lot of girl faces and girls with pregnant bellies with similar scenes and their bellies and things on them and I do a series called the drowned girls series, which is. like a girl's head submerged in water and I do a lot of them, but women like nursing pigs and stuff like that, that's the kind of thing that yeah, I'm doing, I do rolls, rolls, roses in front of Dementors, What would tattoo

artists

like? like you're in someone else's studio or whatever do you think the tattoo is actually someone else's tattoos you know, were they standing up?

You'd rather go in on your knees because they were so jealous and so violent with each other, that sounds crazy, no, it's completely different than that, yeah, I'm talking about old times, if you walked into a tattoo shop, you told the guy I'm tattooing, Can I open a store on the same street from there? Would you like to take a bullet in the head or kick your ass or both, yeah I remember seeing Johnny Thompson in the window of a townhouse getting tattooed with the machine on a bottle of buttermilk to kill the height of hygiene, yes, do you still clean your toes on your knees with a toothbrush in your hand?

I sink in the

back

I in a bucket a bucket of pigs you still have your machines or you install them hanging on the wall from the last person ready to start the next that the actor Billy Knight really came out with a tray and the bone needles and they listened to him as a hitman. Oh that's because you can guarantee you've been using them for days and weeks of music before it starts, yeah it's silly to think that you can use the same needle on another person knowing that this person could be, in fact, was a disease serious serious if in fact anyone in this modern era should go to prison for it, yes, when I was young I used to go to the bank and ask: can I borrow? 4,000 pounds raised to say what he does. let's say a tattoo artist and you could um book that happened to your sir, yeah, and that was the most anyone ever got tattoos, crime, everyone's tattoos, although it's great that people want to get tattoos because then I can tattoo people that I preferred when it was something that you didn't see like when I was a kid or even when I was a teenager, just tattooed people in general was like something shocking that you never saw and it was magical and interesting and I feel like that's a little bit dead, yeah.

It doesn't really exist anymore, everyone is so tattooed that that exciting part has disappeared in some ways, yes, but that is all related to the quality of the work available and it has to be done now that the popularity has created the qualities and the qualities created popularity mm-hm so it's a two-way effect yeah, I guess so, I think people who aren't good at tattoos should be ashamed. I think everyone should have what I'm deaf like that, yeah, and I should. everyone, how did you see the future of tattoos, if rice prevails, you were the zenith of the popularity of the touch screen, now no one on the planet is going to talk to you, but it will go away, it will go away I agree I think it is becoming so popular, but I feel That peaks and then I'll start going down again.

I don't know when that will happen. I don't know how popular it will become before that happens, but I do believe that everything comes in waves in your life, you can see it when you go back to where I saw it when I started, where people used to say that you can't follow the rules, criminal , you have people stopping more episodes of other people's things, but a lot. While we're at it, there's someone, oh my god, on the damn page.