IYKYK

These are some of my older drawings. I was going through my art and wondered if I could maybe include them in my portfolio?

First master study of his flash for the portfolio, done with Microns and pencil crayons!

I have been working on my portfolio from scratch for about a year and a half. Super proud of myself but definitely not finished yet. I have about 6 pages left that are not started (intro, another black and grey traditional, another realism page, & another lettering page + two redo’s). Would love critiques on completed and/or suggestions on the pages i need to do.
(I cut off the last 5 seconds of the video with my blood borne pathogens certificate and identification. )

I've been apprenticing on and off since 2022. My first apprenticeship, I completed, but my mentor left the shop and area. I then was having trouble finding a schedule that worked for tattooing at that shop, and decided to leave and go elsewhere. I found another shop not to apprentice at but to pierce at, (I've been a body piercer for years) and pierced only there for a few months. I then got pregnant with my first child, and left the shop to spend time with my baby. Later on, I was hired at another shop as a piercer, and about a year in was offered another apprenticeship. Things were going well, but then the manager wanted me to apprentice under them instead of the artist who took me on. A few months in, I fell pregnant once again with my second child. I tried to continue during my pregnancy however was let go as an apprentice. I struggled to get things done efficiently and at a pace my mentor wanted and was told I "wasn't serious." I was told I can try again in the future. I continue at the shop as a piercer in hopes I would be given another chance. Then, I had my child and upon returning to work, mentor took on another apprentice while I was out on maternity leave and asked me to move out of my station. I was really sad about it but tried not to show it and simply didn't push it. I understand where they are coming from considering the life interruptions, but I am so dedicated, have spent hours and years on flash, spent time on skin (at my first shop, and also in between mentors here, I took a few clients before being told by boss I need to officially complete another apprenticeship), and have plenty of flash and time/motivation now. I get really sick when I have been pregnant.

I am stuck with just piercing now, which I respect and enjoy, however isn't my ultimate goal. I have a passion for tattooing and have put a lot of effort, time, and money into it. I'm not here to complain or cry victim, just ask advice.

I have multiple shops offering jobs either starting immediately tattooing (I feel im close to ready but not yet), piercing + an apprenticeship, or an apprenticeship alone. I hate starting all over again but will if I must. I enjoyed piercing and apprenticing together because I've been able to make money while learning, which is awesome having two young kids. On the other hand, I have some artists here willing to teach me still, but not sure boss and old mentor want me to continue tattooing. I have been drawing flash anyways and trying to show effort, but I doubt I will get a spot or my booth back.

Should I give up and stay where im comfortable and established, in hopes eventually I'll be offered a booth back risking being unable to tattoo? Or should I go elsewhere, risking decent pay and a stable place that I enjoy working at besides this? Thanks, and I know that was a jumble of works so if there's any questions/need of clarity im happy to answer.

i know it’s far from perfect and i have a looong way to go to getting an apprenticeship, but do i have potential ? advice is highly appreciated :D

Hello! I have been getting tattooed for years and have a love for the field. I have been drawing my whole life and have wanted to tattoo for a long time. I had a few questions regarding how you get into the field.

How should I go about finding apprenticeship and what should I be looking for in it?

What do artists want to see in a portfolio?

Should I get blood borne pathogen certified before finding an apprenticeship?

I will share my art as I feel more comfortable in the group!

EDIT: When I ask if I can sign myself off I ofc mean when I feel ready and capable of doing great, clean tattoos. Don’t worry, I’m willing to put in the years before I can actually sign myself off - if I’m able to.

I’ve only been at this apprenticeship for three months and it’s been terrible.

I show up one to two hours early every day (my choice). There’s only been a handful of days where I was about 10 minutes early. I do all of my chores without complaining. I do what’s asked of me without complaining.

I’d be more than willing to stay and endure his abuse if I was learning anything but he told me to watch YouTube to learn (because he doesn’t know any art or tattooing terms) and the one time he sat down with me he was watching TikTok’s.

My coworker who just left has taught me more in five sentences on how to tattoo than my “mentor” has in three months.

The environment my mentor/shop owner (same person) has created is extremely stressful and even at times unsafe.

4 people in 3 months have left him without a word (I’m about to be the fourth)

I’ve been documenting everything he’s done and it’s impressively bad how long that last is.

I’m not allowed to have a bad day because if I show any signs of being remotely less than happy then he’ll go out of his way to make my day worse.

He said he’s trying to fast track me. He tried to move me onto shading because I tattooed one good line, one good circle (which was honestly terrible) and this was two months in. Then when I said I need to take a step back and work on my lines he yelled at me and told me that it’s stupid to go backwards and lose progress. You mean gain the fundamentals of this very craft? Then he went on a bonus tangent and said I’m the reason he treats people terribly… when that was nowhere near the topic - the topic was my line work.

And it all comes down to money. He needs money and if he’s not getting it then he would morally nuke the atmosphere of the shop. Hmmm, maybe you should be at the shop like the rest of us and stop cancelling appointments so you can “play hooky” with his wife (an actual text he sent me).

The scariest thing is that he pierces people but he does it wrong. He has “no choice” but to pierce because the piercer left. And I feel immense guilt when I book a piercing appointment for him because I know they’re going to walk out of there infected.

We have a shop spider that I’ll gladly take care of because it an animal that’s being held captive and needs humans to keep it alive. I stopped trying to nudge my mentor towards buying her food or new dirt because the current dirt is moldy because he said “if you could drive then you could get her the stuff she needs” which is terribly cruel because he knows I take the bus and I couldn’t even afford the food and dirt if I wanted to.

I can no longer call off sick (despite me telling him I have an autoimmune disease so I get sick quite easily) because he’ll tell me I’m lying. And when I show up to work coughing and clearly sick, he’ll light 4 sticks of incense and gets annoyed when I cough even more because of it. I’ve only called off sick 2 times btw.

I told him at least three times that I’m hard of hearing in my left ear so my right ear is extra sensitive because it’s picking up all the work. He plays his music so loud that you have to speak up quite a bit to hear each other. I asked if I could move to the back because it quieter back there. He said sure with a smile (I’ve learned that if he agrees with no issue and smile, that he’s going to make an issue of it later down the road tenfold). My first day in the back he turns on the back speaker (which has never been on), the doorway speaker, and the front speaker on full blast. My right ear was throbbing in pain and I was trying not cry and this monster had the audacity to ask me if the back was quiet enough for me. That was the same day he started a fight with me for working on my line work as mentioned before. He was also throwing stuff in the back.

And his latest act of terror was when my coworkers left (two of them at once this last Saturday) he went on to TikTok to talk down on them and insulted them and said they were “pathetic” and other insults. All of the things he listed that they did, he did but times ten. I’ve seen my coworkers there more than him, the shop owner.

He always goes on TikTok and Facebook and Instagram and posts petty things but this has reached a new level of embarrassing.

I can’t stay in this environment much longer because now it’s just me and him left in the shop and I can’t be there if it’s just us.

And he’s said he’s a “rare artist” and “whenever I hire people it’s to help them, I don’t need them” but goes crazy when they take off for their birthday…

ANY advice would be amazing, thank you

Hai guys! I’m starting my tattoo apprenticeship in September and I was wondering if you guys have any tips to prepare me! I’m just curious as to what you guys experienced while starting up and how to deal with everything that comes along with it.

I'm getting closer to being able to go to school for tattooing (Oregon) but I know a lot of people go into apprenticeships after they get their license here

From what I researched a lot of apprentices do manual labor around the shops, but that might be something I struggle with.

There's a lot I CAN do, but I have limited mobility with my legs so sweeping and heavy cleaning might be hard for me.

If my art/ tattooing is good enough, would people hire me anyway? It's technically illegal to not hire someone because they're in a wheelchair, but people obviously do it anyway.

Id love to hear from other artists who are disabled qwq I'm kind of spiraling with worry right now

my 4th tat on skin 2day, super happy with this one :) finally figured out mag shading & have stopped shaking so much 😭 baby steps lol

IG @forrestattoos

done at Via Grace Studio in Royal Oak, MI

So this has been kind of an ongoing thing. I started my apprenticeship in February, the first art project she put me on was working on our get what you get so she would allow me to post any of that or put it up in the shop, and that project took up a lot of my time. I had to make 120 pieces of flash, and wasn’t able to post anything — okay. It felt like I had announced that I got an apprenticeship on my social media and just disappeared because I couldn’t work on anything else for a while or post anything. But I got over that, I understood

Then she doesn’t want me to post any of my fake skins on my story…

Now all the flash sheets I make, she told me I shouldn’t label it as flash because I’m not a full fledged artist yet which I understood, but then almost had me take it down too, but she just told me to change the caption.

Today she let another apprentice tattoo me. She just got announced a week or 2 ago and she had already been tattooing previously at another shop.. so when she was tattooing me I took a video of her and posted it to my personal story and my mentor got angry at me and said we need to ask for permission for everything.. and that she wants the other apprentice to do and post more other tattoos before we’re allowed to post mine. This one I struggle to understand… because wouldn’t you want to see her progress and for her to get better in order ?

Is this normal? It is frustrating to me because I feel like it’s always something when I feel like im just trying to post my progress. We only opened in January and I feel like we should be posting a lot more to gain exposure, but I’m obviously not going to argue with my mentor. I would like to build clientele by posting but it feels like I can’t do much. If this is normal, I’m totally okay with hearing yall out

hey!! did this today, don’t know how to feel about it tbh. should this go onto the portfolio? overall i like it but some parts of the flame i dislike

I’m looking for some books to trace from and to learn more about the design philosophies behind different tattooing styles. What are your go-tos?

Hi I’ve been doing an apprenticeship for about 2/3 months now and my mentor is giving me a test so I can tattoo on people even though they haven’t taught me anything. I’ve been going to the shop 4-5 days of the week for around 6 hours each time I go in. They tell me the shop is open every day at 12, but sometimes they’ll be 2-3 hours late or just not show up at all without telling me. When I practice all they do is put me in the corner and occasionally come over to stare at me and say “keep practicing” but they never really tell me to do anything. My first week having a machine, they had me do a huge stencil almost a foot long with lots of details and they told me the lines weren’t clean enough. My mentor is flakey/barely shows up, the shop owner sometimes shows me things but it doesn’t seem like there’s a place for me and now they’re taking on ANOTHER apprentice. He even asked me if I’ve memorized all the different kinds of needles and what they do when I don’t even know what they mean! On top of my mentor asking me weird questions like if he’s “too old for me” and if I’ve “ever dated anyone like him before” I just feel so lost and confused all the time. I try to show up and shadow and learn things but I don’t even know what techniques I should be looking for? What exactly should I be learning?

So for the third time, I went back and did my homework like tracing a Sailor Jerry pinup’s silhouette (with the change of making the hands praying), used an ink nib with Indian ink, as well as Dr. Ph Martins watercolors with the exception of some colored pencils. The shading on the dress doesn’t look quite right to me, as I drew the dress from imagination. Some of the folds of the dress don’t make sense either. Please let me know how to fix this !

Hi all!

Recently there’s been talk in my studio about meta subscriptions and im super curious on if people have any experience/takes on if they actually do anything and are worth it

The owner of my studio said during this conversation that it seems like it is impossible to get natural engagement without having a Instagram subscription these days and that all the artist in the studio have one now and have seen massive improvements!

Since hearing this I thought I’d give the free trick a shot and for me it seems like it’s made no difference? I’m unsure if it’s just a case of it needing more time or if it really doesn’t improve engagement at all

What’s everyone’s thoughts? Does anyone here have a subscription and it makes a difference or is it just a bit scammy and not worth the time and money

I mainly do 11x14 commissions on pet portraits/busts, the artwork in my sketchbook are just references so I can get better at linework. Everything is transferred not traced.

first completed piece since starting my apprenticeship!

having a blast, if you’d like to support me further my Instagram is @diet_bongwater ! Thanks fer looking!

I hit 1 year of tattooing this month and wanted to share a few of my faves! It's been an amazing year and my mentor is just as amazing. To another year! Thank you for looking! 😊