The Ouroboros - Part 2

Sep 8

What am I doing this for

Tattooing is not exactly the kind of career you get into “just to pay the bills”.

I was super young when I got into this profession. Actually too young. But like a lot of tattooers, that once in a lifetime opportunity came, where someone was actually WILLING to apprentice me and I had to believe it was now or never. That opportunity was never coming back. So I did it. I had a hard time and don’t exactly cherish those memories but I learned how to tattoo and have been doing it ever since. A lot of us wash out and can’t hack it and boy did I think I was one of them. I’m not tough or gritty, I’m barely even lucky. But somehow I kept afloat through this industry all these years, past the initial obstacles and then learned to dodge and weave from there. Here I am. I love my job.

But if ALL I wanted to do was pay my bills and go home, this isn’t the career I would have picked. Even if I was young and naive at the time. I was old enough to know there are plenty of other jobs I could have gotten, to clock in and clock out and live a simple, predictable life. We get into tattooing because we want to live vibrantly. Meet insane people from all walks of life and do nothing but create crazy artwork everyday, ranging from gorgeous, intricate and ornate pieces, all the way to the most batshit imagery like cartman threatening to bear-mace scooby doo for a hall pass while dressed as dog the bounty hunter (thank you, Stephen).

And this is where my line in the sand moment comes in.

I love tattooing.

I don’t want to tattoo just to clock in and clock out.

Some of you may see these next statements as a personal attack or offense. And I want to stress to everyone reading, that this is not designed to insult you, nor is it meant to hurt anyone’s feelings or personal taste. So I will stack my words as delicately as I can.

I don’t want to spend my days doing pinterest tattoos or the new un-tattooable, AI-rendered images people send me or copy and paste fine line tattoos.

But at the end of the day, these tattoos help keep my bills paid. How could I —ever— be ungrateful for that? …Gratitude isn’t what’s missing here though…

It’s passion.

So when I say I don’t want to spend my days doing these tattoos, it isn’t to say I don’t want to do them EVER. Because I need you. I am not some celebrity tattooer with a handpicked clientele base who can do whatever I want whenever I want. That concept also doesn’t even appeal to me. The thought of that makes tattooing feel so pretentious and cold. Which is exactly the opposite of what I want. And sure, I say no to plenty of requests that come in, it’s important to know when I’m not the right guy for the job. But that’s based on my personal and professional discretion.

My point is though, that I am but a mere small town tattooer and tattooing things I just am not inspired by every now and then is just simply part of my job. And some days tattooing is just that — a job, and that is totally okay. My struggle is that this has recently become an imbalanced ratio. Most of my days have consisted of uninspiring tattoos that make me go home feeling depressed, tired, mentally overworked and completely unfulfilled.

This could be for a lot of reasons.

-people can’t afford larger work right now

-trends are shifting and people are influenced by what they see the most. That being the ever popular minimalism, fineline styles

-there may be too many artists and not enough clients

There’s probably a thousand and one reasons why. My own taste and tattoo styles change and morph all the time. How often do see me come out and say “I wanna do THIS now” after saying just the day before “sorry I don’t tattoo that kind of stuff”. I am impossible hahaha, I know this. Which is why part of the problem could very well be me, as I had adopted the “fineline” title into my list of skills. I need to be very self aware of the fact I am responsible for that. Because to clarify, no one is being blamed for —my— creative burnout. No one has done anything wrong. I want everyone to remember that. I am the one saying yes to these tattoos, therefore I would never punish or shame anyone for getting the tattoo they want that I agreed to. Especially those of you reading this who’s taste in tattoos differs from mine. We all define what inspires us completely differently. And that’s why this is a matter or my own personal passion and not the responsibility of any one single client.

All I know is I miss tattooing. Ya know? Like…THAT kind of tattooing. Do you know what I mean? I miss waking up excited to go to work. Lately, I open my calendar and see what’s ahead and I find myself starving for that excitement from it. I’m just building myself up to do another carbon copy, generated image that has no life to it. I want to bring back tattoos that look like tattoos and I have no idea how to articulate what I mean by that other than hoping there’s a few of you out there who intuitively understand exactly what I’m talking about.

So how can this cycle be broken? How can I revive my passion? I’ve been working on the answer to this privately in my own time this past summer. I’ve been taking this current wave of burnout as an opportunity to reconnect with myself if I can’t connect with my tattoos at the moment. Something I’m very passionate about is physical media. Death to the world of physical media has been long in the making. It’s reflected most strongly in video games and tv/movies. (PS owners know what I’m talking about) When I immerse myself in things I can physically hold like a book, magazine, dvd, sculpture, handheld game, etc, I find so much creative energy from these things that scrolling on a screen doesn’t quite give me. Don’t get me wrong, I am an avid pinterest/internet user. There is definitely some hypocrisy in my previous statement but I think what I’m trying to press about here is a sense of balance. I am not demonizing any one thing in absolution. Only a Sith deals in absolutes.

To start this rebirth of creativity, I went back to exactly that - tangible forms of creating. All summer I painted. Things I haven’t even shown anyone yet. Created without pressure. I read books in a language I don’t even understand by looking at the photos, googling a word or two and filling in the blanks through implied context. I built gundams and nerdy models. I started writing, not just into this blog. I visited zoos, aquariums, museums, and left my house whenever possible to be present in a new environment. I watched new movies without a phone in my hand. I immersed myself in both short and long form media. I didn’t rely on tattooing to fill the void of personal creative fulfillment. In a way, I think there’s something positive in all of this. I know of too many tattooers who cannot exist with tattooing. They have formed a fully codependent relationship with tattooing and have made it their entire identity. So when they’re not tattooing, they’re absolutely miserable people. You can love tattooing, it can be your favorite thing in the entire world and you can miss it in a healthy way when you’re not doing it. But relying on it to be who you are is a detriment. And not depending on my tattoo work to give me that satisfaction while it’s been unable to, has been a surprising and rewarding outcome of this recent burnout.

okay, first things first.

I want to end this chapter and start a new one. I want show you what has fostered my creative energy these last few months while I’ve been emotionally absent in my tattooing. And if this connects with anyone, I want to offer you a unique opportunity from how I usually do things because I want to tattoo again.

Let’s start with the hard part.

Number one? This one’s gonna break a lot of hearts…

—exhale—-

death to fineline.

More specifically, minimalism-type fineline. Illustrative is still totally welcome.

sigh

Yup. You heard me. It’s out.

Not for good. But for now? I’m saying toodles. Which might be the dumbest, riskiest things to do in the height of one of my slowest years to date in the midst of one of the most turbulent economic times the tattoo industry has faced since 2008 :) I really do know how to make things 1000x easier for myself, don’t I? SARCASM INTENSIFIES

But yes. From here on out, I’m shifting away from fineline tattoos because I never wanted to be “the fineline tattooer” to begin with. It was a symptom of a style I already tattooed and then eventually, it snowballed and became basically the majority of my bookings. Everyone else disappeared. I won’t say no to EVERY single one, because hey, a girl’s still gotta eat! But for my sanity, I need to kick fineline back and re-diversify my daily workload.

Now. If you’re gonna take something away, you need to put something else in it’s place. I’ve put together a little digital scrapbook to share with you of where I reeeeally want to take my tattooing right now.

In the spirit of remaining present, I didn’t always take photos of the things I saw “out in the wild”. And since I said I’m not COMPLETELY demonizing the internet as a source for references, I spent a little time gathering some personal references to show you alongside some of my own photos. So as a disclaimer, some of these photos do not belong to me and their original owners are unknown.

Now here’s my proposal…

If you’ve made it this far into me rambling on and on, I congratulate you.

Now that you’ve seen where my head is, emotionally and creatively, I want to invite a select number of people to do a few exclusive tattoo projects. I wrote up a list of requirements, describing my ideal candidates. I have no specific timeline for this, no click-baity catchphrases to sell you bullshit right now, just looking for a handful of people who this speaks to. Here’s who I’m looking for:

a legal adult, duh. (18 and up only)
someone with at least a few tattoos that has an understanding of their pain tolerance and is experienced with the process
you have the availability and are open to doing full day sessions
is open, trusting, and 100% comfortable with giving me full creative control
has large open blank spaces on their body for large scale tattoo work to go
potentially open to more graphic, adult-themed imagery (not a requirement for all though, just hoping some of you pervs pull up salutes)
can afford to complete the work without long gaps in between each session (looking to do sessions at most, a few weeks apart)
loves anime, traditional japanese-inspired art, italian majolica art, blue china, realism, let’s say just general nerdy content, and basically everything shown in the gallery
comfortable being photographed

These sessions will be one on one, not super different from my usual set up. But since I’m essentially looking to recruit models to rebuild my portfolio and restore my creative drive in tattooing, these sessions will be offered at a super discounted rate from my normal hourly rate.

Ideally I’d like to start funneling everyone in starting in October and November but this is not required. As always, I will do my best to work with everyone’s schedules.

I’ve created a sign up below where I’ll send out design ideas to you monthly to those of you who are interested. You can either wait for me to make something cool to send out, OR, hit me up and serve yourself up to me on a platter and let me know you want me to paint you like one of my french girls (titanic reference number TWO, I am on FIRE lately…*dusts off shoulders*).

So with that, let me introduce to you…

PROJECT: OUROBOROS

This sign up sheet is different from my regular newsletter that I send out. Keeping them separate will help keep me from obnoxiously flooding everyone’s emails with junk if you want to see my updates but are NOT interested in this particular project and vise versa. If you’re signing up for both…well good luck to you, friend. Godspeed.

I will also keep this send out on a monthly schedule, unlike my newsletter that I send out organically.

How does the 1st of the month sound? Easy to remember, every month always has a 1 in it, and everyone is usually in a bad mood because yay, rent. So maybe this will give you something to look forward to? ME. sorry BAHAHA.

If you made it this far, I am so sorry, I literally cannot shut up hahaha. But hey, you asked to be here and you can leave any time so this is on you.

I can now, with confidence, finally conclude this 2 part blog series of babble.

Thanks for reading, friends.

"You've made this day a special day, just by your being you."

.₊⊹༻✽༺⊹₊.

emily rose