I’ve been tattooing for over 16 years now. I wouldn’t say that makes me super established, but I’ve been blessed enough to be featured in some magazines early on in my career. Because of this, a lot of younger tattooers remember me from these magazine articles and such.

When talking with tattooers who are in their first few years of working, I get asked the question “What can I do to make my tattoos better?”

In the past, I’ve given very individual advice. As time has gone on, though. I’ve found advice that applies to everyone. This is how everyone can make their work better.

The thing is though, you probably won’t do it. No one seems to. I’m not consistent with it.

First, take every design as far as it can go before tattooing. Do several thumbnail sketches for every piece. Pick your favorite. Draw out the piece, then do a value study and a color study. Get advice from people whose opinion you respect throughout the process.

Have the design in color completely finished and developed before you even start tattooing. Then you’re able to solely focus on the technical aspects of the piece when you’re tattooing.

If this seems like you don’t have enough time to do all this with your workload, then you need to learn to live more frugally and do fewer tattoos.

Second, in regards to technical elements of tattooing, keep a dated journal where you write detailed information on every tattoo- what needles you used, ink, color mixtures, machines, any info about the client’s situation that day, etc. This gives you a record so when you see stuff healed, you can refer back to it and know what worked well and what didn’t.

Invest as much money as you possibly can into the best equipment out there. Regularly try new things, but only try one new thing at a time. (For example, don’t try new needles and new ink using new machines.)

Third, while doing all that, constantly be working on new personal art that reflects an original direction you’re trying to push your work towards while also pushing the boundaries of what you’re capable of artistically. Share this work regularly; if you hide it, it doesn’t count. Also regularly work on basic universal art skills- life drawing, rendering, painting from observation, etc.

Last, develop relationships with people in a variety of fields who you admire both due to their work and their character; people who will challenge you. Regularly seek their feedback in regards to the work you’re doing. Listen but also develop the personal character to accept when advice is valid, and to know when it goes against your core principles and should be ignored.

This is how you become the best. This is the path. I know, though, that from what all this requires, most people will not do all this. They will avoid something either through refusal, laziness, or the core of it all- fear. That’s why the best are the best.

I know this is very specific to tattooing, but there are some universal principles there. I’m sure you can easily pinpoint the few different things you have to do to be the best in your own field.

Accept that you’re scared and face your fear. Be the best you can be. Then get better.

Thank you.

Working regularly on genuinely creative thought can be very draining. After a few good bursts, many times my well dries up and I unconsciously fall into common thought patterns. Looking back on my work I’ll see compositions repeated, subject matter regularly used in similar manners, etc. This is all despite trying to create new things.

I’ve found that I have to trick my brain to do new things. A major way that I’ve done this is throughout incorporating randomness into my process.

There are countless ways to do this, but here’s one simple one.

Write down twenty different subjects- they can be things you specifically pick, or stuff you observe, or things you pick randomly from a magazine. You could also have someone else make the list for you. Assign each subject a number, 1-20.

Roll a twenty sided dice (available at comic and game stores) two or three or times. Draw something that incorporates those subjects together. This will force you into new problem solving and unique juxtapositions.

If you hate your roll, don’t dwell on it, just re-roll. If you love something you draw from this, work to make it a finished piece of art.

I hope this exercise helps to spawn some very cool work. I’d love to see what you create; feel free to share.

Thank you.

(This was a post from late 2014 on the blog from my old website. It’s been slightly re-edited with new photos.)

First, before I begin, after reading the last blog post, did we start something? If so, that’s awesome. Keep going, daily. If not, do it.

Ok, here is what I struggle with.

I struggle with a need to fill every moment with a mental fidget of some sort. I constantly feel a compulsive urge to occupy myself. Whether it’s my phone, a magazine, a TV, I thoughtlessly seek distraction.

By filling every moment I’m awake, I allow myself no gaps of silence. I’m never allowing myself to be bored.

In Die Empty, Todd Henry states the importance of gaps and boredom as times for ideas to come, and as an opportunity to organically reflect and reorganize. Those times in line at a coffee shop are better spent doing nothing rather than using it as an opportunity to seek entertainment. (which we may disguise as “being productive”… Let’s be honest with ourselves here.)

We have to give ourselves permission to do nothing for stretches of time. This allows us a reset. We can reflect.

When we enter this state, we can start to appropriately judge our priorities and how our actions reflect those. Over time we start focusing on the right things more and more often.

Please don’t think that I’m knocking technology by saying all this. I’m by no means a Luddite. However– tech, like anything, should be assessed and incorporated into our lives, not intruding.

A good way to deal with this is to schedule time each day that we will respond to all but the most important texts, emails, calls, and social media in our lives. We wait to respond until it’s a time that we choose. I’ve by no means been 100% on this, but when I have done it, I’ve found that I respond more regularly and more successfully than taking on everything as it comes to me.

Choosing the time and duration of both entertaining ourselves and connecting put us into a proactive state of mind. We become starters rather than constantly responding to things.

When I do afford myself silence though, I still struggle. The mind doesn’t want to calm down and be silent. It wants to send us a barrage of thoughts non-stop. This is where meditation comes in.

Personally I don’t practice any particular form of meditation, but I sit or lay for 10+ minutes and let my thoughts go, acknowledging but not holding on.

I also sometimes use a binaural beats app, and a isochronic tones app, Mindwave, and Mindwave2, respectively. They’re intended to activate certain brainwaves. I’ll run one of the programs on those, usually delta or theta based, listening through my headphones for 20 minutes. Afterwards I always feel remarkably clear and renewed, much like I had slept for a couple hours.

Also I’ve tried one other thing to control my attention addiction. I made a pact with myself that every time I felt the urge to check my phone, I opened my sketchbook instead. I found that incredibly successful. But, of course, I eventually fell back into old habits.

Time to start again.

Thank you for reading.

You have no idea how much I appreciate everyone reading and commenting on my posts. One comment I’ve read several times is people describing my posts as inspiring. Truthfully, though, my goal is not to inspire.

Ultimately I write these posts to myself. This is advice that I need, but I feel others may be in the same boat.

Since I started the tattooing path, I have never had any shortage of imagery, reference, possible ideas, or motivational material available. If anything, with social networking, specifically with Instagram, I’ve been inundated with too much inspiration. It’s paralyzing.

There is some value to searching for inspiration. Much of the time, though, we’re just procrastinating because we’re scared to start. Actually starting is where the magic is.

I want you to actually start. Now, if at all possible. If not In this moment, then definitely today. If you’re too busy, then time yourself and work for only ten minutes today. If you can’t spare that, make it five. If you can’t spare that, then make it one minute. It’s still more than nothing. Quit your excuses.

But… it has to be something meaningful and original. Be fearless. Don’t be afraid to make something ugly or stupid, but genuinely try.

After the time you’ve allotted yourself, if you hate it, don’t get rid of it. Cross it out if you need to. I’d suggest sharing it with at least one person, though, no matter how you feel about it.

If you like what you made, work more every day on it until it’s done. Feel free to stick to your allotted time each day if you’re busy, but work on it EVERY DAY.

What do you do once you finish? Start something meaningful and original the next day.

What do you do if you hated it?
Start something meaningful and original the next day.

This is how great things are made.

I recently took a drawing workshop with Steven Assael. He went over keeping a sketchbook, and advocated keeping one where the pages are easily removable. That way you’re not married to anything you draw. You can cross drawings out. You can accept that some are going to be bad.

In his words, “You have to make a lot of bad drawings in order to get really good at drawing.”

Think about that. He didnt just say the bad drawings were a possibility. He said that regularly doing work that fails to meet our own expectations is essential to progress. If you never do, you’re not stretching and you’re not learning.

Oh lord it’s painful but it’s a good pain.

GO START NOW.

Thank you.

(This is a post from late 2014 from my previous blog. Re-edited a bit, with new images added.)

The one thing that holds us back as tattooists is conforming to genres. When work becomes a genre, the life gets sucked out of it and originality and progress ends.

I need to clarify the difference between style and genre, because most people misuse the word “style”. Style is an individual thing. It’s the personal touch inherent in our work, whether we like it or not.

However, when people ask “What style do you do?”, they’re wanting to know what category they can put us in. Do we do traditional (old school), Japanese, tribal, biomech, black work, new school, neotraditional, etc?

I’m going to pick on neotraditional here because honestly I hate that term. It’s so clunky-sounding. It screams having been invented by some random magazine editor struggling to come up with a name for something. However, what I’m trying to get across applies to all genres of tattooing.

The basic goals of design in every tattoo are essentially the same– they should be clean and understandable from a fair variety of distances. They also need to be designed and applied in such a way so that they will remain this way through the client’s lifetime, within reason. This is very important. Within a few basic universal concepts, there are countless ways of accomplishing this.

The thing is, though, we only get one shot with a tattoo. The fear that arises from that fact is near paralyzing. We could do all the prep work and make something different and original, but there’s this fear- that it might fail.

The easy way out here is obvious. We do what’s been done before… because we know it works. That way we can dazzle our clients and peers with our technical skill and great taste. We can make perfectly good tattoos this way; but can this work ever be genuinely incredible? I argue no.

I fell in love with Timothy Hoyer, Grime and Adam Barton’s work early in my career. They each had such fresh, original approaches, bringing in things I had never seen before in tattooing. Soon that led to studying Marcus Pacheco and Dan Higgs, and actually understanding Ed Hardy’s work and impact. As time went on, other pioneers came about- Tim Biedron, Lars Uwe, Thomas Hooper. Each of these people did something NEW.

So many times I’ve experienced it, though- one tattooer makes something genuinely new, then others appropriate it directly, changing it just enough so it’s not copying. Enough people do this/enough time passes, and so a “genre” is born. So it becomes, “I’m not copying Barton/Uwe/whoever, I do neotraditional.”

By buying into a genre, we separate ourselves from the thought processes behind them, WHY things are approached the way they are. Thus, we do a tattoo, our thoughts are in the wrong place, they’re not your own.

I think- “Yeah, I’m going to do this tattoo of a woman. I’m going to use a thick line with fine line details. Then I’m going to put solid black under her lower eyelids and under nose in black because I’ve seen that and it looks awesome, and I’m going to use just black, red, and yellow, and I’m going to frame it out in a diamond shape.”

I should be thinking- “I’m going to do this tattoo of a woman. I’m getting across a look of dark sadness- I want that, my client wants that. What sort of lighting gets that across? What sort of colors get that across? What original way can I approach this? What’s an interesting way to form a good silhouette? How will this piece fit into the entirety of my work? How can it be mine? How can I take this farther?” Then again- “How can I take this farther?”

We love throwing out terms like “tied to tradition” and “standing on the shoulders of giants” to justify what is ultimately fear. We can all be giants. I can be a giant. You can be a giant.

Perhaps taking what’s been established and putting some original spin on it isn’t enough any more.

Can we start from zero? Establish the important things as tattooists- clarity; and being built to last. From there get in the personal work to find an honest, genuine, original way to make our work.

Neo-trad: the moment you name a genre, you suck the life out of it and end originality and progress

I’ve always enjoyed this quote, and I continue to try to learn its meaning better every single day-
“We seek not to imitate the masters, rather we seek what they sought.”

Thank you.

This site is still very much in progress. Once it’s fully polished, it will have a full portfolio and active blog. Also, my online store will be built into this site, making it much easier to get my original art, prints, and such.

For now, while I’m building the site, the absolute best thing you can do is join my mailing list. By joining, you can have the first opportunities to book appointments when my books are open. Also, you’ll be the first to see new work and any other updates, including my travel schedule.

Lastly, here are some photos of a tattoo I completed recently that exemplifies the color scheme I’m focusing on in my visual aesthetic.