A practice in humility (on myself)
I decided to take the jump into tattooing myself so I can see what real skin is like. I know it was ambitious, but I was also expecting to make some mistakes. So, rip me apart, build me up, whateva. My goal is just to complete this (fixes, shading, details) and learn from my mistakes. Pictures are at 24hrs.
Here are noteable issues I had / mistakes I made and how I’m thinking about fixing them:
- I guess I’ll address the elephant which is that there are clearly lines going into places where they should not be going per my original design, and some shit circles 😂. My initial stencil did not stay very long after making some very important outlines. I learned in a very crappy, 2 hour manner WHY it did not stay AND how to reapply it in a way that would stay… in 6 pieces….
- Blowouts, squiggles, inconsistent lines. There are portions I plan on shading or filling and am just going to wait a few weeks to see the final healed result and go from there. Touch up lines that fall out.
- Awkward angles. No fix there, I think that was just good to experience firsthand because it made it terrible trying to stretch the skin and have a steady hand
- Problems getting ink into the skin, especially on inner thigh. I did this all with a 1007RL at 6 volts. I definitely don’t know the machine well enough, and probably not my skin either. I couldn’t tell what the exact issue was here which was a big red flag for me because I couldn’t correct what I didn’t understand and ended up trying to change a lot of things at once.
Final assessment: Had fun learning; Keeping day job