tattoos are an intricate art form that takes considerable preparation and planning. Finding a shop and artist who understands your unique requirements and style is paramount for success.
Step one is selecting a design. One way to get ideas is by exploring magazines.
The Process
Before getting tattooed, many factors should be taken into account. You need to ensure you feel at ease with the artist, pain tolerance, and size/location of the design.
Depending on your design, an artist will begin by applying an outline of it directly onto your skin using unique papers and inks. After completing this step, they’ll start coloring and shading their design. Sometimes this process goes quickly – and soon, the plan will be complete!
The Needle
A needle is one of the critical tools in tattooing. While hypodermic needles inject liquid into your skin for medical purposes, tattoo needles are solid and ink-coated to puncture through the skin as they plunge downward.
Piercing creates a small hole, up to 2 millimeters deep. Inside this opening are macrophages and fibroblasts – cells responsible for sealing and trapping ink within it – which serve to fill and hold it in.
Tattooing uses vacuum sealing technology to keep ink in place permanently within the skin, creating an impenetrable barrier and eliminating transfer to blood vessels for painless tattooing sessions.
There is an array of needle types, from flat needles – which are soldered directly onto a bar – with pin counts marked on them like 7FL or 5FS – to large formations of flat needles used together for color filling or thick lines in one pass. However, trauma could increase if hand motion isn’t controlled carefully when using these groupings.
The Ink
Tattoo needles puncture the skin multiple times every second, depositing tiny drops of ink with each puncture and penetrating deeper layers such as the dermis. This part of your skin is constantly renewed by shedding old cells and replacing them with fresh ones; thus, if tattoo ink were to be injected here, it would simply wash off in three weeks.
The Artist
Artists employ various skills and methods when crafting their artwork, from painting, and drawing, sculpture and beyond. However, all artists share certain commonalities when creating artworks of any medium.
Artists must balance structured training and free rein to explore new ideas throughout their careers. Ideas take time to form fully, so multiple sketches may need to be drawn out before completing a piece.
