My journey continues of course, and with this continuing journey, new steps have jumped up and taken place and made this traditional hand tattoo thang smoother and much better in my humble opinion. I have of course undertaken these steps on my own, opting for these steps to be added to the process of my learning and I am ever grateful that I did. My wife, being the ever so logical and rational part of me, insisted that I not rush to tattoo myself and instead get practice skin and then ink myself. Thus the next steps in my journey were born…
Step three: Large piece of flash or free-hand
I decided to go with a free-hand flower, one of my non-natural floral pieces but put it to tattoo flash instead of sketching or painting. It took me just over four hours through two sittings over two days to complete, and while it isn’t winning any awards, it turned out decent and taught me so incredibly much. After doing a bunch of small pieces, I was confident enough, and after completing this larger tattoo, I built so much knowledge and how-to information from doing it, that I am excited and anxious to get started on the next piece. I didn’t just jump into the next piece though… instead I took another step…
Step four: Learn from someone… something… somehow!
This step was one I decided I wanted… neigh… needed to do because I wanted tips, pointers, and a bit of extra know-how, from someone who has been there, and done that. I found the famous traditional tattoo artist Lily Liu, and purchased their course on traditional hand poke tattooing, becoming more and more obsessed with the art as the course went on. Lily is an incredible teacher and the course was phenomenal, teaching me more than I had initially even signed up for… it was nearly two courses worth of content in one!
Now I’m purchasing some things Lily mentioned in the course, followed by a little more practice on faux skin, but I do plan on secretly and spontaneously just tattooing myself out of the blue and beginning the whole foray into covering my body. Just as I wrote this tonight, I took time to tattoo on the practice skin for a few hours and I really liked the results once again… especially since I learned so much from the course and applied it.
Now, a friend of mine asked why I’m not posting pictures of the practice skins, I am on Facebook, but they aren’t quite as special as the first one I actually put into my own skin, so I’m not posting them here. I will post every piece of ink I put on my own body, that much I promise, as well as much of what I put on others.
…and what are the next steps in my journey into traditional tattooing? Your guess is as good as mine, but it will be something that helps make me better at my craft, that much is for certain.