Word to the Wise

This past week I got to sit down with two awesome NYC-based tattoo artists. I don’t want to give anything major from the interviews away just yet, so I’ve chosen one question that I asked both of them. Keeping in line with my previous post on apprenticeships, I asked Daniel Mirro and Minka Sicklinger:

“What advice would you give someone who wants to be a tattoo artist?”

Aspiring artists, read carefully. 

Daniel Mirro is currently at Red Rocket Tattoo. His style is traditional American old school. (Click here to check out some of his work!)

Here’s what he had to say to aspiring tattoo artists:

“…Go to a university and pick a different avenue of [artistic expression]. I really don’t think that people should go out with the aspiration of being tattooers. I think that if through being covered in tattoos (which I think should be prerequisite for anyone that wants to tattoo) -I think that in the course of receiving a bodysuit, that if they receive the vibes from the Tattoo Gods and the people that are tattooing them are like ‘hey, I really think that this is something you should go down,’ then sure.… I think it’s a very hard thing, because when people start off, they don’t really do good tattoos. So every time a new tattooer is born, there’s that line of tattoos that they’re going to start from that’s not going to be the best... If you love it that much and you truly think that you want to be a tattooer: Sacrifice all of your life to it. Spend all your money on it. Obsess about it night and day.”

Minka Sicklinger, originally from the Netherlands, had similar ideas. She’s currently at East Side Ink. She has a really unique style; very abstract, a focus on detailed lines, and grey tones (Check out some of her work on tumblr!)

“Get tattooed first of all… I don’t believe you can be a tattoo artist if you don’t know the pain barriers. You need to talk your clients through that and if you don’t understand it, how are you going to tell someone else?... You will never work as hard… It never stops. I don’t ever have a day off. You have to really put your time in to do well and to produce good work… It’s not a ‘cool’ job. It’s long, long hours. You fuck your hands up, you fuck your back up. You get burnt out really quickly… It’s a really romanticized job. It’s an amazing job but its tough…It’s really important to work as a shop person and learn the proper sterilization of things… That’s the most important thing you can know.”

And there you have it, a little opinion from two established artists. Consensus so far is to have a lot of experience with getting tattooed yourself -and to have a true calling and passion for this particular art form. It is a lot of hard work. It's not all fun and games; Being a tattoo artist is the most difficult customer service job out there!