A Guide to Tattooing (2024)

Everything in this guide is written & based on my real life experience as a tattoo artist and what I've learned through-out the years. It's important to understand that the tattooing world has a million different ways to go about it and every mentor has their own ways of doing it. I will be describing the general & key points to being a tattoo artist and what it takes.

Enjoy the read, Rheotic.

To start off, if you want to be a tattoo artist depending on how you want to go about it we always start from the bottom. Whether we have money to buy the required equipment, or not. So I will be starting off with the very bottom and how I started off as I didn't really have the money or the resources to necessarily buy everything I needed, nor was it too accessible for me at the time. So in-case you are roleplaying a hood tattoo artist, or un-professional I'd recommend developing from this point.

STENCILS

• Starting from the very, very basics. With every tattoo you need a stencil, the stencil is a must in doing any tattoo. Even if you're doing a free-hand tattoo there will always be some guide-lines and a rough representation of how the tattoo will look on the skin.

This is how a normal, traditional stencil paper should look like.

Now that we know how a stencil looks like and it's purpose, I'll give a rough explanation on what's the point of the two layers that you see. The first layer is the paper, it is only to be used to actually draw the stencil and as you draw the stencil the layer underneath which is the ink layer, will transmit the ink with every stroke that you make on the paper stencil. So in the end, all of the stencil will be transmitted on the back of your first layer which is just the paper. Think of it as a stamp, the more pressure you apply with every stroke the more ink will be copied on the back of the first layer.

Once you have finished drawing up your stencil you can now get a rough cut-out of your stencil that you will be applying on the skin. Follow this video to see how it's actually done.

• Now that we've understood how the stencil works, let's talk about the transfer paste and how it works.

It is pretty straight forward and just how you saw you in the video, you simply apply it on the skin and then you apply the stencil and the ink will simply transfer on the skin. Now, if you are to role-play a more hood artist or let's just say a poor artist and you don't necessarily want to be the professional type you can always make the transfer paste at home, it consists of widely available products. I personally used to make them at home before I went professional and bought them from dealers.

It is a pretty straight forward process and all you need is: Aloe Vera gel, a Speedstick regular and alcohol gel. You microwave the speed stick in a bowl for 30 seconds and you end up with goo-ey solution that you later on mix with the aloe vera and the alcohol gel. And boom, you have yourself your ghetto home-made transfer solution that you can use instead of having to find a shop that sells it for 3 times it's worth.

You can follow the video I will link underneath, the guy explains it very well.

THE EQUIPMENT

So this is where things are starting to get a little tricky and confusing, in the tattooing world we have many machines and every machine has it's own purpose. Today we'll cover the two types of machines that artists use.

We have the coil machine and the rotary machine. The coil machine is usually more bare-boned, and it's manual. A lot of the adjustments that you want to make to the machine when you want to switch from lining to shading is a very tedious process and so a lot of artists that use those coil machines usually have two machines, one's for shading and the other's for lining. But generally speaking it can be applied for the rotary ones aswell, the rotary ones are just more modern and easier to adjust as you do not need to take them apart.

Coil Machine:

The coil machines are very loud and often can be very annoying to work with for prolonged periods of time as they make a really loud, annoying buzzing sound. I've had many times where clients who are scared of tattoos had to back down purely because the coil machines are just generally more intimidating, and rough overall. But, they are cheaper and create amazing bold lines that every artist wants.

Rotary Machine:

Those are a lot less annoying to work with, very simple and straight forward when it comes to adjusting the needle length and can be done on the go. They are very good, but sometimes lack the capability of creating bold lines like the coil machines. Don't ask me why, but every time I used a coil machine and a rotary machine the lines were always better using the coil machine. The rotary machines are typically called pen machines because of how they look, some find them easier and more comfortable. It's totally up to you and personal preference whether you want to use a coil machine or a rotary machine.

Now that we've covered the machines, let's move on to the needles.

The needles are if not, the most important as without a good needle your tattoo will simply be awful. The needles come in many, many variations and sizes. And every needle size is used to create a certain type of tattoo. Some needles are made for shading, which are typically called MAGs (Magnums), Round Shaders. And some are made for lining which are typically called RL (Round Liners). As a really basic, unprofessional tattoo artist you'd probably only use one or two types of needles out of the wide, variety of needles available to use simply because the more basic you are, the more basic your tattoos are. Only the more sophisticated artists that make one of one tattoos use the less commonly known needles which I will now list below.

So those were the needles, the next important thing about tattoos is the sterility of your tattooing station and the general way about it. It is very important you wear gloves, use a clean cloth, use a cover for your machine, and a new grip tape with every new use.

Typically as a tattoo artist you'd use one-time use products such as your tape grip, your machine cover and so on & so forth. You will never want to recycle the same needle as it is simply stupid, and will guarantee an infection as you're mixing two types of bloods from one person to another. So if the last person you tattooed carries a disease, that needle will carry it to the next person. So, yeah. It's pretty common sense.

I'd be writing an essay if I will describe EVERYTHING you need so it's better you just watch this video.

UNDERSTANDING TATTOO STYLES

I'd say the best trait for a tattoo artist to have is to understand what type of needles were being used to create a tattoo, and this will help you tremendously in role-playing your style of tattooing. Understanding needle sizes and their purpose is very, very important. So let me just demonstrate.

I hope you get the general idea of what I tried to represent here but every line & shade is due to a certain needle size, but typical for fine line tattoos you'd go for 3 Round Liners, or even 1 Round Liners for a very thin line, but for bold lines you'd want to use a 7 Round Shader or a 10 Round Liner.

Watching this video will make better sense if you still haven't understood exactly what I mean.

SKIN LAYERS

The skin is made of three layers, the epidermis, dermis and hypodermis. Understanding the fine line between those three layers is what will present great tattoo performance as if you dig the needle too deep it will create a blow-out and the ink will pretty much just spread all around the skin and create a weird little bubble that will potentially ruin the tattoo, if you don't hit the needle too deep the ink will not stick and you will end up just damaging the skin and have to go over it again, which again will yield bad tattoo performance.

What you seen above is the perfect example of a blow-out fuck up, now this is the worst possible out come when it comes to blow-outs. You have to be really, really bad to reach this type of blowout. So this is why understanding the layers of the skin is very important.

The needle should be striking the skin precisely 0.5mm to 1.5mm in the skin, in order to hit a perfect line you'd want your needle to puncture through the epidermis and just a little through the dermis. Anywhere below the epidermis can cause damage to the skin & a blow-out.

SETTING UP YOUR STATION

A pretty straight forward process and is better explained with a video rather than text, so please refer to the video below.

TECHNIQUES

One of the hardest thing to learn about tattooing is the techniques, lining techniques & shading. I will list a short list of videos that explain it in the best way possible, enjoy.

And that's about it, this guide is still considered a WIP as I've still to add more to it. If you have any questions feel free to tag and ask away.

There is so much more to tattooing but this guide will get you started with the basics, and there is only so much that I can explain in text as I'd have to go on & on for days to explain everything.

I will link an interesting extra read about coil machines written by a famous artist and machine builder.

I hope you had a good read & good luck.