PP: Spending time at Shades of Ink - Day 3
The tattooing compenses...
As I wrote about yesterday today I had the pleasure and honour of having one of my own design tattooed on an actual client of Vinces. I got to the studio nice and early as the client was scheduled to come in at 1 o'clock and I wanted to make sure I would have time to make any adjustments to the design. Fortunately both myself and Vince were still happy when we had another look. While I was making sure the studio was clean and all the equipment was set up Vince went about making the design into a stencil, for this he used transfer paper and copied the design onto it.
When it came around to the client turning up I was both excited and nervous, even though I wouldn't be doing the actual tattooing I was still incredibly excited to know that an actual paying customer would be getting something that I had designed placed forever under his skin.
When the client arrived I showed him the design, he absolutely loved it! The feeling of knowing he was happy with it gave me such a confidence boost although the trickiest bit was still to come.
Vince went about setting up the equipment and sanitizing the studio, as this tattoo was only outline for now Vince used only one ink, that being a black Alla Prima.
I sat and watched for as long as I could whilst also working front of house talking and booking in customers, the tattoo itself took around an hour and a half to two hours despite only being a medium sized tattoo. This was in part due to the fact I had still retained some small detail in the finished design as I didn't want the design to be too minimal.
When the tattoo was finished I managed to get a proper look, it looked wicked! Despite the skin being a bit raw and red from hours of tattooing the design looked brilliant. The customer was also very pleased with the result. The feeling of knowing how happy he was with it really made me feel accomplished and made me think about how rewarding a job such as Vince's is.
When leaving the client told me that he was also thinking about getting a samurai tattoo in the near future and that he would love me to design it for him, I guess time will tell as to when or if this will happen but I cannot wait for another prospect to design a tattoo for a client!
As for me today has been my last at that of Shades of ink. I have absolutely loved my time here and am already itching to get back and work for hopefully a longer period of time! I have learnt so much and can't wait to try and take away some of what I've learnt and apply it to my own practice back in the studio. I will be posting a write up in the next couple of days as to what it is exactly that I have learnt and what I intdend to do next.