A History of Tattoos & Body Art: What to Expect When Getting Tattooed

Series Summary

Tattoos have been a part of human culture since long before recorded history, and this ancient practice of dermal pigmentation is practiced worldwide. Tattoos have played various roles in numerous cultures from rites of passage and signs of religious devotion to sheer desire to ornament oneself.

If you’re thinking of getting your first tattoo, your tenth tattoo, or just want to find out more about the tattooing process, this series of free videos will help answer any questions you might have about the professional tattooing experience. Expert tattoo artist Rick Wyckoff offers a wealth of knowledge on the history of tattoos, explains how the tattoo machine works, and offers tips on how to care for a new tattoo, how to preserve the pigment, and how to deal with the pain that comes with being tattooed. He also offers advice on choosing and creating a tattoo design, and finding the right tattoo shop and artist to give you a tattoo you’ll be happy with for a lifetime. Rick also demonstrates the tattoo procedure by filling in parts of a full-body, or body suit style tattoo which adorns the back of one of his students. After you watch these free videos you’ll sit in that tattoo chair with the confidence of a seasoned veteran, knowing exactly what to expect even if it is your first time.

Video Transcript

" Hi I’m Rick Wyckoff and you can check out our website at avatart2.com and I am here on behalf of Expert Village.com talking about the history of tattooing. Well the history of tattooing goes back farther than human memory. Humans have been tattooing each other from the very beginnings since we have been cooking food with fire. The first human I guess that they have ever found that was tattooed was the iceman that they found in the Italian Alps. They are speculating they were for medicinal purposes, to alleviate back pain just because of the strategic location. Shortly after that, the same year they found a woman in Siberia that was heavily tattooed, a high priest as apparently, and she was also buried in ice and they recently uncovered her because of global warming or whatever. She had elaborately tattooed arms and legs mostly with zoomorphic animal designs probably having something to do with an ancient religion. But we do know from other historical writings that tattooing has been practiced all over the world by every culture even in modern time eras. There are aboriginal people still practicing the same type of tattooing that was being done back then. We have a modern version of that same process that we use; electricity and machines to do it, but I guess the idea and the feeling of it is still the same that it was in ancient times. The same desire to decorate is present in modern times as it was in ancient times. For a variety of different reasons to memorialize somebody who has passed or to beautify for purely aesthetic reasons, anyway the tool has been used to fulfill a variety of different human needs over the course of our human history. "