What Makes Tattoos Painful?

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Shotsie Gorman. I'm here as a tattoo artist, a professional tattoo artist for Expert Village. You will feel it a little more in some places more than others. The nerve endings change from location to location. But in some places you hardly feel it at all and in some places you seem to hit a real hotspot. The petroleum jelly has three purposes. It allows me to wipe off the excess pigment. It keeps my hand from bogging down on the surface of the skin. It keeps down any capillary, small capillary bleeding, which there really isn't any at this point. The tattoo is actually only piercing the skin about a 32nd of an inch. So it's not really deep penetration. You don't really need much. I think what you're feeling is the heat from the friction. Yeah, it's the friction of that machine moving up and down. It's really throwing a series of dots in a way, but they're really close together. And the friction of it moving in and out is what creates heat in the body. Most of that is the sensation that you are feeling."