Why Self-Tattoo?

Series Summary

A tattoo is a permanent mark on the body made by depositing ink between layers of skin with a needle and has garnered a variety of reactions from American mainstream culture. Tattooing the body for aesthetic, ritual or subversive reasons has been popular since before written history. Many peoples in Japan, North Africa and New Zealand were adorned with decorative facial tattoos when "discovered" by settlers, though Europeans had the art as well. In America, soldiers popularized tattoos in the mid-20th century; religious and social conservatives denounced them as defiling the body soon after; counterculture movements picked them up as subversive demonstrations quite quickly; and currently celebrities and simple familiarity have made tattoos an accepted and ubiquitous part of American fashion. Tattoo artists use ink and needles to draw often stunning artistic images on the skin covering any part of the body, and new converts are made every day. In this free self-tattoo video series, tattoo artist Brian Franc demonstrates how to self-tattoo. Franc believes a good tattoo artist practices on him- or herself, usually on the leg, to tryout needles and designs and see how different inks or ideas age. In these videos, Franc demonstrates tracing a transfer, doing tattoo line work, choosing inks and colors, shading, blending colors, and more all on a self-tattoo. He gives tips for becoming a better tattoo artist as he works through a cherry blossom on his leg step-by-step in real time. Self-tattooing is serious and permanent; and aspiring artists must be willing to test their work on themselves.

Video Transcript

"This is introduction. So, I've got a cherry blossom here, I've got this Japanese work that I've worked on for, throughout the years, and as an inspiring to tattoo artist yourself, you ought to work on your own leg and work on yourself. There's no experimentation with the customers. You work on yourself. Easy enough. So, this simple little cherry blossom is very simplistic and very meaning to me, because, when I started tattooing, I did such a very simple design, as you can see, different cherry blossoms through here. And this one I did last week in preparation for this. I timed this. How long this would take, it's like a black ray piece similar to this one. I've also done these eyeballs here on my legs. It stretches. You can see how big and how small they get. But today, I've transferred this cherry blossom on here, the same size as these three, in a transfer. Now I'm going to show you how to do a simple design on your own leg."