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Summary: Practicing tattooing can be tricky, as the best medium is human skin, but there are volunteers who will allow tattoo apprentices to practice on them. Find practice subjects to hone tattooing skills with helpful tips from an experienced tattoo artist in this free video on tattoo techniques.
Chip Taylor has traveled extensively throughout his 19-year tattooing career, and he spent many of those years working on the east coast at some of the best studios. Such studios...read more
"Practicing tattooing is that is a very tricky subject because, the very best thing in world to practice on is a human being. Now finding people to let you practice on them can be tricky but there are those, individuals in the world that can believe it or not do not really care what their tattoos look like. And my personally when I started tattooing I started working on these guys that worked in carnivals. My boss was an ex-carny and the show was in town and he happened to know some of the guys that were working on the show and they were covered in just hand poached and prison tattoos and they did not really care what they were getting as long as it was covering their skin so, that was a really good, a good thing for me to practice on. Alternatives they sell fake skin now, you can buy it from some of the tattoo suppliers around. Some people have practiced on melons and practiced on grapefruits and things like that but it really does not give you a, a good a good idea of what stencil is like because it just punctures right through and and you do not really have to work at it all, there is no stretching involved you are just going right through a a very brittle skin than ink will hold in the melon but it looks more like an engraving than it does a tattoo it does not really look that much like a tattoo at all. So finding things to to practice on can be a little tricky but like I said there is always people out there that will let you practice and you in the beginning, and if you plan on doing this for a career, you cannot really charge people in the beginning, you would be surprised at the people that will let you work on them if you do not charge them anything so. All you got to do is go out to the local bar or grocery store and find somebody that has got a bunch of hand poached stuff on them and say, "Hey dude, I am a tattooer or I am learning to tattoo, I would like to get some people to practice on would you mind?" And nine times out of ten they will say, "Well you are okay," and have at it. But you should always practice. Practicing perfect execution and not just going through the motions, anytime you are practicing give it your best shot do not do not go at it half way, got to do the the very best you can and, again the best way to learn this, is by getting tattooed I think getting to where you can watch the artist while he is working getting him in a location on your arm or something where you can see what is going on. And then when you go to start doing your practicing you will kind of have a a little bit of a, an edge as far as knowing direction you move your hands which way the the machine works best when it is going a certain direction you always try to pull the machine so that the needle bar is pressed against the back of the q but if you move your hand back this way it pulls the needle bar away from the q. So you want to when you are practicing practice in the correct form and do not just start waving the thing around thinking you are going to put some kind of magical outline doing your own thing."
eHow Article: How to Practice Tattooing
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