Cont. - The Internet is Tattoo Artist's Friend Part 1

Cont. - PART 1 – The design Process

So, your potential client walks in the studio and says that they want a tattoo (yea business!). How do you, as a new tattoo artist (or apprentice) go about accomplishing the goal of getting the client to explain what they want – in a way that you can add your own creative touches and come up with something you can both agree will look good on their body? You have to have some sort of reference to draw from – and they have to have some sort of concise description of what they want.

Often you will get those clients who say “just draw it, I trust you” (we love those clients), but even more often you will get the client who has no idea what they want – yet they know exactly what they want (very frustrating). Instead of drafting a bunch of sketches (and possibly striking out), you can jump on the internet and use any number of image search engines. If you go to Google or Yahoo – you can enter a search topic. The best piece of advice I have for this method is to NOT enter the word “tattoo” in the search criteria, try to find a different kind of reference. Try to build your tattoo from non-tattoo related and non-flash related images (most of the time). No one wants a replica of a tattoo as a design (well maybe they do actually), you see where I am going with this? So if your client wants a tiger, we would jump on the search engines and search for “tiger” or “tiger jumping” or whatever they elaborate on during the conversation. You can also try to search for “tiger sketch” or “stylized tiger”. The point I am trying to make here is that you don’t want to search for “tiger tattoo”. There are a ton of resources, not just search engine image databases. Try checking out Stock Photography sites as well. You will get a water mark on the image – but you can easily make a stencil out of them, or use them as a concept to get the ball rolling with a client.

The end result is getting a good design and making sure you and the client are on the same sheet of music. This way of working will ensure an expedient workflow process for the tattoo studio, and you can even have your apprentices do this task (which usually takes 10 – 45 mins per client) before they are serious about the design and layout and drawing.

CR Jordan