The Art of the Tattoo
So you want to get a tattoo. But how do you make sure it’s not going to be a tragic mistake you’ll be warning your grandchildren of when you’re old and wrinkly? There are a few things to consider before having something carved on your skin for all time.
THE BEST person to tell you what not to do is a tattoo artist who’s done more than his fair share of cover-ups. Tomppa, the owner of Halo Tattoo Studio in Tampere has been in the industry long enough to have seen all kinds of tattoo getters, and quite a few of them he’s sent back home, ink-free, to think things through.
“After a while in this business you get a certain knack for people, you’ll see if they’re still undecided,” says Tomppa You need to be sure. Go and buy a biker jacket if you want to look like a badass. Getting a tattoo will backfire when you decide you’d rather be a banker than a biker and need to wear a diving suit to a job interview to hide your badass tats. “You need to protect people from themselves”, says Tomppa. “If the customer is uncertain, I don’t take the job. When they’re stuck with a shitty tattoo, they put the blame on the guy who did it, and never on themselves for wanting it in the first place.”
Hate-inspired or vengeful tattoos are generally a bad idea, because feelings tend to change and having “die you cheating bastard” tattooed on your arm might not feel like such a great idea after a while. Tomppa also refuses to do racist tattoos. “It’s not my business to tell people how to think, but you have to think about your own portfolio and your reputation. If you carve a couple of white power -tats, there will be guys with chemotherapy haircuts swarming in front of the shop.”
Running his own business has allowed Tomppa to make his own rules. He won’t do you if you’re underage, with or without parental consent. And he won’t give you a folder to choose a copy paste picture from. “I don’t do barbed wire. This is not a hardware store,” he smiles. Tomppa likes to do things his way, but with the customer in mind. “There are a lot of tattoo artists in this business who say they’ll only do it their way and if someone doesn’t like it, they can go elsewhere. But you need to listen to the customer to some extent. And talk them out of it if what they want is crap,” Tomppa says.
Tomppa has a brutally honest, Gregory House kind of attitude towards customer service, and his habit of saying first and thinking later makes even some of his regular customers a little wary. Some of them don’t even pretend to like him. “I get called an ass a lot. But we’re making tattoos here, not friends. I know a lot of tattooists who are really nice guys, but they couldn’t draw a straight line with a ruler. You need to weigh up what’s really important,” says Tomppa.
Tattooing is an art that requires more skill than just the ability to draw. No matter how stunning your artistic talents may be, they mean little when the pen you’re holding weighs about 250 grams and vibrates and the paper you use feels pain, twitches and needs to rest. Drawing skills aside, you need to understand what it means to work on a person. “Drawing on paper is art, but on skin it’s science. There are so many things you need to know, the way skin reacts and what will and will not work.”
This is part of the reason Tomppa is suspicious of tattooists who don’t have any images on their own skin. Their knowledge of the art is limited. “The roughest tattooists I have met have been ones with very little ink of their own.”
The process of getting a large, custom-made image is very different from copying a flash image. People expect to see the exact image beforehand, but Tomppa likes to draw freehand, shaping the design to suit the body and draws only certain details in advance. “I always say that sure, I’ll design and plan ahead, and I never do. But that helps me maintain my interest in the job I’m working on. It demands a certain kind of customer-tattooist relationship though,” he says, implying that he makes sure the customer is fine with the idea before starting to work on them freehand. There are people who need to see the exact picture beforehand, but those people are often reluctant to pay for the time it takes to design. “When I tell them I need to charge for the time I spend drawing their project, they slam an egg timer on the table and start harassing me to draw faster,” Tomppa says.
So you still want to get a tattoo? Good for you. You’ve got your heart set on the design and you would trust your tattooist with your life. This is it. The buzzing of the machine. The faint smell of the disinfectant. The punk music blaring from the stereo. It only hurts in the beginning. The pain will subside after the first hour, I promise. Look at your tattooist. If he’s got ink, he knows how it feels. He’s not doing it to hurt you. He’s doing it to carve something better out of you.
