deaddreamnation

Tattoo Zeke Owen’s Column
ASK ZEKE WITH ZEKE OWEN
This one’s from the legendary tattoo artist dates back to May 1998.
Dear Zeke:
I want to pursue a career as a tattoo artist very seriously. I am currently an aspiring artist with no tattoo training. How do I go about it?
—Chris Sisler, Vacaville, CA
Dear Chris:
I’d like you to know, Chris, that my editor goes through all this mail out in California, picks out the things he wants and sends them to me. So I don’t have a lot of choice with really picking out my mail and the questions that I’d like to talk about. In other words, it’s just random and I don’t say, “I don’t want to answer this, I don’t want to answer that.” I say, “Oh there’s a juicy one,” and go on. I just have to take the ones that he sends.
First of all, I’d like to tell you a little story about something that happened to me up in Seattle, Washington, one time. And I might start this little story out with a caption that went, “So you want to be a tattoo artist?” By the way, did you see in local business magazine that tattooing is now the sixth largest growing business in the United States?! Well anyway, next to my shop—my shop was on Skid Road. Skid Road was named originally as the logging road way back in the 1800s when they used to skid the logs down the road to Peugeot Sound to put on the ships. Well, anyway, I was out on First Avenue in Seattle for a little while and it was really neat. One of the coolest things that I used to see up there was that the people from Alaska and all over up north used to come down and put their money in the bank and go to the poker rooms and live in the old, beat up, stinky, I mean really stinky hotels right down there on First near the Pike Place Market and Skid Road. And this one guy used to bring down, every year, a couple of typical sled dog looking dogs and they were probably three years old or right around there. And he’d stay in one of those Skid Road hotel rooms where they let you have anything—I mean anything. And in the morning, you’d see the dogs and this guy from the Arctic Circle or someplace, down on the sidewalk and the dogs would both have collars on and each collar would be attached to the other one, kind of like Siamese-twin collars. So, consequently, he’d have one dog on the port side and one dog on the starboard side and they’d both be leaning in about ten degrees against each other and that’s they way he’d walk. Man, it’d be funny right there at the beginning of winter. They’d be falling, a struggling and a pulling. But, after a while, after a few months, winter would start winding down and they’d go down the steps and outside on the sidewalk just in unison—just as happy as they could be, with their tongues hanging out. And they’d run down the street when he’d call them. It looked like he was training them for sled dog work, but I’d never seen that before. It was really strange to watch them.
Next door to my tattoo shop in Seattle was this old bar called the Forty Niner Tavern. And that’s exactly what it was. It was full of all them off the ships and miners. Honest to God they still have mines up there, of course they’d be there for the winter. And Seattle was kind of growing in those days, they were building all over the place, so we had a lot of steelworkers. And the tavern used to open up at six in the morning, and I know that because one of the opening bartenders used to be my girlfriend, Carol. And I’d be over at the arcade—it was open 24 hours a day with a pool hall, and the little guy who ran the grill—and I’d get her home fries and scrambled eggs and coffee and go over to the bar at six in the morning. And the place would be so smoky from cigarettes, it’d be the middle of winter and there was no movement of air in there, and the fire would be going and it was just thick with smoke. And the sun would make rays through the front door and the first few tables had a spotlight like one of the helicopters that flies over the lakefront when you’re out there barbecuing and partying.
Anyway, I was in there and it was packed with all the steelworkers in there partying and doing shooters before they went to work up 20, 30 stories. They’re as drunk as hell going off to hang steel up there. Somebody ought to write a book, if they haven’t already, about how these guys used to save each other’s lives from falling to their deaths by catching them on the floor underneath. Anyway, I was sitting there drinking my coffee and I’d just finished my scrambled eggs and home fries when all of the sudden the most horrible, putrefying smell came into the place. God it was horrible, you know? And I looked around. I once had tattooed a South Korean Sailor for two gallons of kimchee because he didn’t have any money—this was back in the 60s—and he brought me this two gallon can of kimchee and I tattooed him and he went back to the ship. I had zero communication with the guy. So I put the bucket of kimchee—after taking out about a quart size jar of it—and put it in the reefer box in the Forty Niner Tavern and we were looking in there. We thought that was it, because it can get pretty foul sometimes. But that wasn’t it. And I looked up toward the front of the bar, and in the middle of this blazing sunlight cutting through the cigarette smoke here sits this old wino. He has a Korean War era watchcap in a shade of green that was particular to that era with flaps hanging down over his ears. And he had two or three suits on underneath his big overcoat, because it was below zero degrees outside. And his hands were just—you couldn’t tell what they were because the guy was so grimy. He had on big, heavy army wool pants and I looked down and I could see steam coming off his right boot, this old army boot. And the guy’s face was leathered and beat up. And he had his hand wrapped around a double shot glass of some kind of wine or something. With the sunlight on him, he’s just sitting there with head down—he’s drunk about half of it. And the steam coming off his shoe was coming off a freshly laid turd. Somehow, before he had sat down, he had crapped in his pants and his turd about the size of a scoop of vanilla ice cream had slid down his pants and landed on the toe of his shoe. Just balanced there. And the stink was just ripe. It was horrible. And the funny part was I was only one who got nauseous—ready to get sick over it. The rest of the seamen that were in there—a couple of guys from the hotel, a couple of Indians, all these steelworkers, my girlfriend Carol behind the bar—when I pointed it out they said, “My God, there it is, it’s on his shoe!” They all turned and broke into a rolling laugh, but they weren’t sick. It didn’t bother them a bit. They thought it was funny as hell. Well, I didn’t think it was very damn funny. So I went over to the guy and I told him, I said, “You’re gonna have to get up and leave this place and take that fucking thing on your shoe with you! Get outa here!” Anyway, he drank his wine, got up and walked out the door real slow, with his head bent down. Poor guy, he looked like a refugee from WWII, with that shuffle, like those guys with the tattoos on their arms, given that number from Hitler. Out the door he went, and that stinking thing on the toe of his right boot.
But you know, that’s all part of life of being in a tattoo business. So I thought about that for many, many years. And there’s not a real point to all this that I’m telling you. But before you do anything—before you go about planning a big career move into the tattoo business—you really ought to find out more about what it’s all about. Where you want to go, what you really want to do with it. I mean, do you have any tattoos? In other words, before I give you directions to build a bomb you better know what the hell you want to do with the damn thing after you get it finished. Because most of the people who got into this business have a real kinship with their customers in that it really gets into their blood, so to speak, and you keep coming back for more. They stay in it. And I’ve seen real good tattooers just go nuts. Actually, one of Mike Malone’s that came in my shop, what was his name—from Germany—Freddy or something. Anyway, he went back to Germany and he was one of the very first ones on the crack of the wave of the tattoo scene and he took Germany by storm. It was 24 hours a day and it got to him so bad that he had a breakdown and went off to the hospital. And I haven’t heard anything from him since. Mike will know what I’m talking about.
But the point of it is I can tell you right now, don’t take it on your own to try and do this or experiment with anybody. And here I am telling you exactly what I did, and a lot of others did, experimenting on their own. I can’t say it’s a mistake but it’s just a better approach to go into a shop of maybe the guys who’ve been doing your tattoos. I’m sure you have a bunch, right? And talk to them. Bring your artwork in to show. I’ll tell you what, there’s been a phenomenon in this business that went right past me. I missed it. Only just now am I getting to find out about what’s going on. I call them entrepreneurs. They have a job with the transit system or maybe they’re in the bricklaying business in the daytime and they have ten or fifteen tattoos, so now they decide they’re going to have a tattoo shop. They go down to Ocean Boulevard in Jacksonville, Florida, and they rent a little store. They put an ad in the paper and they hire six or seven guys and they give them 35% of the gross to sit in there and tattoo. But if they don’t have the equipment, by God, they send off to somebody up north and buy all the machines and the designs and the tools to do the work with. And that’s one way to do it. And they just get together like a big Chinese cluster-fuck and sit there and mark each other up and everybody else that comes in the place.
But that’s one approach, I suppose. I think it’d be better off though if you did find somebody who had a reputation and they would sit you down and let you watch and talk. That’s really the way to get started. Hand to hand—kind of like the old-fashioned apprenticeships used to be at the shoe repair shop. After about a year, they eventually let you put a heel on somebody’s boot, you know?
And also, this is another kind of business where you want to get next to the best person you can. If you have some serious art abilities or training and everybody goes “oooh” and “aaah” when they see your painting, then evidently you’ve got the kind of ability that you need today to succeed in the business. Most of the old time guys are what we call mechanics—take a pattern, slap it on your arm and follow it along. There were some guys that could make it look like Rembrandt. You could tell, it was sort of a mechanical follow-the-dots sort of a deal. But today, when you’ve got so many great people, it just blows me away. I never knew Brian Everett was an oil painter or a portrait artist before he got into this. I just didn’t stop to think like that. The scope of the way I thought was pretty much limited to the tattoo community that I developed myself in. And it didn’t include people like that. And today Mike Malone says I’m the last guy to find out anything. I don’t know—he’s probably right. But today I’m beginning to find out these people in fine arts are getting into tattooing. I’m beginning to think, is there more money working in tattooing than there is working in the art department at some big magazine? And evidently some of them actually like tattooing. So then again, you have to think very carefully about what you say or what you do around this or any other business. But especially in tattooing, because most of the people who are in tattooing are pretty down to earth. There’s not a lot of fiction in tattooing like a lot of people would think. When a guy comes in and you work on him two or three hours and he gets up and runs out the door with your money, that’s pretty real. It’s not a real good example either but—also I don’t just sit there when I’m tattooing somebody. I’ve got something to say. I ask them what’s going on and you get to hear a lot of what’s really happening in the rest of the world. The kind of people I work on are everything from deep sea divers to CEOs of major corporations.
But again, you need to learn or find out more about what tattooing’s all about before you decide I’m an artist and I want to be a tattoo artist. Find out something about it first. Go to a tattoo convention. There you go. Hang out with all those drunks after the tattoo room is closed and they’re all in the bar slinging shit at each other, wrestling around in the parking lot like Bob Shaw and I used to do, drunk as hell in the grease. Things like that. Then that’ll give you more of an insight and whether you really want to be a tattoo artist or not.
See ya.
—Zeke.

I know you've said you're looking for an apprenticeship, so firstly -- and this is not coming from a pompous holier-than-thou attitude -- tread lightly here. One of the reasons we've lost solid contributing tattooers to LST is for this very reason. Every few months someone joins up and says, "Hey, I want an apprenticeship, what's the problem?!" The forum is here to help and to share -- but not when it comes to technical how-tos and certainly not when it comes to the ins-and-outs of getting your foot in the door.
Second -- and this is coming from only a very slightly more life experience -- go get tattooed. I know you've got two tattoos.. But apprenticeship aside, if you want to learn about tattoos and that world, go. get. tatt.ooed. Make that your primary goal, put the apprenticeship out of your mind. How do you know that you want to commit your life to something when you've only got two tattoos? I bet things will be a little more clear after having spent more than a few hours in a tattoo shop.
Tried being as nice as possible here and there's a good chance it's as nice a response as you may get.. It's not that it's a cult or that people are assholes. Take a step back. Listen to what people are saying. Godspeed.

my favorite is on this chick here in town that reads: BEAT KIDS. pretty funny. Mine say open eyes.

What a vey nice thing to say!!!
Stewart, often I think to comment on a post- and then you do, so articulately, that I just feel like writing "ditto"

I recently apologized for my inactivity here.
I still enjoy looking through and reading new posts - but haven 't contributed or posted as much as I used to--- I don't know if it's because I'm old or just an old tattooer --- but I felt like many of my responses lacked empathy and came off impatient or preachy.
Sorry, i'll try harder

Of anyone here, you have more right to be preachy. You, Don and the rest of your family represent the kind of authenticity that cannot be faked, styled or imitated. A beacon for us all.

I think we can be blasé and attribute the reasons to whatever but that's just speculation , what we do have is feedback from the artists that remain and should entertain the possibility that each of us is slipping and take it upon ourselves to do something about that .
Remember the words of my man Jimi Hendrix " Knowledge speaks but wisdom listens "
or that other hippie Arthur Schopenhauer " Treat a work of art like a prince : let it speak to you first "

Thanks for bringing this up @Shannon Shirley while we've never met, people who I think are awesome tell me that you're awesome. Everyone here should pay attention to what this guy says.
I still check the forums every day but I told myself I'd try to only get involved if I could be constructive in some way (even being a dick in a particular way can have a positive outcome).
Lately there hasn't been much 'new' information or discussion where I felt my opinion would make any difference. Often someone else gets to the point before I do. I don't want every post I make to be a verbose "Me too."
On the other hand... The more help or insight we give, the more help or insight we're asked for.
Everyone likes to say they "Did their research" for their tattoo but that often just means looking at pictures in a Google search or checking Instagram. But what about the kind of research where you follow an idea that someone mentioned and find out for yourself? Learning and discovery is fun. Information discovered is more cherished and valuable than information that's spoon fed.
Everyone wants a book or website recommendation where the mysteries of life and everything will be explained, with pictures.
Explorers will eventually tire of conversing with tourists and consumers but they may feel nourished conversing with other explorers. (I use these terms with their proper, non-insulting intention) If more people try to be explorers (intelectual, spiritual or physical) this site, and the world will be a better place.
I've said it before but I don't come here to help with tattoo questions. We have a phone at Frith Street Tattoo. Helpful people are paid to answer it and answer questions. Most tattoo shops work with a similar system. You can get a helpful answer pretty quickly that way.
Even if you're in another country. International calls are not very expensive compared to the price of a tattoo.
I come here because I realised that it was a place where professional opinion meant something. I only started typing when I knew that nobody better qualified had answered. The turning point for me was Bryan Burk's post about Japanese tattoo politics. Finally we had first-hand, sensible and interesting information or opinion from a reliable source instead of conjecture or wiki-regurgitation. I knew then that I'd beter keep my mouth (or keyboard) shut unless I was sure I could contribute something worthwhile.
I'm aware this approach doesn't make for a lively forum but it was great to see it in action earlier this year when Bart Bingham put a halt to some whining about tattooers drawing directly on the skin with a simple, direct and thoughtful post.
Sorry for the lack of links to threads and @ mentions. LST seems to be loading extremely slowly so I couldn't check where stuff was.
Other that the fact that one of my favourite tattooers started this site, I still like it that real-world experience holds water over post-count here at LST. I also like it that the mods (well, the one's I've met) are heavily covered with genuinely great tattoos. That really makes a difference.

I started on here about a year and a half ago, I would not like to see this site crumble. It seems to me that lately, less and less knowledgable people are commenting,posting etc. It also seems that thier are more lurkers with "I know some shit" attitudes. those that fit this profile should understand that you are ruining this site. This site was started in hope of an intelligent place where some could learn about the nuances of this craft. Stating amateur attitudes on here does not help.Having gotten three tattoos does not make you an authority.

Mary Jane Haake is an amazing and beautiful lady that has been tattooing in Portland for 31 years, she apprenticed under Bert Grimm. Her work now mostly consists of reconstructive work on burn victims, breast cancer patients, wounded soldiers, which I personally think is a really cool thing to do. She kind of holds things together in Portland is the best way I can put it. She works as kind of a liaison to the health department , keeping us up to date on any new laws or restrictions. It seems like whenever you have an issue you can always call Mary Jane, and she is willing to listen and help.
She throws a birthday party every year, with food, live bands, and such and I have been lucky enough to be able to tag alone with boss man a few times. It's always a great time and usually end up meeting some pretty legendary people in the tattoo world there.


Here is a video of her talking about her career, Bert Grimm and tattooing penis and butt crack among other things. She is also the only person I know that uses a coil machine to tattoo to do cosmetic tattooing.

Ok fellow forum goers, I need your help. Here is the dealio...
I really love woodblock print art. I really want this one ORIGINAL print. You guys need to convince me it is worth $450 bucks.
It is an original Yoshitoshi print from 1868. 9x14 Print is a depiction from 47 Ronin-the image is of Hayano Wasuke Tsunenari exacting revenge upon an adversary
Found it on Gomineko Books website.

I may be the wrong one to give an opinion since I love this type of artwork, but I say go for it if it's something you really want. I think it looks great and I would love to have this hanging in my house. For a piece of original art from 1868, this seems like a great deal. I just ordered Kuniyoshi's 101 Samurai prints today and am psyched to be getting it, but nothing beats the beauty of an original Japanese woodblock print. You only live once....... go for it. ;)

Well all i can say is weather you agreed with Huck as a business man or not he was a huge part of the tattoo world and for that we all can agree. Some hated him because he was the biggest tattoo supplier name for years and years with advertisement in almost every magazine selling starter kits and what seems to have become the blue print to shops and stores that are now selling supplies with no inhibitions. Others knew him as the ex-business partner of the late Paul Rogers and also have an opinion of him from those stories, but many of us were in the Spaulding starter kit generation and the book A-Z was a large part of our beginning into the tattoo world. so it seems that no matter what side you were on in the world where Huck Spaulding was we have indeed lost a huge part of an older tattoo world and with that said, R.I.P. Huck.

As long as Kev brought up Rock of Ages tattoo in Austin, I like Jay Chastain's back pieces over there too.

Here is a nice one from Jim Sylvia

i dont know the history but here's a Carol Nightingale acetate of it

Bam

sorry for the shitty picture, but this is from my instagram. here's a little garbage can cat filler i got from dan santoro on saturday. he also spider webbed my right shoulder. my right arm is so close to being done.

Dagger through neck, Valerie Vargas

My new flash set is up for sale.Sorry for the dull Picture but I promise these sheets are BRIGHT. $65 delivered in the U.S. $60 in person
Paypal [email protected]

Guess I'll never know will I? Yeah, as soon as I get my money back it's going straight to Jimmy Whitlock and Seth.

1. Best Thread- Monthly Best Tattoo Contest. A chance to come on and just see the best tattoos of the month on here. I think it also has made people get tattooed more on this forum (if that is even possible).
2. Worst Thread- Dumb Hipster Tattoos.
3. Favorite Tattoo I got- Snake and Rose by Dan Gilsdorf @blackheart tattoo in SF. I really have gotten a lot of tattoos this year from some really good friends, but getting the chance to visit and hang out in blackheart was a tattoo highlight of the year.
4. Best Tattoo others got. I would say for me my favorite tattoo is the dagger and skull combo that @deaddreamnation got by Danny Reed, but I think the undisputed champion of this year is @Scott R .
5. I would say Danny Reed is my favorite artist I have discovered through here. It's not even so much that I discovered him here, but I put a face to the name and really started looking at his work differently on here. I can't count how many tattooers I have discovered on this site, or been compelled to study more in depth because of work or discussion on this forum.
6. How did I get here? I think I commented on a post on facebook about the facebook friend tattoo and led me to a thread about tattooers with no tattoos, I saw that Nick and Mario from CTC were on here so I started lurking more.
7. I would say the general forum is my favorite part of the site. I like to not only hear everyone's tattoo news, but I do enjoy giving advice and a good discussion on a hot topic.
8. I spend most of my time in the general forum.
9. The one thing I miss is the tattooers that don't post here anymore and post less here.
10. THis year was hectic
I really can't think of a bonus quote of the top of my head, but I know that I always enjoy when Stewart Robson joins the conversation and Shannon Shirley. I know that both of them post less, but when they have something to say it's good.

I haven't been tattooing very long, so I feel awkward replying to shit like this. But here goes.
I like the act of tattooing. I love watching pigment go in the skin, seeing the line as it's being pulled across the stencil. I love it. So when I get requests for annoying shit, or things I'm sick of,(and denying that you ever get sick of shit is fucking retarded. We're humans. We get sick of shit. Period.), I try to just get past it in my head and think about the application. Not that I'm applying a tattoo that I hate, but that I'm applying a tattoo at all. And get right back into that mindset of enjoying the work aspect of it.
Without trying to sound like a wagon jumper, I too like tribal. I love watchign the black just go in solid as fuck. I know this dude is just some dude looking to look just like his boys, but in my head I'm thinking, "man, this shit is going to make your buddies tribal look like shiiiiiiiiiiiiit!". I just try to get in that zone as much as I can.
The clients though....
None of us can control the chaos that is our client base. That is the unknown quantity part of the job. Lots of shitheads, and lots of people who don't actullay want tattoos. They just want their very own "me too, guys! I did it too! See!" story. They spend hours trying to find the least tattoo-ish, most benign design possible and stick it somewhere no one will ever see it, because to them it's just proof that they did it too when the stories start flying.
I try very hard to pick my battles, read clients and choose which ones would be receptive to some swaying. Not into something completely different to stroke my ego, but into a better planned out version of what they want. Just gotta pick the battles.
Can't do it with everyone or you burn out, and you can't responsibly be the guy who says "fuck it, I know this will look, age and heal like crap, but i'll take your cash." All the time banging rainbows up their ass telling them how good of an idea it is to keep them and their dumb friends coming back for more.
Regardless of how it will effect responsible tattooers who try to do a good, well thought out tattoo for the benefit of their clients. Just gotta do what I can to sleep at night, like trying to explain to people that upside down is upside down. I try. If they get it, awesome. If not, I'll at least try to do it clean.
Sorry for the ramble. I just felt it on this one. I felt that I need to make an ass of myself on the internet. Word.

hahahah. amen to that julio! do you guys do white tattoos? what about blacklight/glow in the dark tattoos? answers: no. and, well do you want cancer?

Nick CTC