Hi All,
Dont worry, its not for me! I work with a kid in our pub kitchen, he is covered head to toe in tattoos (he’s 18) he is absolutely obsessed with them and loves traditional work especially. He is desperate to become a tattoo artist and spends all of his time drawing when he’s not at work. and spends all of his money on books, light boxes, pens etc. He needs someone to guide him in the right direction and chanel the real passion that he has for this.
He was offered an apprenticeship through a family member in Berlin, but being UK based and it only being a 6 week trial he felt that he couldnt afford to up sticks and bugger off to berlin with no money. So he’s looking for potential apprenticeships in the UK, South East. we are based in Sandhurst, berkshire so if there is anyone out there who knows a really good artist who would consider taking a look at this kid i would really appreciate it. He’s very young and naive and rough but i think he has potential if his determination and drive is harnessed in the right way and he’s given the right tutorial and guidance.
Thanks for any help guys 🙂
XXX
The best thing he can do is get his portfolio together and hit the streets. Get his artwork infront of lots of tattoo artists and ask for critiques or for things he can improve on. He needs to find a shop that he fits in with and feels comfortable with. He’s young yet and it could take some serious time before he gets a serious offer for an apprenticeship. I was 32 when I got mine. I had been looking on and off for years. It wasn’t till I got VERY serious that I made it happen.
I have a friend that owns a tattoo shop and I asked him if he would apprentice me after I showed him my portfolio. He told me his shop wasn’t the right shop for me to learn because they specialize in almost exclusively American Traditional tattoos. He told me to go to another shop in town that he had a great deal of respect for that better fit my style and was more well rounded. He gave me some really good constructive criticism on my artwork. I applied what he had to say to my future drawings. Then I started getting tattooed there. I made friends with them and eventually showed them my portfolio. I was asked if I wanted to learn.
That’s the easy part. The first few months of my apprenticeship was cleaning and watching and more cleaning and more watching. Every day after work I went to the shop to absorb everything I could. Those first few months are to weed out anyone who isn’t serious enough to be a legit tattoo artist. Anytime a customer came in with an idea I would draw it to make sure I could make myself comfortable at drawing anything that came through the door. It was a ton of work. Harder work than I’ve ever done. I still work full time fixing up old houses while I’m apprenticing. All told I work over 80 hours a week. In a few more months I should be able to quit my day job and rely entirely on tattooing for my income!
thanks guys, unfortunately, there are lots of very average/under par artists in our area and i really want to point him in the right direction of a good artist and mentor does anyone know of any really good well known artists/shops around the Surrey/Hampshire/Berkshire area that i could point him toward? so pleased you’re doing well David you must be ecstatic 🙂 x
KittyKat200 – This may sound silly to you but, What’s a lightbox? (as mentioned in your thread starting post)
^^I’m from New Jersey and have trouble understanding people south of the Mason-Dixen line, let alone from the other side of the river, lol … while reading your post, for one split second I thought to myself “Why would he want to start picking up sticks?” … then I realized what you meant…lol
ha ha! like arni has pictured above a lightbox is basically a box with a light in it and a perspex screen over the top so that you can do original drawings and then add to them etc by tracing them without destoying the original picture or having to copy the original by eye, it just highlights all the lines better so that you can create accurate copies, i have one for my portrait drawings 🙂 sorry i thought light box was a pretty standard term for it! lol
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