What have your years in
tattooing taught you?
There’s been times in my career
where I’ve experimented with
different line weights, etc... Yeah,
you do learn a lot as the years go
by. One thing about having that
little bit more experience is that
you get to see the way your tattoos
age. The way colours change and
the way lines spread. Those things
are important to know. For
example, if you’re going to do a
small face on a tattoo of a lady,
you have to make sure it’s
simplified enough that it doesn’t
become a mess later down the
road.
Are there 'rules' in traditional
tattooing?
I guess people would say there are
rules about how much black there
should be, or the general line
weight. Personally, I think
traditional tattoos should look stark
and bold. If a tattoo has the same
line weight throughout, it's a very
different thing to start adding fine
lines. That changes it for sure. It
becomes more of an illustrative-
style tattoo with some of the
fundamentals of a traditional tattoo
but not that same feeling. So yeah,
I think there’s definitely a certain
look. You have to have enough
black, but not too much either.