So THAT'S who she is.....

This woman has fascinated me since I first saw her picture 2 years ago.


Isn't she beautiful? She is defiant towards the camera, an early 'fuck you' to the mores and morals of society and 'normal' people. I finally found out who she is, thanks to The Vanishing Tattoo and their History of Tattooing pages.

She is Mrs. M. Stevens Wagner, and the picture was taken in 1907. So who is Mrs. M. Stevens Wagner? I don't know, but I bet she's related somehow to Charles Wagner, who was partnered with Samuel O'Reilly in the late 1800's in NYC (Bowery). Charles Wagner did something else, too...

Recognize it? It's a dual coil reciprocating engraver, a prototype of today's machine.

It's amazing what you learn when you surf the 'net, isn't it? Oh... A Google through various search terms provides us this: "Maud Wagner was the first well known woman tattoo artist in the United States. Maud was a circus aerialist and contortionist who learned to tattoo from her husband Gus. Her daughter Lovetta Wagner became a well known female artist as well despite having no tattoos herself."

Someone needs to get me this book, please. I would dearly appreciate it. I'll tattoo you for it! No... Seriously. 1-2 color piece no more than 2"x2". You provide the book and the canvas, I'll give you ink. Deal? Comment and we'll work out details.

****EDIT**** She is Maud Stevens Wagner. Wow. .... Just.... Wow.

It's small and blurry, but you get a better idea of what the color is supposed to look like. Fresh, it looks almost navy. Healing up, you can see it's actually closer to the color of the wall (indeed, brighter than).
It's finishing nicely, and I have only spotted 1 instance I would like to go back and correct. At the top of the "Y" shape, in the above picture it's the right leg of the Y top. Right where it comes to the point, it's not. I am not stressed about this because it is less than .. the distance between those 2 dots. Really. But I'd like to correct it.
She's ready for her 2nd, which I'm still playing with the design on.
And Sic_un is giving me my 2nd. It's celtic knotwork, not super detailed (he admits he prefers the simple). I'm thinking bicep. Outline, potential color?
It's closest in shape to this:
but reversed. I want the terminus at the top. ANYway. This reversed (and yes, I have the flash for it already), but let me throw some ideas to you:
Thin black outline, pale shading overs and dark unders (purple shades)
Thin dark purple outline, dark shading unders, everything else left alone.
Thicker purple outline, above shading options.
Thicker black outline above shading options.
Thicker dark outline, navy blue or perhaps a deep purple, no shading, just the outline.

I'm leaning to the latter. I'll have to play.

Fire

SB, one of the women I work with, wanted a tattoo. Specifically, the kanji for fire flipped and modded just a little is what she requested. It's the crest for her karate dojo, and she wanted it on her upper arm. She was a lot like I was when I first started looking into getting a tattoo. She has a fear of needles, and wasn't really sure she could tolerate getting a tattoo. She didn't decide color until she was here. I was nervous, she was nervous.

She tolerated this admirably well. So did I. And I am now officially a tattooist (accepted money for a tattoo), and I have officially broken the law.






This is the outline. You can see 2 small scratches right above where this is at. That was the dry run. The bluish circle going around the outline (you can see it very faintly) is the edge of the stencil.







Here's the finished product. It's Superior's Sky Blue, even though it looks vaguely black in the picture.






Here's the full-effect finish. And you can really see the scratches in this one. That's what she likened it to... cat scratches. I couldn't agree more.

Outline: 3L, 3/23/08
Fill: 14S, 3/23/08
Subject: SB/Fire

Fixed Fill In-Completion.

Here's what it looked like after I redid the top line. You can see the feathering in the already tattooed area and how absolutely icky it appears, correct? NOT the new black line, but the greyish looking area (dry skin, older ink). That's what I started with, pretty much all over.











But now... taDAAAAAA! This is FRESHLY done. You can see the lines where I put down another layer of color, so there isn't any question about where I touched it up.

A close up of the same area as the first picture, now fully done...

And the full finished after it's been sitting about 45 minutes or so in antibiotic ointment... it rehydrated the skin and darkened the ink all over.



Outline: 3L, 2/22/07
First Fill: 14S, 12/7/07
Final Fill: 14S, 3/19/2008

First Fill In

Finally filled in Sic_un's outline. I actually played around with it. Saw what fill in on real skin is like. Serious fill in. But I played and now I pay the price, or rather, Sic_un does. Touch up is needed. He's willing to accept some as 'first tattoo'. Other bits can be blamed on shitty lighting (architectural lamp and flo bulbs, here I come) as well as "He had alcohol". In other words, he bled like a stuck pig. Other is me being my artistic nature and testing things. How does the needle move, what if I do it X way instead of Y. Let's go through it bit by bit.




Here's what we started with,

























Here's right at the beginning,




















Here's after changing needles to the all-in-one prepackaged tube/needle (the disposable tube with separate needle wasn't working out too good for me), spilling my ink on the carpet, making him switch position twice, me attempting to get comfortable, not being able to see because of lighting issues and finally at the end just trying to get the bloody thing finished. We're going to dissect this one.













Let's take it from the top, shall we?
Fig. 1: I'm working in essential darkness, about 10 pm. And it's a case of do it or it won't get done and I feel bad enough having just an outline done. So I did it anyway. I know now I should have complained and set up better lighting. It's also a little awkward working around Sic_un's back. He had worked all day, his back's been funky 'cause of weather and minor little injuries to it, and he had to get comfy. He keeps telling me little circles, but that combined with bad lighting is what led to (Fig. 2) and (Fig. 3). I miss the middles and it gets spotty. Add to that the lighting which made my needle hard to see AND the disposable needle sold separately set up was giving me fits. The needle was resting right on the bottom of the tube. Ink was globbing up around the needle, even wehn moving in more-or-less a forward movement.
Fig 4, I started, every so little, working in longer sweeping forms instead of tight little circles. I have to know what it will and will not do. Up until this point, it's behaved quite a bit like a pen set up, so I decided to use a few pen techniques.



As you can see, they didn't quite work. This was right in the middle of the stressy bits, where I spilled my ink, threw a bit of a whine about how I didn't think I could do it and was gently eased into it more by Sic_un being patient and very understanding as I poked him with a needle. Repeatedly. It was at this point he started bleeding a bit more. Fig. 1 is me going back and forth and back and forth. Fig. 2 is more back and forth, trying to hit both sides. I switched to the different needle setup for 3.
Fig. 4 to the right impressed me. I impressed myself with it, rather. I wanted it good because the line to the left had been completely missed the entire length. Still showing all the middle bits, so the back and forth isn't working. Fig. 5 I started slowing down, we got a lamp set up for more light in a better place and I started TRYING to do small circles, slow it down a bit.




My hand got away from me. I was constantly telling myself "Slow down." I would even say it out loud to myself. Not because I wanted to rush it, but it feels so comfortable, I'm killing the tattoo bit of it because I thought of it and still think of it as moving the same way as a pen. But better, even if not by much. More moving back and forth instead of in circles. Fig. 1 was another 'A-ha!' moment, but the teeth (Fig. 2) were a pain in the ass. It was right around here that Sic_un started repeatedly telling me he shouldn't have picked or let me do such an obnoxious design as a first tattoo. I say it's a learning experience. Figure 3, you can really see the blood. That's not ink popping up, kids, that's blood.

Figure 4 pleased me, 5 not so much. But I was done and it's not not-fixable. It just has to heal.


So what have we learned with the first fill in?

I really want to try magnum needles, actually. That's one of the things I've learned. There has to be a better way than a standard 14 round fill in. I know Sic_un did it that way (14rounds), and the mags weren't that widespread when he was tattooing, but... BUT. I'd like to try them for big fill ins. They make more sense to me in the needle pattern, actually.
Better lighting is a MUST. No excuses. The problem appears that it will be a case of me avoiding the halogen option because that's what's out there for architectural lamp choices. I'll find something that will take a bright florescent bulb. I want as little heat while tattooing as I can get away with.
NO ALCOHOL. Dammit.
Better set up. Can't do it in the bedroom. Won't, not anymore. Comfort be damned. We'll take breaks. I won't do it on the bed any more. Part of the reason ink got on the carpet is the lack of space where I was doing it at.
Powdered gloves. The kit came with ohsofashionista black gloves. Not powdered, at least, not enough powder if any. Made working with/in them a bitch. I wouldn't mind a slightly smaller glove. Part of the problem is my hand-size. I have wide, short hands.

So. Critique if you wish. I've moderated comments to keep down on the 'You suck' and 'You're wonderful' stuff. Critique, not insult, not pander. Your words will remain yours.

Will someone please remind me....

...that the painted man isn't allowed to drink anything Wednesday and Thursday nights? We weren't able to do his fill in the other night because he had been drinking. He had a couple beers and that kills your clotting ability... not that I was planning on causing major amounts of blood loss, but still. It messes with you and can be bad. So it's going to be more practice until I can do fill this weekend. I'm thinking alphabets.

New equipment synopsis

The machine operates well. There's a 2 step process for changing the spring instead of the 1 step process the other machine I've worked with used.

Fake skin is not a good thing. It seems like it would be OK to practice lining, and I can see where that would be a big hurdle for people to get over, but in my case, I need something that lets me do fill in. Even a one-off outline for testing the skin didn't turn out perfect, but it's certainly fixable with fill in.

The only problem is the skin doesn't fill in. You've got to use vaseline to lay down line with and it works OK for lining practice, but the fill in on the skin is shit. The skin has a tendency to soak up vaseline as well, and I thought that might be enough to keep the ink from dyeing the skin immediately. Didn't work. As a matter of fact, until I scrubbed the fake skin with my brush cleaner from my painting kit, it was a smeary black blob.

It is unworkable for fill in. But I can see where it would be handy to test outlines, maybe some small shading placement as long as you don't care what the finished product looks like. Tonight I fill in the painted man's leg.

A couple of links and some information....

Just to get started, there's a couple links I'd like to point out, and then some information.
First, there's Star Tattoo, home of Chris Partain, the man who did my dolphins. Superior Tattoo is where I purchase my equipment. There's a wealth of information on tattoos at the Tattoo Archive. Huge amount of art at TattooArtists.org. A great source of information can be found also at Tattoos.com. The Penn Museum has an online exhibit on body mods that's worth a look. Links will be added to the sidebar as necessary.

Information:
Most of what you'll see is practice skin. Not being licensed, I'm very aware of the fact that I can potentially be charged... Well, here's the text of the law:

2-38-208. Violation for operating without a permit or with a revoked or suspended permit. —

(a) Any person who does not obtain a permit as required in § 62-38-202 or whose permit has been revoked or suspended and who continues to tattoo or operate a tattoo establishment commits a Class B misdemeanor punishable only by a fine of five hundred dollars ($500).

(information brought to you by this link )
As you can see, not being licensed can cost me $500 here in TN. There will, however, be some real skin. That will be pointed out. [ ahem ] Documentation is being kept by the blog owner for all real skin. The NM law, since I may move back (who knows) can be found here. I won't quote it, you can read.

You may see the same design several times. It may be that I end up doing the same design 30 times to get it as perfect as it can be. You won't have to comment that you hate a color scheme or a design repeatedly. I can learn the first time. Since I'm teaching myself how to do this, I better be able to learn, right?

Special thanks go to my partner, my painted man. He provided me the tools and the beginning knowledge. He's an unending supply of support for me, and I don't know what I'd do without him.

Photographs are taken with a Fujifilm A350 digital camera.