Why You Should Research Your Artist

This post just focuses on why it’s important to research your artist’s art style, if you’re interested in researching if a shop is safe checkout my other post: How to spot a reputable tattoo shop.

This week I wanted to do training wheels on why it’s important to research your artist before choosing, I think this is an under-talked about part of booking a tattoo. Not properly researching your artist can lead to you being unsatisfied with the piece even if they did a great tattoo. There are lots of tattoo ideas that any reputable artist could do but it’s important that you actually like their style as well. Even though you may be getting something small or simple, anything that an artist does has their artistic flair in it (except maybe script where you’re choosing the font) and if you don’t like their style you may not be happy with their rendition. Now most tattoo artists that I have encountered prefer to use Instagram to showcase their work – if you’re not an Instagram user but you want a lot of tattoos I’d recommend making an account just to look up artists you may be interested in and see what their finished tattoos look like. Another thing to look at is their flash. Flash are often things that an artist enjoys drawing and without a client’s ideas in mind you get to really see their style. Now, I know lots of people like to pick an artist and stay with them for life. There’s nothing wrong with that especially if you really connect with them and their style. Personally I like to collect a lot of different styles and I have certain styles in mind for different images. In this case I research by the piece.  Every artist has something different to offer. If you know you like their style you’re going to be much more satisfied with the piece than going in blindly and expecting the result you’re picturing. 

That being said, most artists can do a variety of styles. As Chris addressed in his post about specialties not everyone specializes, referring to the tattooers that came before us he says, “Versatility was their livelihood. The freedom to specialize is a gift that wasn’t afforded to a lot of guys, they had to make their living doing whatever tattoos came through the door.” We operate as best as possible on this principle as well. All our artists do and are encouraged to do different styles but the pieces still always have their artistic flair on it. For example Bryan, Chris, and Loren are all skilled at doing traditional style tattoos but all their trad looks slightly different because it has that little aspect of their style. Having that background knowledge when you’re choosing the artist just solidifies your satisfaction with their design even if they are skilled at adapting their style. 

These are all Traditional swallows, Left by Bryan, Middle by Chris, and Right by Loren.

Gatekeeper

Hi there! I'm Taylor, you may know me as Sterling Skull reception, or gatekeeper, or most recently Tater (thanks Chris). I love writing, creating and I love tattoos; so what better way to use my passions than to bring you a personal experience of our studio via a blog! Welcome, please stay a while!