For today’s work we learned about depth. Something that unfortunately, Owen and Morgan explained is impossible to teach us. Apparently, as we become more and more acquainted with our tattoo machines and practice we’ll get to a place where we understand it. But the jarring part about practicing tattooing on fake skin is that the depth doesn’t translate to the actual skin on real people at all. The fake skin is much tougher than the real skin. With real skin the needle practically sinks into it with ease and if you go too deep you can create what’s called a blowout and the skin will scar, leaving the tattoo to raise. It turns out that not only was the tattoo that I got from a previous shop raised but I was going too deeply on the fake skin, putting practically half of the needle inside of it. It was only when Morgan came over to check my progress that she realized that I was going too deep. I unconsciously was using the depth to guide my tattoo machine and make my lines more smooth and clean. So I spent most of today revamping my technique and going around the shop learning from each of the artists. Each of them had their own experience with depth but all together it helped me gain a better understanding. But something tells me that it’ll still prove to be very difficult at first.
