Entry Two; Lining On A Banana

In these two videos, I ended up tattooing a two day old banana.
LINKS HERE:

Banana Lining: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9CRDqdaCsw

Banana Stick & Poke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axF7SDm2PeI


Banana lining:
In this video it starts with me looking close up to the tattoo gun where you can see I’m trying to get the gun ‘ghosting’. This is what determines how deep the needle goes in to the skin.
If the tattoo gun isn’t ghosting well, it’ll sound deeper and almost more dilute when t really needs to sound like the pitch of a fluorescent light buzzing except louder

Banana Stick & Poke:
In this one you can see I’m using a round liner but it’s thicker (whch is less ideal for stick and pokes but hey, learning experience).
You can see and hear when I pull out there’s a picking noise; that’s what you should hear when doing a stick and poke.
When stick and poking you want to stretch the skin as much as you can and come in from a 45 degree angle, and when you pull out you should raise the needle up (that’s how you ehar the skin picking). This wipes the ink that’s still on the needle into the hole in the skin. However, be careful not to pull up too hard as it could rip the skin and make a deep trench that the ink won’t settle into.

Entry one: Tattooing Synthetic Skin

LINK :> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4nlsuGoCKc <: LINK

This synthetic skin was a bit soft so it didn't hold in the ink very well in the end. However it was awesome to do a first practise!

This was my first actual try with a tattoo gun on synthetic skin.
When you watch these videos, you can see I was very excited and started moving the gun too fast. This was because I’m used to outlining with an Artline ink pen (amazing pens fyi) and they can evenly distribute ink no matter how fast you draw. When I was outlining with this inking pen, I was going too fast so it didn’t give the opportunity for the needle to line the skin without missing bits since its only inking in dots.

Introduction

Hello everybody! My name is Bella, or also known through my brand name Apex (Apex Art).
I have always been a creative spirit, and since a young age I have drawn every day to better my skills as an artist. 14 years later with the help of amazingly supportive friends and members of the Wellington community, I have managed to host 2 solo gallery's and paint 4 murals around the central Wellington area.
Growing up I never thought my art becoming a career path would never be a sustainable future. When I started making money, I realized some people can just be close minded idiots.

As time went on I started to surround myself with other creative people like myself. Its astounding how many different people you can meet who are just passing through a city!
All these people were creative in various ways; sewing, drawing, writing, music making, you name it! But there was one median that I became so fond of that I couldn't stop nagging the artists to teach me about it, and that was tattooing!

I finally managed to get off my butt and follow my dream of being a tattoo artist, but along the way I recorded everything step-by-step so you can see my progress and developent as a tattoo apprentice!
Over the last month I have managed to learn some tips and tricks from a local tattoo gallery to help further the understanding of the art behind tattooing.

Essentially you'll be taught things here and there in an apprenticeship, but you'll always learn more through your own experiences. These are the tips and tricks I learned that nobody else will think to tell you.
Throughout this blog, I will post up photos and videos of my progress. The two categories are Stick & Poke (SnP) and just using a Tattoo Gun (TG) which are then labelled w what I need to fix / what's done right.

Hope you enjoy!!