Provo Ink

Me before my tattoo training-- for your eyes only!

Timeless Image Tattoo...
aka the only place in Provo to get ink'd. Properly.
   
     I began my apprenticeship at Timeless Image yesterday afternoon with Luis and Randal . "Could you tell me everything there is to know about giving someone a tattoo?" I asked Luis at the front desk when I arrived. After one long, awkward stare, Luis, confused, asked "Like an apprenticeship?" "Yes," I said, "A one hour apprenticeship." He laughed a little, agreed, and took me to the back room. This is an account of my experience at Timeless Image Tattoo.

      Randal was in the back room in the process of giving a girl a tattoo on her back. Luis told him I was there to watch and learn the process of giving someone a tattoo. Randal said that was fine as long as I got my own tattoo at the end of my tour. Haha.....

Randal letting me watch

   Randal asked me what I knew about tattooing, I told him I didn't know very much. "Tattoos have been around forever," he told me, ten years ago archeologists found a cave man covered in tattoos.

     When I got home I looked up what Randal was talking about. "Ötzi the Iceman" was discovered in 1991,  his body is dated around 3300 B.C. Ötzi had over 57 carbon tattoos on his body, little dots and lines. Clearly, the history of the tattoo is long, and as diverse as the people who get them.

   

Randal's cave man

    Randal was using a tattoo gun to cut into his client's skin to inject the ink. "Your skin has seven layers, but to give a tattoo the deepest we go is the third layer." Ancient tattoo artists used sharp bone needles to pierce the skin and inject pigment, according to archeological finds in Europe. Some Indian cultures of North and South America simply scratched the skin and introduced ink to the wounds. In New Zealand, ancient people used wood carving tools to cut the skin. 

Ancient tattoo tools. A visual history of tattoo tools here!

  
 I asked Randal how long it took him to get trained as a tattoo artist. "Six months of formal training and a lifetime of doodling." Luis told me if I practiced my drawing I could apply for a formal apprenticeship and start tattooing by next year. "Drawing ability is an important part of tattoo design, but you don't have to be able to draw well to get into tatooing." Randal showed me the transfer they used on their client to put the design on her back. "It's like carbon paper, or a stencil." Luis told me. Even though you really just follow the lines of the transfer on your client's skin, you still need a lot of practice. 

    To practice tattooing you have two options: practice on your own skin or go to the butcher and buy pig skin to practice on. I asked Randal if I could try on his client, he said no. I asked Luis if he had any pig skin, he said no. Both men told me the only way I could touch the gun was if I was going to try it on myself. Good joke, guys. 

Randal dipping his tattoo gun into the ink well

     Randal and Luis proceeded to show me the tattoos they had given themselves in training. Luis had a spider on his wrist and a Catherine Zeta-Jones look-alike on his calf.  Randal had an 8x13 inch cross on his thigh.  I told them there was still no way I was gonna give myself a tattoo. Ever.

   Luis showed me the design gallery where clients picked out what tattoo they wanted, if they didn't come with their own idea. Ancient tattoos found on the mummified remains of Scythian people depicted game animals and totem. Tattoos in ancient China, however, were first used to mark criminals. 

All the different colors Randal showed me!

   Tattoos or "dermal pigmentations" are a type of body modification.  In ancient cultures as well as today, they are used either as a decoration or as a way of branding. Because I believe, as a Latter-Day- Saint, that my body is a gift and not a medium of expression, I don't support the tattooing industry. My informal training in modern-day tattooing, however, was an interesting experience from a learning-about-folk-knowledge point of view. The history of tattoos is much too vast for me to cover in this blog, but I do hope I highlighted the fact that tattooing in ancient cultures isn't much different than it is today. People today are as interested in expressing themselves in nonverbal ways as they were in ancient Scandinavia, China, Japan, etc. To see how all cultures have a history with tattoos look here.  Or here. I think it's evidence of the fact that we share more in common with our ancestors than we realize.