Seth Holmes works with tattoos, and is himself mostly covered with tattoos. But he doesn’t call himself a tattoo artists.
Just “tattooer.”
The difference is that art, he says, is only one part of the job — probably less than half of it. Rather, tattooing is mostly about working with people.
“No other art medium has something that bleeds, moves, tells you what it wants,” Holmes said. “Tattooing is more of a culture, more of a trade, and much less of an art.”
It helps to know how to draw, but even that doesn’t translate directly, Holmes said. Artists typically draw on a flat surface. But the human body is made of curves, immediately introducing technical factors that the tattooer has to consider that the painter and draftsperson doesn’t.
In his hometown of Pittsburgh, Holmes attended art school briefly after high school, but dropped out after a few months. He got a job as a piercer at a local tattoo shop where he had gotten tattoos before.
“I always liked the aesthetic of a heavily tattooed person, ever since I was a little kid,” he said. “I knew I wanted to look like that, but didn’t know that I wanted to get into tattooing specifically. It fell into my lap at the perfect time.”
Within a few years, he began an apprenticeship. He practiced with pumpkins, watermelons, pig ears, friends who volunteered. It takes years to become competent as a tattooer, he said.
But that is only the most basic technical aspect of the job. It takes longer to master the harder part — working with clients.
It starts with the client’s idea of what they want. Except, clients usually don’t really know what they want, Holmes said. They may have a vague idea, or a basic theme they want to work with.
But the idea is usually undeveloped.
“They come to us as the creative ones,” Holmes said. “A lot of times, you don’t know what you want. A lot of times you know you want something — you have a basic, general idea of what you want. I have to distill it.”
That process may involve research on the tattooer’s part, especially in cases where the client has certain themes in mind, or certain symbols they definitely want to work with. Understanding the meaning of the image the client has in mind can be helpful, Holmes said.
When he was honing his craft as a tattooer, Holmes developed a reputation for good flower tattoos. He liked them because they are incredibly difficult to do well — they involve complex uses of lighting and color. Clients would seek him out to do tattoos of particular types of flowers, he said. Many of those projects involved studying the flowers the clients were asking about.
Another kind of challenge comes when a client’s ideas are simply unrealistic. Clients who know little about tattooing often request pieces that would not hold up well over time, Holmes said. Tattoos work best with strong line work, heavy contrast and deep color saturation. Pieces that are defined by fine lines and subtle coloring will tend to fade and smudge over time, especially if they aren’t cared for and maintained properly.
Those kinds of requests seem to have become more common over the last 10 years, Holmes said. He explained it as an effect of social media. Photos of new tattoos always look great, especially if they have been digitally touched up. The more ornate the tattoo, the more it will be shared on social media. Without the advice of an experienced tattooer, those images seem to create unrealistic expectations in people’s minds, Holmes said.
“This guy did a super realistic portrait the size of a quarter on somebody’s leg, and it’s got a million likes and retweets and reshares all over the internet, and that thing is just going to look like a blob after five years, if that — when this is something that is supposed to look good until the day that they die,” Holmes said. “People are willing to sacrifice the quality of a tattoo for Instagram fame.”
In those cases, Holmes said he tries to work with the client to develop a better concept for the tattoo. Sometimes that works. But sometimes the client has already made up their mind. In those cases, Holmes said, he will refer the client to another tattooer, rather than do a tattoo that he doesn’t expect will hold up.
When clients won’t listen to advice, Holmes said, it usually means they don’t appreciate the tattoo. They don’t grasp that it is a lifetime investment. In this, older customers can often be easier to work with here than younger ones, Holmes said.
“It’s more of an investment than anything else,” he said. “You’re investing in your own self-expression.”
Reach Max Marcus at mmarcus@recorder.com or 413-930-4231.