EXPERT ADVICE • SHOP GUIDES • STYLE SPOTLIGHTS
13 Articles
August 19, 2026
Last week a client sat down in my chair and spent the first ten minutes of her appointment not talking about her tattoo at all. She wanted to know why her friend's constellation ear project looked so...
July 29, 2026
My first tattoo healed terribly. Not because the artist did bad work, but because I had no idea what I was doing afterward. I slathered it in Vaseline for two weeks straight, picked at every piece of...
July 29, 2026
First time I watched an artist pull a portrait out of nothing but black ink and skin, I stood there with my mouth open like a complete idiot. This was back at a shop on Federal Highway, probably 2003...
July 29, 2026
Fine line work broke my brain the first time I really sat with it. A client came in about eight years ago with a reference photo, something delicate, botanical, tiny leaves and stems no thicker than...
July 8, 2026
First flash event I ever worked was out of a shop on Flatbush Avenue that doesn't exist anymore. Somebody had pinned maybe forty sheets to the walls the night before, the ink still smelled fresh, and...
May 3, 2026
Twelve years ago, a client walked into my shop with a crumpled photograph of a Hokusai wave print and said "I want this, but mine." That conversation lasted two hours. We talked about koi and their...
April 22, 2026
My first septum piercing happened on a Tuesday afternoon at a shop in downtown Greenville, back when I was maybe three years into collecting and thought I knew everything. I didn't. The piercer took...
March 27, 2026
My first American Traditional tattoo was a disaster. Not the design itself, a classic panther climbing a forearm, but my execution. I was two years into my apprenticeship at a shop in Phoenix,...
February 20, 2026
Last week a client came in asking for "whatever's trending on Pinterest" and honestly? That's not the worst starting point. The problem is Pinterest doesn't tell you whether the jewelry in those...
November 15, 2025
Walking into our shop twelve years ago, I watched a college kid practically vibrate with nerves in our waiting area. First tattoo. He'd been researching for months, had his design picked out, but...
October 28, 2025
Last week, a couple walked into my studio holding hands so tightly I thought they might cut off circulation. They'd been planning matching tattoos for two years but couldn't decide on a design. Sound...
October 26, 2025
I remember scrolling through Instagram three years ago, completely mesmerized by this artist's work but feeling crushed when I realized they were based in Portland and I lived in Atlanta. The style...
October 17, 2025
A client walked into my shop last week asking for a "tiny something meaningful" on her wrist. Nothing flashy. Just personal.