Tattoo - A story written for Reporting 1

Diane Gruver has been employed by Tattoo by Design for the last 17 years and has been tattooing for the last 10½. In the world of tattoo, every artist has his or her own technique that is held close to the heart and not easily shared. It’s like a family recipe passed down from artist to artist.

Gruver’s work begins when a client contacts her for her services and provides a picture of the tattoo he wants. She runs the client’s picture through a Thermofax, an old photocopy machine, to create a stencil that can be transferred onto her client’s skin. Before she begins work on her client, Gruver cleans her station and her hands. When she is sure that everything has been thoroughly sanitized, Gruver can then take out her needles and pour her pigment and rinsing water. Once her station is prepped, she calls her client over and readies his skin.

First, Gruver preps her client’s skin with a soap spray, a shave, and some rubbing alcohol. She applies deodorant, which helps the stencil stick. After rubbing the stencil on she asks the client to check and make sure it is placed to his liking. If he wants, she can wash it off and reapply.

A professional tattoo artist generally uses a tattoo machine which the artist controls by pushing a pedal on the floor, much like a sewing machine. As Gruver pushes the pedal with her foot the current opens, turning the machine on. When turned on, the needles set in the machine vigorously move up and down, recreating the old traditional way of hand tattooing by tap-tap-tapping the needles into the skin. Each tap into the client’s flesh creates a scratch. The vibration of the needles then shakes the ink, or pigment, into the scratch, planting it between the top two layers of skin. Gruver places the needles in the machine very carefully, using a jeweler’s loupe, to make sure it scratches to the right depth.

Guver begins her work of art by carefully following the outline provided by the stencil. She starts in an area that can be easily re-done in case her client twitches at the first touch of the needles. After he proves himself motionless, she moves on.

Comparing the motion to a sewing technique, she pulls the skin taut and brushes, or more literally, scrapes the pigment across the client’s skin to create a solid line. As she runs her needles across her client’s flesh, pigment and blood pool along the lines. “You have to learn to see though the mess,” she says as she wipes away the color and blood with a paper towel. She says that each skin type has a different grain to follow and she needs to adjust how she directs her machine in order to place the pigment where she wants it. “Skin is hard to work with,” she says.

Employees prepare and sterilize tattoo needles in advance. The most common types of needles are called “liners” and “shaders,” however that doesn’t mean they are only used for their names. ”Different types of needles have different shapes, sizes, and configurations," Gruver says. "A tattoo artist picks the appropriate needles for the particular tattoo, just as a painter picks particular brushes to get different effects.”

Gruver frequently dips the needles into her pigment, then the water, wipes a little test on her paper towel to make sure she has the right mix, then goes back to her work. When she finishes her outline, she changes her needles and starts filling in different levels of black and grey. Her speed and stroke styles change depending on the effect she’s looking for. “Think of it like a vacuum cleaner,” she says: The faster she moves, the more spotty her covering will be. When she moves slower, her filling will be more dense.

After about 2½ hours, Gruver finally completes her piece. She has the client examine it to make sure he likes it. After he confirms his approval, she give him specific, stern directions on how to care for his tattoo: Don’t expose it to the sun, make sure to keep it clean, use lotion, don’t let it dry up. If the client follows Gruver’s directions, his tattoo will maintain its quality. If not, she warns, it will fade and become cloudy.

When the client leaves, Gruver turns her focus to cleaning. She stresses the importance of sanitation to avoid illness and infection. Gruver never reuses needles so as to avoid infection. She puts them in a sharps container for biohazard disposal. She throws out all of the stained paper towels, gloves, pads, and rubber bands used for tension on the tattoo machine. She then wipes down her station with what is called tuberculocidal which is a chemical strong enough to kill tuberculosis in 10 minutes. The tools she reuses are put in an autoclave, a machine that subjects the equipment to heat and extremely high pressure, killing all life left that the tuberculicidal missed, including hepatitis. Everything is stored meticulously to avoid contamination.