Chilling with my Mentor

April, 11, 08
4:30pm 7:00pm

On Friday i met with my mentor Ron. When i arrived Ron was on his way out to the store to buy some ink for the printers. I talked to him real quick and he told another employee at the shop and he agreed to let me watch him tattoo some people. As Ron left the other guy started to tattoo some girl on her leg. This girl got a tiny star on her ankle. I didnt get to watch him tattoo her because by the time i came back in to the shop the guy was done tattooing. This professional tattoo artist are real quick in what they do and real good at it. Well as i sat there waited another lady came in and showed Rons friend a picture of a tattoo she wanted to get. The picture was a painters pad with colors on it and paint brushes behind the pad. Rons friend then quickly rezized the picture so it could be smaller and fit on her wrist. After he resized he made sure it would fit and then he started to stencil it. This guy really didnt talk to me much about what he was doing or anything but i still watched him. As the lady waited for him to stencil it i asked her if i could take some pictures while she got her tattoo and she agreed to let me. Then Rons friend came back and told us he was ready. He applied the stencil and started to tatoo. Ron told me that when ever he would tattoo someone he would talk me through what he was doing and all but this guy did not talk to me at all. As soon as he started to tattoo, not even ten minutes in Ron showed up and i started to talk to him.

I talked to Ron about how i had bought some fake tattoo skin and a tattoo machine. He said that was great and asked if he had any of it with me. Ron showed me his machine and showed me how a machine should sound like when it is running correctly. Ron then started to prep some piercing for some girls who were about to get an ear piercing. While he did this i walked outside and got the fake skin and my tattoo machine. When i came back in Anna (my girlfriend) was talking to Ron about a tattoo she got. Ron then gave her some tips that she could use to keep her tattoo looking good. Ron looked at my tattoo gun and started to show me how to tune it. I had started to do some tattooing on the fake skin but my tattoo machine stopped working and i could get it to work for a while but then it would stop working after a while. Well Ron helped me out with this problem by teaching me how to tune it. Now it works real good and I can start working on my product. After he tuned my machine he talked to me a little more about what other things i could use to tattoo on. He told me i could use pig ears and bananas and grapefruits to do this. Ron said that the pig ears are most similar to real human skin. When using pig ears you really cant keep them for a long time because the start to rot and get real smelly. I was thinking on going back this week but Ron is going out of town and not coming back until Thursday. Hopefully i can meet with him then and get some more mentor hours. Well thats pretty much it for this visit.