Moria Dailey
Published: November 9, 2005
Tattoos have become an ever-growing form of body decoration everywhere, including PJC. Monica Cutler, who has one tattoo, said all of her friends were tattooed, and “my boyfriend is the only person I hang out with regularly who doesn’t have tattoos.”
The tattoo process begins with picking out a design. Custom designs require an advance trip to the shop to talk to the artist about drawing it out and sizing it. If it is flash (flash is the art that hangs on tattoo parlor walls), then you simply go into a tattoo shop, pick out the flash you want, and tell the artist.
The artist then makes a transfer of the flash, or the design he or she has drawn. The transfer is then applied to the skin of the person wishing to be tattooed, and then the artist traces over the transfer with a tattoo gun, and then colors the design in.
Tattoo artists use a motorized “gun” or machine to inject tattoo pigment into the skin. The ink penetrates to the second layer (the dermis), and the needle of the tattoo gun penetrates the skin at a rate of 50 to 3,000 times a minute. The gun, which can hold multiple needles, is used with only a single needle to do the outline of a tattoo, done in black ink, and then anywhere from five to seven needles are added to the gun, and that is used to fill in the tattoo design.
Now, that sounds like it may be a little painful, and PJC students agree…for the most part. Sam Cummings, who has two tattoos, said, “Yeah, it hurt. I was a baby; my boyfriend was like ‘I hate you’ because I squeezed his hand off.”
Kemo Azar, however, has a different opinion.
“Tattoo pain is annoying,” he said, “If you’re in a bad mood it hurts way more. You have to be totally stoked.”
Florida law states that it is illegal for any person to tattoo the body of another person unless under the supervision of the Board of Medicine, and that it is illegal for minors to be tattooed without written and notarized consent of the parent or guardian.
“I got my Scorpio tattoo as an 18th birthday present to myself, because I was 18, and well, I could,” Adam Cope said.