How do you know if your going to a good tattooist?

Find out all those niggling questions before your tattoo with our good tattooist guide!

The world of tattoos has changed over the past few years. Technology has made it way too easy for anyone to pop on to ebay and get a tattoo starter kit and with no formal qualifications needed to set up shop you need to be sure of who your allowing to stick needles into you and leaving a permanent etching on you for life.
If you don’t believe us on the starter kits heres a link.

This entire kit is £33!

£35, rent and  a health and safety certificate from the local council is all someone needs to open a tattoo shop!

The council are not interested in how good at tattooing or if the tattooist has any actual experience, they are their to make sure it is being done in a hygienic environment once per year, the rest of the year it can be a pig sty.

Although the technology has allowed anybody to become a tattooist it has also helped proper artists with extremely lightweight tattoo machines, new types of ink that continue to be vibrant after healing and the internet has also opened people’s eyes to what a good tattoo should look like.

The most important thing to do before you even look for an artist is to decide on your design. If you need some help then check out our previous blog post here, all about choosing a design.

Once you have decided on a design you would like it is now time for some research. Use google, instagram, facebook, mates or anything that you can to try and find an artist that you feel could do your design justice. You should decide whether you want it in black and grey or colour before your research as this can greatly change the most suited artist for you. Check out our black and grey or colour post here.

So you’ve decided on an artist and you know your design so now it is time to speak to the studio/artist your looking to go to. If your miles away from the studio your best bet is to either phone, email or message them to find out there normal tattoo procedure. This is also true if you live down the road. Please do not expect to walk in to a studio and be able to speak to your chosen artist straight away. If they are a good artist then they will be busy all the time and your only chance to speak to them maybe through a booked timeslot.

We always advise our customers to have a consultation before booking in their tattoo. This gives you and the artist an idea of the design, timeframe and any adjustments that may need to be made before the day. This consultation also saves valuable time for you and the studio when you actually come to get tattooed as the design is already done and the artist knows where it is going. We highly recommend this consultation process as without it you could be spending the first hour of your actual tattoo time just sitting on a couch twiddling your thumbs as the tattooist creates a stencil and so forth and they may even charge you for this!

If they do book you in for a consultation then this is the time you can scope out the shop a bit before getting tattooed there.

Does the shop look clean to you? Are the customers sat right next to each other which could cause cross contamination, are all the chairs and so forth covered in cling film? Are the tattooists wearing gloves? Are the leads covered? Is the working area covered in tin foil or other disposable material? Are the inks in plastic disposable cups? You should ask yourself all these questions during this consultation as you will probably forgot to look on the day of your tattoo due to excitement! If there is anything that your worried about you have two options; speak to the artist about your concerns or walk away. obviously speaking to your artist is the preferred option as you’ve researched their work and are happy for them to ink you and they can respond to any concerns you may have.

Whilst your getting the consultation it can also put your mind at ease to see some of their work that hasn’t been plastered over the internet. Why you ask? well it’s not very hard for somebody to rip off another artist and just say it is there work, especially if they are the only artist in their shop as you could be going into a tattoo thinking you’ll be getting one thing but leaving with a worse quality, infected piece as the artist has been lying about their work on their internet pages.

At Monumental we pride ourselves on are hygiene and as we have private tattoo rooms for each artist there is a very low chance of any cross contamination unlike other shops that may sit people very close together and/or in the same room which could cause cross contamination if the studio and artists are not totally hygienic at all times.

So you’ve researched, you’ve had a satisfying consultation, what next? Well the hardest part, getting tattooed!

If you have any other questions or comments then please leave them below or message us on facebook or email us monumentalink@hotmail.co.uk

To get a feel for our studio take a look at our studio photos on google+.