Walking to a tattoo parlor, there is a vast selection of designs will astound you.
Once you make your choice, the tattoo artist traces the image.
Next, he places the traced image on carbon paper and retraces the lines. This creates the carbon outline of the tattoo on the reverse side. The artist will use this blue print, as it is called, at his guide.
He cleans the customer’s skin. Then, firmly presses on the blue print. The carbon image transferred easily because the skin is damp.
Now it is time to construct the needles. Most tattoos required two needles, one to make the outline of the image, the other just shade and color it in. Each needle is made up of these many and 20 smaller needles. The artist aligns these small needles in a jig then solders them together onto one end of a steel rod. There is an eye on the other end.
The number of small needle in a needle depends on the tattoo design. How thick is line are? How big its colored areas are?
To finished needles, go into an autoclave to be sterilized. That takes 20 minutes at precisely 170 degrees Celsius. The tattoo artist uses that time to assemble the tattoo gun after cleaning the frame with rubbing alcohol. He installed the motor called the ‘coil’.
When an electric current runs through the coil, it also lights the needle at up to 50 times for second. Once the two needles are sterilized, he takes the one for outlining called the ‘liner’ and slide within to the tattoo gun. He hooks the eye on the other end unto the spring. As the spring moves back and fort, it moves the needle up and down. The tattoo artist stops and starts it with the slit pedal like a sawing machine.
Time to tattoo. He turns on the power supply to ten volts and dabs the needle in the ink cap. The gun sucks up the ink.
Some petroleum jelly on the skin helps the needle glide more easily. He begins by tracing the lines of the blue print. The needle punctured the skin at a rate of up to 3000 times per minute injecting micro particles of ink which intermingle with the cells of the dermis, the skin’s second layer. The artist continually wipes the way we access ink to keep his work area clean.
After finishing the outline, he re-applies petroleum jelly. This seals the pores of the skin and prevents bleeding. Then he changes to the other needle and begins shading and coloring the image, with a back and fort movement. He applies one color at a time, overlapping them to ensure thorough and even coverage. The needle can penetrate from one to four millimeters and a good tattoo artist knows just how deep to go to create the different part of the image. For example, he had to inject the outline, the deepest. At going too deep, can tear the skin and cause excessive pain and bleeding.
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