Tattooing doesn’t stand still, even when we do. A long-term view on staying curious, avoiding dogma, and building a career that lasts.
This Christmas, during the short light of the solstice, I was sitting in the studio watching winter sunlight cut slowly across the floor. Nothing dramatic. No big moment. Just quiet light, moving.
And in that stillness, something became obvious to me. I talk about tattoos a lot. I’ve written about them in this column for over a decade now. A lot has changed in that time. I’ve talked about tattooing into cameras, over bar tables at conventions, in late‑night hotel rooms, and on podcasts that probably should never have existed. When I started, I didn’t have a complete view of tattooing. Not even close. I had opinions, strong ones at that, but perspective only comes with time.
If you’re early in your tattoo career, a year in, two years in, maybe just finding your feet, this isn’t advice in the usual sense. It’s not a checklist or a set of rules. It’s a warning, and some encouragement, offered quietly.
Most of what you believe about tattooing right now feels solid. That’s normal. You learned it under pressure, in close quarters, from people whose approval mattered. Apprenticeships do that. They hard‑wire ideas into you, about what good tattooing is, what bad tattooing is, what matters, what doesn’t, who’s doing it “right” and who isn’t.
Some of those ideas will save you years of mistakes. Some of them will quietly limit you if you never question them.
The danger isn’t learning strong opinions early. The danger is freezing them in place. Tattooing is always changing. Not just stylistically, but culturally, economically, and socially. If you stop updating your thinking, you don’t stay still, you fall behind without noticing. That doesn’t make you a bad tattooist. It makes you human.
I’ve been tattooing for around twenty years now. Long enough to have been certain, wrong, certain again and wrong in entirely new ways. Long enough to have watched styles rise, peak, commercialise, collapse and quietly re‑emerge under different names. Long enough to see scenes form, fracture and reform around different values. What I’ve learned isn’t a single lesson. It’s a pattern.
Tattooists who last, creatively, financially, mentally, are rarely the ones who were “right” first. They’re the ones who stayed curious. Curiosity doesn’t mean chasing trends or abandoning fundamentals. It means refusing to confuse familiarity with truth.
Early on, your world is small. One studio. A handful of artists. A narrow slice of tattooing presented as the way. That’s unavoidable. You need structure before you can safely dismantle it. But if you’re paying attention, the cracks appear. You’ll meet tattooists doing work you were told didn’t matter and they’re booked solid. You’ll see artists with styles you were warned never to touch and the tattoos last. You’ll notice clients responding not to technical flexing, but to feeling understood.
That’s usually when people double down, or open up.
Doubling down feels safer. It keeps your identity intact: this is how I tattoo, this is what I believe, this is where I stand. Opening up feels destabilising. It means admitting that what got you here might not get you where you want to go next. That moment matters more than you think.
Tattooing isn’t just marks in skin. It’s a relationship between people, money, time, culture and trust. Ignore any one of those for long enough and the work suffers. Even if the tattoos still look good on Instagram.
One of the biggest shifts you’ll experience, if you stay in this long enough, is realising that being a working tattooist is a different skillset to being a talented one.
Working tattooists manage energy.
They manage expectations.
They manage difficult conversations.
They manage boredom, ego, insecurity, and repetition.
They learn how to show up consistently when inspiration doesn’t.
They learn that longevity is a craft of its own.
No one teaches you that in an apprenticeship.
You usually learn it the hard way. Burned out, frustrated or quietly resentful of a job you once loved.
This is where open‑mindedness stops being a personality trait and becomes a survival skill. Staying open doesn’t mean agreeing with everyone. It means listening long enough to understand why someone else’s approach works for them. It means separating principles from preferences.
It also means being able to say, “That’s not for me, but I can see why it exists.”
Tattoo culture isn’t a fixed object. It’s a living thing, shaped by technology, economics, clients, artists, and wider social shifts. Pretending it should stay exactly as it was when you entered it is a recipe for frustration.
Every generation thinks the next one is ruining tattooing.
Every generation is partly right. And partly blind.
Your job isn’t to protect tattooing from change. It’s to decide which changes you participate in, which you resist, and which you ignore entirely. That requires thought. It requires humility. And it requires the confidence to admit when your views need updating. If there’s one thing worth doing early, it’s this: don’t build your entire identity around being right.
Build it around being useful.
Useful to your clients.
Useful to your colleagues.
Useful to your future self.
The tattooists I respect most aren’t the loudest or the most dogmatic. They’re steady. They’ve changed their minds more than once and they’re not embarrassed about it. They understand that the future of tattooing isn’t something that happens to you. It’s something you help shape through daily decisions.
How you speak to clients.
What standards you quietly uphold.
What corners you refuse to cut.
What ideas you stay curious about instead of dismissing.
The future shows up in small choices, repeated over years. So before you lock your views in place, before you decide you’ve got it all figured out, leave some room.
Room for better questions.
Room for perspectives you haven’t encountered yet.
Room for growth that doesn’t look like success at first glance.
Tattooing will take a lot from you if you let it. But it will give a lot back, if you stay awake.
Before I finish, I want to slow this down and make it practical. Not rules. Not commandments. Just a few things worth carrying with you if you’re early in your career. When your hands are still finding confidence and your opinions still feel sharper than your experience. These aren’t things you’ll hear shouted in studios or posted online very often. But they matter. Quietly. Over time.
»You don’t need permission to do things differently.
At some point, you’ll feel the urge to step sideways from what you were taught. A different way of working. A different aesthetic. A different relationship with clients. That instinct doesn’t need approval.
But choosing to do things differently means choosing to be visible.
If you step outside familiar lanes, people will watch you more closely. Some will question your decisions. Others will test your resolve. A few will hope you fail so they don’t have to question their own choices. That isn’t cruelty. It’s human nature.
If you want autonomy, you have to accept scrutiny without becoming defensive. Let your work, your consistency, and your standards do the talking.
»Be prepared to be scrutinised and don’t confuse that with hostility.
Not every raised eyebrow is an attack. Not every question is disrespect. Sometimes scrutiny is just curiosity, concern or unfamiliarity. Learn to sit with being questioned without rushing to justify yourself. Take what’s useful. Discard what isn’t. Keep moving.
»Everyone has something they can teach you, if you’re willing to listen.
It’s easy early on to decide whose opinions “count.” To sort voices into neat categories: relevant or irrelevant, old school or new school, insider or outsider. That kind of thinking shrinks your world.
Some of the most valuable lessons you’ll learn won’t necessarily come from people you admire stylistically. They’ll come from clients, from artists working completely differently to you, or from people who can clearly explain why they make the choices they do. Listening doesn’t weaken your position. It sharpens it.
»Be careful with the language that separates us.
Pay attention to the words you repeat, especially the ones that divide. Real tattooing. Proper tattooists. Scratchers. Fake artists. Old guard. New kids. Every one of those phrases builds walls.
I don’t care what style you work in or what tools you use. What matters is that we’re both serious about this art form, this craft, and the people who trust us with their skin. If we start from that shared commitment instead of separation, the conversation changes immediately.
Unity doesn’t mean uniformity. It means recognising common ground before drawing lines.
And that matters, not just for the culture, but for the future you’re stepping into. Because the future doesn’t arrive all at once.
It’s built slowly, by people who stay open long enough to grow into it.
