What happens when you’re willing to give, but you don’t actually have the resources that the traditional tattoo apprenticeship system expects you to give?
Why won’t you just teach me?
That’s the question I imagine a lot of people wanting to get into tattooing have asked at some point. And I understand it. I had to ask it myself. Because, if you want to become a tattooist, the obvious thing you’d think you’d need is somebody who knows how to tattoo to show you how it’s done.
Simple, right? Well, No. As I’m sure many of you have discovered.
The traditional apprenticeship argument is usually a version of this: “If you want someone to teach you, you need to demonstrate that you’re worth teaching.”
I was older when I got into tattooing. I had bills to pay, kids to feed, car payments etc etc. I didn’t have time. I couldn’t afford to work for free. Even if I could find a shop to take me on. Which I couldn’t. So I taught myself.
Friends got me started, VHS tapes and DVDs gave me insight into the world of tattooing and later YouTube gave me access to countless hours of information.
I did it on my own. I had to. It was like fishing in the dark at times. Spending hours trying to figure out what the fucking question was before you could get the answer. Hour after frustrating hour, scouring the internet for that tiny piece of information that would connect the dots for me.
Like you I genuinely wanted to learn. I was prepared to work hard. I was prepared to clean the studio, make coffee, draw, listen, observe and contribute.
But I also needed to pay the rent.
In Episode 17, I argued that an apprenticeship isn’t simply somebody teaching you how to tattoo. It’s an exchange. And that sounds reasonable until you start asking what happens when you don’t have very much to exchange.
So when you’re told: “You need to earn your apprenticeship.” Some of us had to ask: “Earn it how? And with what resources?”
“I don’t want to clean the studio because that’s beneath me.” is a very different conversation from someone saying: “I have a mortgage and two kids. I literally cannot spend six months working unpaid.”
Because there’s a difference – a big difference – between refusing to contribute and being unable to participate in the traditional exchange.
Those are not the same thing.
The Traditional Tattoo Apprenticeship
The traditional apprenticeship allows you to learn inside the actual environment where tattooing happens. You observe experienced artists. You learn the culture, standards, client relationships, studio behaviour and all the stuff that isn’t necessarily contained in a lesson plan.
But, it’s extremely demanding. It can involve a huge amount of unpaid or poorly rewarded labour. Access can depend on geography, personal connections and circumstance. And the person with the most enthusiasm isn’t necessarily the person who can afford to give six months of their life to being available whenever the studio needs them.
And I can’t help but ask myself, if we’re telling people: “Don’t pay for a tattoo course. Find a proper apprenticeship.” but then the proper apprenticeship requires them to work unpaid for months, relocate, or somehow support themselves without an income…
Who exactly gets to become a tattooist?
That’s not necessarily an argument against apprenticeships. But we should be acknowledging that economic access affects who can participate in any culture.
I thought this was a working man’s artform?
The simplistic argument that traditional apprenticeships are good and courses – any kind of courses – are bad isn’t enough of an answer. It ignores way too much to be sensible. But that doesn’t mean the alternatives are automatically good or without problems of their own.
So, what’s the trade-off created when the traditional exchange isn’t available?
Commercial Tattoo Apprenticeship Courses
Now, let’s be honest here. Commercial tattoo courses ONLY exist precisely because there is demand for something the traditional system isn’t supplying. If you’re asking “Why won’t you just teach me?” You’ll always be able to find somebody who says: “Okay. Pay me and I will.”
But what exactly are you buying?
- Knowledge?
- Technique?
- Confidence?
- A certificate?
- Access?
- A shortcut?
And even if you’re buying somebody’s knowledge, you’re not necessarily buying their experience or judgement. Can a course reproduce the environment and relationship of an apprenticeship? Probably not completely. But that doesn’t necessarily make the course worthless.
Self-directed Tattoo Apprenticeship
The modern aspiring tattooist has access to an extraordinary amount of information. That’s how I learned. YouTube, Instagram, books, online communities, drawing courses, distributors, conventions, observation, experimentation. Which creates another problem we’ve already explored in this series.
Namely, information isn’t the same thing as understanding.
You can watch somebody tattoo a hundred times without necessarily understanding why they’re doing what they’re doing. And you can accumulate enormous amounts of information without anybody telling you that you’re making the wrong decision.
Maybe there’s an option that studio owners and mentors should be considering today that would have been a hard no a couple of decades ago. Something that we touched on in HERE
One of the assumptions built into the traditional apprenticeship is that the mentor gives knowledge and the apprentice gives labour. If the traditional apprenticeship is an exchange, what other exchanges could exist between someone who wants to learn and someone who knows how to teach?
Instead of asking: “Will you take me on as your apprentice?” what if the relationship became: “Can I pay you for an hour of your time?” or: “Can I come and watch you work?” or: “Can you look at my drawings and tell me where I’m going wrong?”
This might be an interesting middle ground. It starts to separate mentorship from employment. And perhaps that matters.
- Money for knowledge.
- Time for access.
- Attention for feedback.
- Skill for opportunity.
Now, if we’re going to take this kind of exchange seriously, the mentor has to have an incentive too. Because, an experienced tattooist’s time is valuable.
If they spend two hours reviewing somebody’s portfolio, that’s two hours they’re not tattooing. If they allow somebody to observe them, there are privacy and client-consent issues. If they teach somebody properly, they’re giving away knowledge they’ve spent decades accumulating.
And if they take responsibility for somebody’s education, there are consequences if that education goes badly. So perhaps the reason this alternative mentorship market hasn’t developed isn’t simply that tattooists are unwilling to teach.
It’s that the exchange hasn’t been properly defined yet.
If you can’t access a traditional apprenticeship, that doesn’t mean you have no route into tattooing. Many of my friends in tattooing started this way and many of them are sharing what they’ve learnt with an audience without prejudging either them or their motives.
But every alternative comes with its own costs, limitations and responsibilities. There are still NO shortcuts and, to be honest, teaching yourself takes longer and you’ll make more mistakes. You don’t know what you don’t know, right?
Don’t confuse access to information with access to education. And don’t confuse paying for education with buying competence.
But, don’t take no for an answer. If you love this craft. Really love it. Then do it. But, do it safe, take responsibility for yourself and your clients and be prepared for a longer, more frustrating journey.