A good night’s sleep, an early morning at the cabin, and some nero leads in hand. Today started off really well for me!

A structured warm-up. It went fairly well, though I’m really dissatisfied with how light the Nero Medium leads are, now. Conte spoiled me for a few days, and digital has been a ton of fun to work with.

I really like this structure, and I think I’ll keep it for a bit. It helps me with accurate lines, circles, and ellipses, so I feel like it’s a good exercise for now.

Gestures today were very challenging. I think I’m actually starting to enjoy doing them digitally more than traditionally. I struggled until the very last one, which I was actually pretty happy with.

It was another “pyramid” gesture day, starting with 5 minutes and working my way down to 1-minute gestures.

Once I made it to the shop I tattooed for a little over 4 hours, doing Japanese Wind Bars on a client’s chest. That involved some very saturated black and opaque grey inks, blending evenly from dark to light.

Unfortunately, it was a lot of trauma for a client to sit through, so we only made it about 3/4 of the way through the tattoo before my client started shaking from the adrenaline.

So we called it a day and ended the session a little bit early. I didn’t want to force my client to drive home on the verge of passing out. With all of the excitement, I didn’t get to take photos before the client left


What went well?

  • Tattooing.
  • A good warm-up at the cabin.
  • I got new Nero Soft leads in! I’ll be working with those on Monday.

What needs work?

  • Energy levels while I’m tattooing.
  • Getting photos of EVERYTHING.

What did I learn?

Sometimes…it might not be a bad idea to take a break before I feel like I got hit by a truck. Tattooing is harder on the artist than any other kind of art I’ve ever done, but the results — having someone walking around and showing your art to everyone — are completely worth it.


Session: #10

Duration: 4.75 hours

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