Biweekly Newsletter 11/07/2016

Greetings from Reinventing The Tattoo!

 

What a crazy couple weeks it's been... most of my spare time in October had been dedicated to preparing for the two seminars I just gave at the Paradise Tattoo Gathering in Jiminy Peak, Massachusetts. This was the first time I've given two at the same event, which made the preparation double challenging. Normally I'll sit down with a cup of strong coffee and open Reinventing to whatever chapter I'm focusing on in the seminar- in this case, the two chapters were Flow&Fit, and a second pass over the Coverup chapters, which I still have a lot more to say about. I then write out some notes, asking myself where I want to go deeper into the subject matter. Doing this for two seminars at once almost felt like having two paintings on the easel... which is something I've done plenty of times. 

With the notes hammered out it's then a matter of choosing some of the root images from the Reinventing curriculum, then as many new images as possible to give fresh examples of tattoos that illustrate the topic. This time around I also invited some fellow tattoo artists to send me some images, so that the presentation could represent a good range of artistic styles. Each seminar folder got a couple hundred images dropped into it, which then had to be sorted, combined, labeled and organized. Text slides were made as well. It's the kind of job that is easy to imagine not really taking that long, but once you are on the ground doing it you find that there's no end to how much time you can spend on attention to detail. So sure enough, there I was sitting on the plane hammering away at the laptop. Then I arrived at Jiminy Peak and they didn't have my room ready, so I camped out in the tavern for four hours, continuing to hammer away. At least I could get a little socializing in that way.

Thankfully, James Kern had a seminar just before mine, and we let him know he could run over a bit. That gave me a solid excuse to keep working until about ninety seconds before it was time for me to start.

 

Why am I admitting all this to you good folks? As it turns out, every artist that I've spoken with who gave a seminar there was working until the last minute. Not because we are procrastinators, but because we wanted our classes to be as solid as possible. 

 

I'd like to thank everyone who attended the two classes. These were interactive workshops with drawing exercises, which I commented on while people worked, so it was a pretty high-pressure situation for a lot of the artists in the room. You all delivered the goods; I think everyone improved that day, myself included... because I've definitely found that teaching is one of the greatest learning experiences.

 

I'll be doing some editing over the next month to crunch these two seminars into a pair of 2-hour video tutorials, which will be embedded in your Reinventing The Tattoo electronic package. You'll find them in your Table Of Contents after Chapter 2.1, Flow&Fit, and added into the coverup section, which is becoming pretty substantial. I hope to have these in place by the New Year.

 

A number of you are coming to the end of your first year subscription, and I wanted to thank you for being part of the Reinventing The Tattoo project, which has proven to be the single biggest thing that I've ever worked on. I'd like to encourage you to renew your subscription, not only to retain all the great material that is already in place, but to get access to the large volume of new material that is in the works. This includes the two large tutorials just mentioned, plus several compact Photoshop tutorials on specific subjects ranging from photo retouching to advanced design compositing. Also in the pipeline are guest chapters by Nate Beavers, Deano Cook, Killian Moon and others, with a new one added every two months or so. We are also working on a significant section on the business side of the tattoo field, plus an apprentice playbook that is being designed to help integrate scheduled lessons into the day-to-day experience of being in a shop working under experienced professionals. 

 

Just look for the Renew button at ReinventingTheTattoo.com, where members can enter their username and password to get a $50 discount.

 

Thanks, and I'll be in touch soon!

 

Guy Aitchison