(Spike jingle)
(soft music)
- [Todd] You're taking tradition,
something that is traditional,
throughout history of tattooing,
and you're adding something new to it.
For me it was I guess a new art form,
so I was just trying anything I could to learn it.
I was like "Oh, I can do a skull this way,
instead of that way that guy did it back in the 40s.
Just add my own twist to it or
use a thinner line here, a thicker line there,
and not have these confining rules.
- [Joe] What's possible in a tattoo has expanded greatly.
Not only have the pigments come further,
not only has the application come further,
but also the array of things that you can choose from.
It's just been an evolution of the art form.
- I think I was pulled to neo-traditional tattooing
mainly because of the imagery,
the classic Americana folk imagery
of the old tattoos you'd see on your uncle's forearm
from World War II.
Skulls, eagles, snakes, pinups, daggers.
- I went to art school, I studied illustration.
Neo-traditional tattooing is the way that I would paint
left to my own devices, you know,
it's a style that I can achieve in the tattooing medium
that lends itself to how I would
normally create an image.
- Within traditional and neo-traditional tattooing,
there's a lot of the same imagery.
The skulls, the daggers, the pinup girls,
babies, hearts, crosses,
it's just how it's portrayed.
- The history of flash artwork for tattoos,
which is sheets with designs ready to go,
came from the carnie era.
You know, the biggest tattooed lady or
the most tattooed man,
and there would be a guy tattooing there too,
so you know, once they got to the town,
they setup their tent,
they would setup their tattoo gear,
they would have their flash sheets with designs
out on the walls for the customers to pick.
Somebody would come in, say
"Oh I want that skull and dagger,"
and they would tattoo it.
And that really solidified the imagery
that neo-traditional uses.
- You see a lot of nautical themes in neo-traditional
because of the American traditional tattoos.
A lot of those were done for Navy people
who were on shore leave.
They'd come in and they'd line up
and they'd pick off of flash sheets
and they'd get tattooed, you know,
those guys knew what their demographic was,
so they'd design a lot of tattoos based on
what a Navy guy would want to get.
- When I think of neo-traditional tattoos,
their roots are in the time where
you said "Yes ma'am, yes sir",
you'd open the doors for ladies or old people or
whoever else was in front of you or behind you.
There are things that are lost today
that don't kind of relate to that era and this,
kind of helps bring the whole thing back.
- I think neo-traditional probably started with Ed Hardy
taking a traditional tattoo and just
maybe doing it a little different
and going outside the box a little bit.
It's like, "Oh, he can go outside the box,
maybe I can go outside the box this way,"
and everybody just starts journeying
outside the box a little bit.
- Ed Hardy, he's pretty much the godfather
of modern tattooing.
He definitely got a new generation of tattooers
interested in that tattoo language.
Skulls, snakes, daggers,
he played with a lot of that stuff and changed it,
he would morph a rose into a panther head,
and he would do strange, abstract things.
He basically took tattooing and flipped it on its head.
Ed Hardy really brought neo-traditional to light.
- [Joe] The subject matter of neo-traditional tattoos
is not the same as traditional tattooing
in the sense that when you look at traditional tattoos,
a lot of those were made for
bikers and sailors and prisoners,
a certain demographic.
Neo-traditional takes that subject matter,
but in the same way that the application
is a little more progressive,
so is the subject matter,
so you could make anything into a neo-traditional tattoo,
just by drawing it in that style.
- Every day is different, every client's different,
every tattoo is gonna be different.
Somebody could come in and they're like,
"I want Jon Bon Jovi portrait,
but I want it done neo-traditional style."
It can be done, you can apply a certain
loose set of rules of neo-traditional tattooing
to almost any imagery that's based in reality.
If it's a skull, if it's a sword,
if it's a dagger, if it's a one-eyed ferret,
it can be done.
- [Joe] The application is really the most important part
of the style.
Bold and saturated and strong.
Definitely I use a black outline
in every tattoo I do.
I also try to use multiple line weights.
I usually use a light source
so that it has a little bit more of a sense of realism
than just a flat image.
(soft music)
- My roles are bold lines, crisp lines, clean lines,
enough black that the colors are brighter.
- I try to have a good balance of warm and cool,
use at least one bright color and
use a lot of muted color, so that
the bright color appears bright by contrast.
I really base the colors that I'm using
more on color theory than is applicable to reality.
You know, if it's a leaf,
I don't necessarily have to color it green.
I can make it yellow if that's what the piece calls for.
I can do whatever I want, it's art.
- The colors I like to use are earth tone based.
I'll have super bright colors for highlights or
small hints here and there,
just stuff that grabs your attention
without being like "Hey! I'm a bright color!"
It serves its purpose within the tattoo.
- I think there's a lot of challenges
with designing any tattoo
because most of the time when I'm working on somebody,
they're a perfect stranger to me,
and I have to indelibly mark their skin,
and hope that they like it as much as I do.
There's no accounting for taste in the thing.
It's like my taste might be different than yours.
I could do a tattoo that looks great to me,
but you might not like the color pink,
and I used pink all over that tattoo,
and now you're horrified.
The real challenge is trying to understand
how to make the wearer happy.
- The generations now are more in tune to like,
what they want.
You know, they come in here and they actually
make fun of this shit on the walls,
and it's kind of disrespectful, I'm like,
"You wouldn't be getting tattooed
if this shit didn't exist".
It led to where you're at now.
- The best thing about a neo-traditional tattoo is
the longevity.
It's bold and saturated and it lasts for a really long time.
I try to use my imagination.
That's not always easy because
it's hard to sit down and go,
"Alright imagination, let's go.
Let's come up with a completely original and new concept."
(laughing)
I just try to get a little bit better every day,
and over the long haul, maybe I'll be good.
- I've always been near the ocean,
I've always had an attraction to it,
so my dream shop was to be as close to the beach as possible
so I could go surf, come back and tattoo,
go surf, come back and tattoo.
There's not a day that I wake up and I'm like,
"I don't wanna go to work today."
I like the tattoos that I'm doing.
I just wanna do more of them.
- The thing I enjoy most about my job is
getting to touch somebody's life.
I sit with somebody for three or four hours
and I'm with them forever.
It's an unbelievable privilege to be able to
work with somebody in that way,
and I don't think a lot of people have a job like that where
they're gonna touch somebody's life forever in a day.
That's the best part about it.
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