With the explosion of tattoo reality shows on television, anyone and everyone now believes that they can become a tattoo artist simply by hanging out at a school for a couple weeks and buying the right equipment.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Real tattoo artists begin their careers under the guardianship of a mentor; an experienced licensed tattoo artist who is able to explain and teach the necessary precautions, sterile procedures, business practices, and skills needed to become a responsible, quality, tattoo artist.
It's important to understand that learning how to hold a tattoo machine, and having some drawing skill are not enough to be a real tattoo artist. The real education comes through apprenticing under a reputable and experienced, licensed artist.
The other area where most people feel they may be able to get by on mediocrity, is actual artistic talent and ability. If you are only a so-so artist with a pen, pencil or paint, what makes you believe you'll do any better on human skin? The best tattoo artists have a substantial background in art, be it as an illustrator, painter, or other highly developed artistic talent in these areas.
Something to keep in mind before choosing what you may see as the easier way in a tattoo school is that the shops that will hire you as a tattoo school graduate are few and far between. Even if you do somehow manage to convince an owner to hire you, it will not be as an artist. You will start where everyone starts, as an apprentice learning the real world skills you'll need to be a quality tattoo artist.
------------------------------------------------------
Inflicting Ink is a Rhode Island Tattoo Studio that embodies
quality, consistency and pride, and offers a sterile, safe,
comfortable, artistic environment to its customers. Nominated multiple
times for the Best Tattoo Parlor in Rhode Island and Best Tattoo Artist
in RI.
You may contact them for an appointment for a
tattoo at (401) 683-5680 and of course walk-ins are always welcome.
For
more information, please visit our home page at www.inflictinginktattoo.com.
Inflicting Ink Tattoo
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Cosmetic Tattoos
Permanent make-up can either be one of the best treats you give to yourself, or an experience that leaves you wishing you never did it.
There are several important conditions and criteria to consider when making the decision to have cosmetic tattooing done anywhere on your body.Cosmetic tattoos differ from artistic tattoos in that they are predominantly used by women for the purpose of simplifying their beauty routine, or in the case of accident victims, attempting to redefine their lips and brows or cover and blend scarring.
Some of the most important questions you need to ask before you decide where to get your tattoo work done concern the studio's reputation and sterile practices. This one question alone will give you enough information to decide if the shop is right for you. Basically, you want to make sure that the tattoo shop is licensed, that all the artists are licensed, and that they use sterile practices to prevent cross-contamination from blood-born pathogens and other related germs.
Because many viruses can live on unsterilized surfaces for time periods ranging from hours to days, it is extremely important that not only the equipment is sterilized using an autoclave, but the surfaces, chairs, and surrounding areas are cleaned before and after each client with sterilizing cleaners.
The second criteria to consider, is the skill of the artist who will do your tattoo work. Unlike artistic tattoos, where there is even small room for minor mistakes to be integrated into the artwork as though they don't exist, having cosmetic tattooing done offers no such protections. If the artist makes a mistake, it will be something you will have to live with, and that you will very likely not be able to cover-up or eliminate them unless you then have tattoo removal performed on the affected area.
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Inflicting Ink is a Rhode Island Tattoo Studio that embodies quality, consistency and pride, and offers a sterile, safe, comfortable, artistic environment to its customers. Nominated multiple times for the Best Tattoo Parlor in Rhode Island and Best Tattoo Artist in RI.
You may contact them for an appointment for a tattoo at (401) 683-5680 and of course walk-ins are always welcome.
For more information, please visit our home page at www.inflictinginktattoo.com.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Backyard Tattoo Parties
What is a backyard tattoo party?
A backyard tattoo party is any outdoor (or indoor) situation, where someone will tattoo people without the benefit of a sterile environment; which can include but is not limited to the ability to sterilize equipment or tools, and places where there will be wooden surfaces that cannot be sterilized with cleansers. The situation may or may not involve needles that are used more than once, but if the artist is not using disposable needles, you need to seriously reconsider your decision to get tattooed at such a function.Understanding your risks
Here at Inflicting Ink Traveling Tattoo we LOVE a great tattoo party. However, we refuse to tattoo in anything less than sterile conditions; which is why we bring our sterile facility everywhere we go. With the use of our traveling tattoo truck, we are able to offer the same sterile precautions that we take in our home studio in Portsmouth at your remote location of choice. All we need is enough room to turn the truck around, and you can easily book us through our website at www.InflictingInkTattoo.comIf you are considering a backyard tattoo party, consider the guidelines imposed by the CDC with regard to tattoo artists, and the risks for skin diseases and death before you let someone touch your skin with a less than perfect needle in a less than perfect environment.
The CDC has the following recommendations for tattoo artists:
- All artists should be licensed and use single use, disposable needles and razors for tattoing and piercing
- All equipment needs to be sterilized, and only equipment that can either be sterilized or thrown away should be used in tattooing or body piercing procedures
- All artists should be wearing gloves, and wash and disinfect their hands and any surfaces involved in tattooing or piercing before and after every session (wood is not an acceptable surface as it cannot be properly disinfected, and the virus that causes Hepatitis can live for up to four days on a non-disinfected surface)
- All tools and equipment that is not disposable should be cleaned and sterilized after every use
- In addition to work surfaces, all surfaces in the tattoo studio, such as chairs, tables, and counters should be cleaned and disinfected consistently to prevent the spread of bacteria and pathogens or viruses
How to avoid trouble
Before getting a tattoo ask the artist the following questions, and make sure the answers match up as well:Q. Are you a licensed tattoo artist, working in a licensed facility?
A. Yes. (they should be able to also tell you which state they are licensed in, and which studio they work for)
Q. Did you apprentice under a reputable tattoo artist in a licensed sterile facility?
A. Yes. (they should also be able to provide you with the name of their teacher and the studio)
Q. Do you practice continuing education and updates to your license on a yearly basis?
A. Yes. (they should be able to help you understand the sterile processes they use, why they use them, what the law requires them to use, and what kind of continuing education updates they take yearly)
Remember that there are very few backyard situations that would be considered a sterile environment for tattooing, but a good rule of thumb to consider is whether or not you would let your dentist perform surgery on you in the same environment - because dentists have the highest incidences of cross-contamination and blood born pathogen illnesses of any environment, and if you wouldn't let them pull a tooth in the same environment, don't get a tattoo in it.
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Inflicting Ink is a Rhode Island Tattoo Studio that embodies quality, consistency and pride, and offers a sterile, safe, comfortable, artistic environment to its customers. Nominated multiple times for the Best Tattoo Parlor in Rhode Island and Best Tattoo Artist in RI.
You may contact them for an appointment for a tattoo at (401) 683-5680 and of course walk-ins are always welcome.
For more information, please visit our home page at www.inflictinginktattoo.com.
Stunning Tattoo Removal Results
We know all the rumors about laser tattoo removal, and we may not be able to stop them, but we can show you the great results our clients are getting after just one treatment!Our Q-Plus laser system is particularly effective at getting out dark pigments and especially loves blue ink tattoos.
If you have been waiting for a laser removal system that can effectively remove your dark pigment tattoo with a minimum of expense and treatments, it’s here.
Stop in for a consult to see how fast we can clear up some new real estate for you.
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Inflicting Ink is a Rhode Island Tattoo Studio that embodies quality, consistency and pride, and offers a sterile, safe, comfortable, artistic environment to its customers. Nominated multiple times for the Best Tattoo Parlor in Rhode Island and Best Tattoo Artist in RI.
You may contact them for an appointment for a tattoo at (401) 683-5680 and of course walk-ins are always welcome.
For more information, please visit our home page at www.inflictinginktattoo.com.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Tattoos as Art
If tattoos are art, then it would stand to reason that as art, any copying or duplicating of the images would be subject to copyright infringement laws. It really doesn't seem a case of WHERE the art appears, for instance on a human body or a piece of paper, isn't art, art? Is something that is a permanent display on skin less subject to the protection of copyright law than something that is a permanent display on canvas? Let's hope this isn't the decision that is reached in the case below, or the door is suddenly thrown wide open for body artists to have their work stolen legally.
May 27, 2011
An esoteric debate has surfaced in the legal flap over a tattoo appearing on a character in the Thursday movie release of The Hangover: Part II.
It surrounds the question of whether a work first rendered on the human body can be copyright.
The nation’s top cited copyright scholar, David Nimmer, doesn’t think so. The author of Nimmer on Copyright was an expert witness for studio Warner Bros., which is being sued on accusations of misappropriating an artist’s copyrighted tattoo originally emblazoned on Mike Tyson’s face.
David Nimmer
Since 1985, Nimmer, a UCLA law professor and practicing intellectual property attorney, has been continuously updating his late father’s Nimmer on Copyright, which LexisNexis claims is “cited in more court opinions than any other treatise on the subject of U.S. copyright law.”
He wrote the judge presiding over the tattoo case that he believes the “body, even as augmented, simply is not subject to copyright protection.”
Tattooist Victor Whitmill, who brought the case against Warner Bros., had testified that he created the image directly on Tyson’s skin.
Nimmer, though, acknowledges that his position has evolved. In a 2000 case he covered in his treatise, he “tacitly assumed that a tattoo could ‘presumably qualify as a work of graphic art, regardless of the medium in which it is designed to be affixed’ such as human flesh.”
U.S. District Judge Catherine Perry of Missouri last week blocked Nimmer from testifying on behalf of Warner Bros., after Whitmill’s attorneys objected on the basis that his filing was a legal opinion “on what copyright law should be” rather than expert testimony.
The judge, however, declined earlier this week to block the movie from debuting Thursday. The litigation is ongoing.
The lawsuit claims the movie features a “virtually exact reproduction” of the original tattoo that appears on the Stu Price character played by actor Ed Helms.
Ann Bartow, a USC law professor, accuses Nimmer of having a convenient change of heart to serve his client.
“Nimmer admits in paragraph 15 that he ‘used to’ think tattoos were eligible for copyright protection and ‘even posited one line to that effect in a footnote’ in his copyright treatise,”
Bartow wrote in a blog post. “But now he is representing Warner Brothers, he realized he was wrong.”
Nimmer, of Los Angeles, said in a telephone interview that he began to “reconsider that proposition” a decade ago because “augmentation of the body should not be copyrightable.”
In his legal filing to the judge, he explained why:
The tattoo qualifies as an original “work of visual art” that may gain ”recognized stature,” with the result that a court may enjoin its destruction. See 17 U.S.C. § 106A(a)(3)(B). After a court invokes that provision to bar him from removing his tattoo, Mr. Tyson literally may not show his own face to the world; that is, he will be required to keep Mr. Whitmill’s handiwork spread across his face, regardless of his own desires. Copyright law thereby becomes the instrument to impose, almost literally, a badge of involuntary servitude, akin to the mark with which ranchers brand the cattle they own.
It’s not the first time a tattoo artist has wanted to cash in on infringement allegations. In a 2005 federal case settled out of court, an artist who tattooed NBA star Rasheed Wallace’s right arm sued to stop the forward from “displaying” the tattoo in Nike advertisements.
Michael Kahn, Whitmill’s attorney, said in a telephone interview there has never been a court verdict about whether a copyright on a tattoo can be enforced. Whitmill has copyrighted the tattoo he inked in 2003 on the former heavyweight champ’s face.
He said he and Warner Bros. have talked settlement, but they weren’t “serious discussions.”
“Ninety-five percent of civil cases settle,” he said in a telephone interview. “Whether we’re going to be part of the 5 percent or 95 percent, I don’t know.”
------------------------------------------------------
Inflicting Ink is a Rhode Island Tattoo Studio that embodies quality, consistency and pride, and offers a sterile, safe, comfortable, artistic environment to its customers. Nominated multiple times for the Best Tattoo Parlor in Rhode Island and Best Tattoo Artist in RI.
You may contact them for an appointment for a tattoo at (401) 683-5680 and of course walk-ins are always welcome.
For more information, please visit our home page at www.inflictinginktattoo.com.
Hangover Tattoo Lawsuit: Can You Copyright Flesh?
by David KravetsMay 27, 2011
An esoteric debate has surfaced in the legal flap over a tattoo appearing on a character in the Thursday movie release of The Hangover: Part II.
It surrounds the question of whether a work first rendered on the human body can be copyright.
The nation’s top cited copyright scholar, David Nimmer, doesn’t think so. The author of Nimmer on Copyright was an expert witness for studio Warner Bros., which is being sued on accusations of misappropriating an artist’s copyrighted tattoo originally emblazoned on Mike Tyson’s face.
David Nimmer
Since 1985, Nimmer, a UCLA law professor and practicing intellectual property attorney, has been continuously updating his late father’s Nimmer on Copyright, which LexisNexis claims is “cited in more court opinions than any other treatise on the subject of U.S. copyright law.”
He wrote the judge presiding over the tattoo case that he believes the “body, even as augmented, simply is not subject to copyright protection.”
Tattooist Victor Whitmill, who brought the case against Warner Bros., had testified that he created the image directly on Tyson’s skin.
Nimmer, though, acknowledges that his position has evolved. In a 2000 case he covered in his treatise, he “tacitly assumed that a tattoo could ‘presumably qualify as a work of graphic art, regardless of the medium in which it is designed to be affixed’ such as human flesh.”
U.S. District Judge Catherine Perry of Missouri last week blocked Nimmer from testifying on behalf of Warner Bros., after Whitmill’s attorneys objected on the basis that his filing was a legal opinion “on what copyright law should be” rather than expert testimony.
The judge, however, declined earlier this week to block the movie from debuting Thursday. The litigation is ongoing.
The lawsuit claims the movie features a “virtually exact reproduction” of the original tattoo that appears on the Stu Price character played by actor Ed Helms.
Ann Bartow, a USC law professor, accuses Nimmer of having a convenient change of heart to serve his client.
“Nimmer admits in paragraph 15 that he ‘used to’ think tattoos were eligible for copyright protection and ‘even posited one line to that effect in a footnote’ in his copyright treatise,”
Bartow wrote in a blog post. “But now he is representing Warner Brothers, he realized he was wrong.”
Nimmer, of Los Angeles, said in a telephone interview that he began to “reconsider that proposition” a decade ago because “augmentation of the body should not be copyrightable.”
In his legal filing to the judge, he explained why:
The tattoo qualifies as an original “work of visual art” that may gain ”recognized stature,” with the result that a court may enjoin its destruction. See 17 U.S.C. § 106A(a)(3)(B). After a court invokes that provision to bar him from removing his tattoo, Mr. Tyson literally may not show his own face to the world; that is, he will be required to keep Mr. Whitmill’s handiwork spread across his face, regardless of his own desires. Copyright law thereby becomes the instrument to impose, almost literally, a badge of involuntary servitude, akin to the mark with which ranchers brand the cattle they own.
It’s not the first time a tattoo artist has wanted to cash in on infringement allegations. In a 2005 federal case settled out of court, an artist who tattooed NBA star Rasheed Wallace’s right arm sued to stop the forward from “displaying” the tattoo in Nike advertisements.
Michael Kahn, Whitmill’s attorney, said in a telephone interview there has never been a court verdict about whether a copyright on a tattoo can be enforced. Whitmill has copyrighted the tattoo he inked in 2003 on the former heavyweight champ’s face.
He said he and Warner Bros. have talked settlement, but they weren’t “serious discussions.”
“Ninety-five percent of civil cases settle,” he said in a telephone interview. “Whether we’re going to be part of the 5 percent or 95 percent, I don’t know.”
------------------------------------------------------
Inflicting Ink is a Rhode Island Tattoo Studio that embodies quality, consistency and pride, and offers a sterile, safe, comfortable, artistic environment to its customers. Nominated multiple times for the Best Tattoo Parlor in Rhode Island and Best Tattoo Artist in RI.
You may contact them for an appointment for a tattoo at (401) 683-5680 and of course walk-ins are always welcome.
For more information, please visit our home page at www.inflictinginktattoo.com.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Laser Tattoo Removal Your New Best Friend
If you are among the over 40 crowd with tattoos from your 20s (and before) that you are looking to get rid of, laser tattoo removal is the number one way to eliminate or minimize these kinds of older tattoos from your skin.
It may not even be that you don't like the tattoo anymore. Perhaps its simply old and faded, or the design itself is dated and unprofessional and you would like to improve it somehow. One thing that laser tattoo removal can achieve for you is to significantly lighten or remove the old tattoo, which then leaves your skin ready for another tattoo entirely or a more modern version of the same design.
Whatever you decide, remember that laser tattoo removal should be done in a sterile facility, the same way you got your tattoo to begin with, right? Also remember that there is the same (maybe a little less) amount of pain involved in getting a tattoo removed as there is in getting a tattoo to begin with. You are still altering the skin. The difference in most cases is that a laser tattoo removal will not leave the area bleeding, or create scabs. The most severe laser tattoo removal effects are blistering from extended exposure to the laser.
If you would like a laser tattoo removal consultation, or you would like to discuss your options for tattoo removal, contact Inflicting Ink and schedule an appointment for a tattoo removal evaluation at your convenience.
------------------------------------------------------
Inflicting Ink is a Rhode Island Tattoo Studio that embodies quality, consistency and pride, and offers a sterile, safe, comfortable, artistic environment to its customers. Nominated multiple times for the Best Tattoo Parlor in Rhode Island and Best Tattoo Artist in RI.
You may contact them for an appointment for a tattoo at (401) 683-5680 and of course walk-ins are always welcome.
For more information, please visit our home page at www.inflictinginktattoo.com.
It may not even be that you don't like the tattoo anymore. Perhaps its simply old and faded, or the design itself is dated and unprofessional and you would like to improve it somehow. One thing that laser tattoo removal can achieve for you is to significantly lighten or remove the old tattoo, which then leaves your skin ready for another tattoo entirely or a more modern version of the same design.
Whatever you decide, remember that laser tattoo removal should be done in a sterile facility, the same way you got your tattoo to begin with, right? Also remember that there is the same (maybe a little less) amount of pain involved in getting a tattoo removed as there is in getting a tattoo to begin with. You are still altering the skin. The difference in most cases is that a laser tattoo removal will not leave the area bleeding, or create scabs. The most severe laser tattoo removal effects are blistering from extended exposure to the laser.
If you would like a laser tattoo removal consultation, or you would like to discuss your options for tattoo removal, contact Inflicting Ink and schedule an appointment for a tattoo removal evaluation at your convenience.
------------------------------------------------------
Inflicting Ink is a Rhode Island Tattoo Studio that embodies quality, consistency and pride, and offers a sterile, safe, comfortable, artistic environment to its customers. Nominated multiple times for the Best Tattoo Parlor in Rhode Island and Best Tattoo Artist in RI.
You may contact them for an appointment for a tattoo at (401) 683-5680 and of course walk-ins are always welcome.
For more information, please visit our home page at www.inflictinginktattoo.com.
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