My tattoo story, beginnings

My story begins in 2015 with the death of a piece of my heart. Brian was my soulmate, the father of my daughter Mantis and an incredible tattoo artist, unfortunately his life path was ended at 39 by his own life choices. With his passing I remembered the many times he had offered to teach me how to tattoo, I as an insecure girl never took him up on that but as I reminisced the thought of becoming a tattoo artist started brewing and I found myself questioning why I hadn’t accepted Brian’s offer years ago, now I was 37 and beginning a new career felt impossible and not to mention, Brian was no longer around to teach me, how the fuck would I get an apprenticeship? oh fear! the death of all our dreams lies in fear. My dear friend Lili through a guided meditation saw me tattooing and being successful and told me I should trust myself and everything would fall into place. It’s funny how this small encouragement gave me the courage to seek out an apprenticeship.
Though the decision was made to pursue an apprenticeship, I had no real idea of how this would actually happen. On the summer of 2015 I went to Madrid and visited my friend Robert Hernandez and told him I wanted to tattoo, he let me sit in to watch him do a tattoo in his studio and we talked about why I wanted to tattoo etc… after he finished his tattoo, he gave me one of his machines! now if you know who Robert is, you understand why this means so much. If you don’t know who he is, please go look him up, specially if you are or want to become a tattoo artist. I flew back to NY all ready to start finding a studio that would take me on as an apprentice, this is no easy feat and most people turn you down or don’t really have time to help. Months went by and I was lucky enough to have a great friend who worked at a studio called Last Rites in Manhattan and helped me get my foot in the door. I was already acquainted with some of the artists there and with the owner and legendary tattoo artist Paul booth, on February 14th, 2016 Paola invited me to hang for Valentine’s at the studio and that evening I asked Paul if I could start coming to the studio to watch the artists at work, he agreed and though perhaps initially he thought I would only come once or twice, I made a schedule for myself and started going to LR on Tuesdays and Fridays every week and this was the beginning of my apprenticeship.

In the studio there were four artist total (not including Paul) they were Darwin Enriquez, Logan Aguilar, Jose Contreras and Yomico Moreno. I only knew Logan and he was kind enough to help me on the first few months as I struggled to figure out how to work with a coil machine. Seriously most of the time instead of practicing tattooing I was love/hating my relationship with the coil machine I had, it was a crappy one from Amazon (cheeks turn red) this was my machine for about 8 months and it’s lead me to believe that if you really want to test a new apprentice and their true interest have them work with a coil machine, cause FUCK was it hard. During these months both Logan and Jose truly helped me, both in putting the machine together and fixing it every time it would not work (which was all the time) and also checking my oranges and fake skins that I practiced on. I also sat next to Darwin who is super passionate about learning and would share with me charcoal courses, ways to improve lighting and would let me watch him tattoo. Darwin also sold me my first machine a Hawk pen from Cheyenne, finally rotary heaven! In the beginning Yomico didn’t talk much with me but with time he asked me to help him with his email (I speak english and spanish) so this made sense and could help me learn about the business of tattooing, so I begun working for Yomico as his assistant towards the end of 2016, here an amazing friendship begun and to this day we continue to work together, but this will have its own blog story soon. Anyhow this was a very special time and I learned a lot from these guys!

Also towards the end of 2016 Paul took me as his apprentice. The first few months I was given assignments to be a better artist . I had to draw skulls in charcoal to study light and shade, read books on the subject and in the end I had to choose one skull pose and recreate it in charcoal, stippling and acrylic. Paul took the time to show me how he worked in these mediums and I was able to really improve as an artist and have a better understanding of how to draw and understand lighting etc… after I started practicing the art for what would be my first tattoo. It was one of Paul’s drawings of a leaf man. I drew this piece 100 times on tracing paper, recreate it twice in charcoal and tattooed it on fake skin like 4 times. Finally the day came for my first tattoo, it was one of Paul’s clients, it would be on his calf and though Paul would be supervising me, I had to do the piece all on my own though I did get to use Paul’s rotary machine for this. I don’t remember much of the tattoo, the lining was natural cause I had drawn this out so much I knew the direction I needed to move…shading was a blur and harder of course, overall I was nervous and super excited. When we finished I felt a huge rush through my soul and Paul said something when Paola, myself and him were the last left in his room, he said when the day begun in this room there was only one tattoo artist, now there is two. I will never forget that moment and will always be grateful to Paul for his teachings.

Unfortunately after a couple of tattoos, Paul got really busy and we could not continue my apprenticeship so I went to work at House of Monkey, Lalo owned this studio. The transition was strange and at first I was pretty lost starting over somewhere and feeling unprepared, but I did and started doing apprentice tattoos in January on 2019. HOM closed a few months later.

On April of 2019 Yomico opened his private studio and I went to work with him there both as a tattoo artist and as his assistant. It was tough initially cause being a private studio and me being a beginner in tattooing most clients only wanted to work with Yomico. I lost some confidence in this time as I didn’t know how to get clients in a private studio and then to top it off the pandemic hit and with it more time away from being able to tattoo. Life is crazy but the pandemic ended and I started doing some more tattoos and eventually I also started working a few days a week at White Rabbit Tattoo, this was great! It felt so good to finally be tattooing full time between both studios. I learned a lot about myself in all this process, about my strength, my drive and I know I couldn’t have done it alone, even though sometimes it felt so lonely. I’m glad I didn’t give up.

Currently I work at 1983 Art Studio in Brooklyn, it’s been a crazy road and a new chapter is beginning. My art continues to grow both on and off skin and everyday I am grateful for the road traveled and hopeful for all that is to come.