Tattoo Rulz

1. Our studio is operated to the strictest hygiene standards to ensure your safety.

 
2. NO persons under the age of 18 are to be tattooed unless accompanied by their parent or guardian. A consent form must be filled in and signed by the person and the parent or guardian respectively.

 
3. The consumption of alcohol in and about the studio is strictly prohibited

 
4. NO smoking or eating is allowed in the studio.

 
5. NO pregnant ladies will be tattooed, due to stress that may be inflicted on the unborn baby.

 
6. If a person has consumed any alcohol prior to being tattooed, we will not be held liable for any touchup work afterwards due to the alcohol intake.

 

Caring For Your Tattoo

1. After the tattoo is done, we close it with a dressing. Keep the dressing on for at least 2 hours.

 
2. Do not soak the tattoo in water for at least 24hours.

 
3. Wash tattoo by hand only with a good antibacterial soap.

 
4. We provide a tub with cream to apply twice a day..

 
5. Keep away from direct sunlight until it is fully healed..

 
6. Put a sun block cream over the tattoo if you are going into the sun..

 
7. Under no circumstances should the scab be picked off a tattoo..

 
8. A healing tattoo can become very itchy, but if the scab is picked before it actually falls off, a proportion of the colour will come off with it, and it is likely that he picking will cause infection..

 
9. The cream we give will help soften the scab..

Judge & Jury

1. Quality of line :
   Included evenness of line, width and variability.

 
2. Use of value (the intensity of light):
   Figues emerge from a dark background, creating perspective almost a 3D effect.

 
3. Use of chroma (Intensity of colour):
   If too much colour is injected in to one area, pigment overflow can occure, which causes a lumpy effect.

 
4. Use of Hue (The actual range of distinct colours):
   Before, only a few tattoo artist held the pigment secret at that time which allowed vibrent hues to be put into the skin.

 
5. Harmony of design placement or arrangement :
   Some extensively tattooed persons have aquired a design with a final plan or goal in mind. Others have merely compulsively piled-on designs without thought of a final result

 
6. Use of Realism :
   Of course, determined skill in drawing and knowledge of light, form, colour and perspective on part of the tattoo artist is needed.

 
7. Choice of subject matter :
   Some subject have, at one time or another, have been considered obscene. This should not affect adversly artistic evaluation. Of course relativity enters into the picture when an artistic creation is evaluated. But as the saying goes, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", and such is the case when dealing with tattoos.

 
8. Permanancy of design :
   Some colours, such as yellow, red and vermillion faded long before the carbon based blue, before the use of pigment was developed. Some lines may become more blured than others with time, which probably relates to the depth of tattooing and the partical size in the pigment.

Method Behind the Madness

There are many ways of tattooing, and each nationallity inturn has its own techniques of tattooing. Here are just two major techniques, but there are many more :

Japanese Technique :

In Japan, as opposed to the case in early America, the human skin was regarded as a canvas when it came to the subject of tattooing. Japanese tattooing was distinguished by a dark background from which designs appeared by contrast. Japanese fog or sfumato was also used to produce swirling areas of gray or darkness.

Japanese tattoo techniques consisted of using capillarity between adjasent tattooing needles to facillitate the absorbtion of the injected pigment. Japanese tattoo needles, which apparently started as slivers of bamboo, possibly were placed in rows of five until a maximum of forty were bundled into a circular-bundle shape.

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Current Tattooing Techniques & Methods

Many tattoo artist of today have used self-closing polyethylene or autoclaveable teflon bottles to contain the prepared, cream-like pigment formulations.

The pigment in turn is places into individual cups, in this way each of the artist clients gets uncontaminated and separate pigment pots, which are disposed of after use.

To prepare the canvas or skin for tattooing, the area to tattooed is shaved with a disposable rasor if nessassary. The surface is then sterilised whith an antibacterial solvent. The design is then placed onto the skin, there have been several methods to place the design on the skin prior to finalizing it with the tattoo needle, one old method utilised the use of a clear plastic sheet on which the design was etched.Fine carbon or lampblack was sifted on the plastic templet of the design and the powder would stick to the engraved lines. then the area of the skin to be tattooed was thinly coated with vaseline or petroleum jelly, from colapsable tubes, to prevent any contamination from the petroleum jelly.

The stencil was then pressed on the skin and cearfully pulled away leaving a thin black carbon outline of the design. Other free-hand artists have employed "Hectograph" pencils to trace their origional designs onto tracing paper and then transfer the design onto the skin, toxisity to the skin is nil.