Apprentice entering second year, introduction and some pics of a couple tattoos.

Hey guys. I've been lurking here for years and figured i'd take a minute and introduce myself. My apprenticeship has been a little odd and longer than expected but I wouldn't change a thing. I graduated Butera School of Graphic Arts and design in Boston wiyth my main focus being illustration. After showing my portfolio I ended up landing an apprenticeship at a local shop in 2003. I was there for a year and a half when I found out I was going to be a dad. That being said I had to leave my apprenticeship to go find work that could bring in some money. Wasn't easy to put it lightly. From 2005 till 2010 I crawled around in attics doing HVAC work. Anyway, an artist that I greatly respected who was by far was the most influential person to me during my apprenticeship opened up his own shop not far from where we were at the last shop. We always kept in touch and he always kept the offer open for me to once again start my apprenticeship with him at his shop. The time was right and I took him up on the offer at the age of 36! It has just been amazing. He now allows me to bring in my own customers (friends) to work on after hours as long as an artist is there with me. I started last Labor day so i'm just heading into my second year. Like you all say, nothing comes to an apprenticeship if you want to learn. Just understanding how a shop operates is huge. Scheduling appointments, scrubbing tubes, scheduling time with artists when you have 10 customers in your lobby. There's just so much more to it than knowing how to set your machine up and tattoo. I am just very happy at this point in my life to have a chance of making this my last career choice. Anyway, here are a couple tattoos that I've done recently. I've probably only done about 7 in addition to these but they were my first so the lines were a little shaky and to be honest not something I feel like posting here. These are by no means where I want to be but I just figured I'd share them. I'm really just trying to focus on producing clean work at this point. A solid outline and decent shading. Seeing how i'm so green with a machine in my hands I can actually feel myself getting more comfortable with each tattoo I do. The first couple I felt like the veins were going to bust out of my temples. I'm by no means "comfortable" tattooing yet but i'm not stressing quite as hard. Im blessed to be in a shop with 3 great artists and just grateful that I have the opportunity to tattoo right now. Even if it is about one a week. If anyone's interested I could also throw up some examples of my artwork. I have much more of that than I do tattoo pics :) Thanks guys and this is a great forum. [IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v655/JayMacK/IMG_1167.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v655/JayMacK/IMG_1468.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v655/JayMacK/IMG_1245.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v655/JayMacK/IMG_1025.jpg[/IMG]

Thanks for sticking around, and good luck with tattooing, its not easy. You should bring your portfolio to the Paradise Tattoo Gathering next week... there are also a ton of seminars all designed to make you a better artist and tattooer...