Story and Photos by Victoria Davila
He carefully set out the fresh sanitized needles. The tattoo gun was shining. New black ink sat in little canisters. Gauze, gloves, small black designs and more surrounded the learning artist. “Terrified,” he said he felt. This was permanent. His hands shook slightly. Small droplets of sweat swelled from his pores.  He knew that his mentor, also his first tattoo subject, Tim had a lot of faith in him. The needle met the skin. It was like nothing he experienced before. Soon the skin was swelling, bleeding, reddening. Tim Hawk, the tattooist’s mentor, was trying his best to stay still. But everyone moves, wiggles, and flinches sometimes.
He never practiced on any inanimate objects like some had with potatoes, fruit, fake skin, or pre-roasted turkeys. He said, “You don’t get the sensation of what happens when you tattoo a person with an inanimate object.” Skin gets inflamed, people wiggle, they bleed, and their pores open up.
There’s also the pressure. Tim is watching every move he makes. Satisfying a customer is one thing; being judged and trained has an added element of anxiety. All the reading in the world doesn’t compare to the first-hand experience of laying needle to skin. At first the ink looks like it’s going everywhere, but blotting reveals clean lines. He gets pointers like how much pressure to put on the needle.
His head was rushing with accelerated senses; he was terrified and thrilled at the same time. He focused himself.
Although the design was stenciled, he looked back and forth at it the whole time. Every detail needed to be right.
“Sometimes you get so focused you forget to be afraid,” he said. “But it’s still there in your stomach.”
Forty-five minutes later and he’s completed his first tattoo. A half-dollar-sized tattoo of a lamb. Small black designs are common for the first few tattoos to get the basics before going on to bigger and usually more colorful things.
The Parlour Tattoo’s Jimmy Singleton has gone a long way from that little lamb thirteen years ago on his tattoo mentor, Tim. His portfolio on the shop’s website displays an array of large colorful naturalistic or pop-culture inspired works.
The Messy Side of Tattooing
According to Evolved Ink tattooist Josh “Crawdaddy,” whose first tattoo was done on his girlfriend, the first time “was a lot like the first time having sex; it was awkward and messy.”
Sex and tattoos also both carry a lot of responsibilities as well as risks. They require a good understanding and knowledge of the process and consequences to be successful and safe. Some high schools have sex education classes; some states require tattoo schooling. Still, while just about everyone will have sex in their life, only some experience the first of using vibrating needles to draw on skin and create a permanent piece of art.
For most, it’s a gradual decision. Tattoo artists, more often than not, identify with “artist” more than the other half of their title. Singleton was offered an apprenticeship in high school but had already signed up for the Navy. After six years he came back to art as a tattooist but still cautions that “an art background can be beneficial or detrimental.”
Many tattoo artists explain having a love of art, but never a clear understanding that tattooing was an avenue to make money doing the art they loved.
Crawdaddy says living in a small factory town tattooing as a profession never entered his mind; he never knew about accredited tattoo schools.
The dirty untrained tattooist stereotype has hindered many artists from realizing their careers early on. Movies like Green Street Hooligans show young misfits getting inked in a dark room from a sketchy “artist” who puts fear into the adolescents’ eyes. Tattoo’s taboo status may seem to be disappearing in liberal-leaning college towns like Eugene. Tattoo shops can be found in just about every busy neighborhood in Lane County; Cry Baby Ink just opened in Springfield’s Gateway Mall earlier this year.
However, artist Matthew Holms recalls, “I pretty much knew that this is what I wanted to do before I even got started on it. I was eighteen or nineteen and realized that I hated what I was doing. So I sat down and tried to figure out what I really wanted to do. From there on out it has been nothing but a whirlwind of incredible experiences that I would not give up for anything.” Holms has been tattooing at the Eugene Tattoo and Body Piercing Company for a little over a year.
Holms took the slow and steady path with learning to tattoo. He began at PermaGrafix in Albany, Oregon. At PermaGrafix, Holms had to work in the shop as “the general go-to guy” for almost three years before he was even allowed to start his apprenticeship, which lasted four months. PermaGrafix also had the additional requirement that the first tattoo be a self-tattoo.
“It was amazing how easy it was to tune out how it felt and just do that tattoo,” Holms says.
The History Behind the Needle
Historically tattoos were painful and unsanitary, says Margo Demello’s Encyclopedia of Body Adornment. To bear one was a badge of courage that Americans first saw on sailors and criminals.
Many public establishments in Japan still have signs banning persons with tattoos, according to a 2004 Forbes article. Japan’s history of criminal tattoos still greatly influences job and recreation opportunities. Although tattooist is a trained profession, there is still controversy.
Tattooing safety has actually come a long way in the last half a century. The oldest tattoo association in the world, the National Tattoo Association (NTA) began in 1976 and aims to advance professionalism and safety standards in the industry. The Alliance of Professional Tattooists (APT) was founded in 1992 for the purpose to promote health and safety standards in the industry, according to the Encyclopedia of Body Adornment.
Today, tattooists like Singleton usually get trained in an apprenticeship. However, not all states require a license or even an apprenticeship to practice tattooing. Proper training is important. Singleton started his tattooing career at Hawks Tattoo in Galesburg, Illinois, with an apprenticeship, which he said was “the proper way to be a legitimate tattooist.” Because of that and his experience, getting a license here was mainly jumping through the hoops with fees and records.
At The Parlour Tattoo, Singleton is one of six tattooists working at the shop that boosts not only meeting but exceeding all of the Oregon Health Department regulations. Oregon’s regulations are particularly strict among other states requiring such safety precautions as one-time use needles and autoclaves.
“I learned more in a day at my apprenticeship than I could have learned in a week on my own,” Crawdaddy says.
The Legacy of the Lamb
Once the basics are down, it’s up to the artist to continue developing their style and what they are comfortable with. Singleton usually free-hands his tattoos before getting started. He works from dark to light colors. He doesn’t even think about what order to go in anymore. While tattooing a University of Oregon student, another artist popped in to get Singleton’s opinion on a piece. In two seconds, he knew how to change the thickness of the lines to conform to the body and how the ink lines usually work best near each other.
But even the most confident tattooist knows that, as Crawdaddy says, “there is always the possibility that they might flinch or you might flinch and make a permanent line.”
In the days and years that Singleton has been working in the tattoo industry, his portfolio has grown immensely. Still, tucked away in a book of work he keeps a picture of that very first tattoo: a little lamb done on his mentor.

Read Ethos’ coverage of the Oregon Ink Tattoo Convention featuring The Parlour Tattoo and Jimmy Singleton.