For thousands of years humanity has adorned itself with art in the form of coloured scarification. What I refer to here is the art of Tattoo and as of the past month or so I've joined the ranks of tattoo artists on the planet. Did this by purchasing a 2 gun (line and shader) tattoo kit of of ebay.ca, a link to the kit can be seen below:

ITATTOO Complete Tattoo Kit 2 Machines

Currently working on getting proper sanitization equipment for the kit so I am comfortable tattoo'ing others without risk of blood borne infections and the like being spread..!

My New Tattoo Tribute to STEEM

_{( The Tattoo is Still Healing But almost finished! )}

After getting the tattoo kit in the mail I held off for about a month trying to decide what I wanted to attempt to tattoo on myself to try it out. Having dabbled with home made "jail" tattoo guns about a decade ago I knew the rough basics of tattoo'ing but had never tried anything coloured or used wide shading tips.. It's to be noted I learn best with hands on so I finally decided to tattoo one of the most life changing symbols I've encountered...

The STEEM logo!

The Tattoo Process

Admittedly I'm a friggin' NOOB Tattooist and had never used an "actual" tattoo apparatus before trying to STEEM logo my thigh. But rather than talk myself out of it I was excited to try out this new kit.. Starting with printing out a bunch of STEEM logos to act as a template for me to follow.

I outlined the logo in pen then transferred it to my leg using some old spice gel antiperspirant, which seems to work fine for getting the pen onto your skin and was a technique taught to me by my crackhead roommate out west in Calgary circa 2008 or so.

After that I set out to do the outline in black ink using a 7 round needle, of course my dumb ass ended up wiping off the stencil after getting about half the outline done so I did what I do best to rectify the situation.. Which basically means I free-handed it! I wasn't looking for perfection, a "close enough" would do on this experimental venture into self tattooing.

To be honest it took me a few attempts to get the linework to something passable and many passes over the area resulting in thicker lines than I'd planned for.. But atleast the STEEM logo was visible and damn near symmetrical. The frayed lines on the tips of the logo outline was a result of me freehanding the outline and accidentally overshooting the end.. Oh well!

After the outline was completed to the best of my ability I set out to colour the logo.. Which was exciting to me, as I'd never used a wide shading needle before. Initially I'd used it in the same fashion you use an outline'ing tatttoo machine but that yielded literally ZERO colour I was looking for.. So after attempting a new method involving drawing little circles to shade I got the effect i was looking for!

After a but more trail and error and effectively mutilating myself trying to get the colour to stick I was left with a passable STEEM logo on my leg! A bit of blood was seeping through but it was expected considing the noob technique I'd developed to get the colouring / shading of the logo completed! Bleeding like a bastard but not hemorrhaging colour!

While my skin was pretty pissed at this point the tattoo was completed! While it wasn't perfect by any means it was certainly a learning experience with many new techniques learned and with that I'd given myself a wonderful tattoo in honour of the STEEM network which has greatly changed my life. I applied some healing ointment and covered it up.

The first picture in this post was taken a week after the process pictures. It's healed remarkably well considering I really ripped up my skin in a few places honing in my shading technique... I'll post a picture once it's fully healed in better light to show it off. Not bad for my first attempt me thinks!

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