Interview with Patrick Bates. @european.son.420
a hand poke tattooist based in Brighton, UK.
Patrick is a well-known hand poke tattooist based in Brighton, UK.
He is famous for tattooing words on people.
I have documented the tattooing process with film photography.
Photo are shot on a Pentax Spotmatic loaded with an ILFORD HP5.
This interview was done for @soraxstudio
Patrick’s advice to young people that want to get into tattooing;
/ Just do it, just teach yourself. Lots of people think an apprenticeship is necessary which would be “nice” for them to get an unpaid labour.
/ Tattoo is something like, if you just want to learn tattooing and work in a walk-in shop, tattooing dreamcatchers all day, then yeah go and get someone to teach you. But if you really want to do something special it has to come from yourself, and no one else. It’s good to sort of take inspiration from stuff, I’m glad that I taught myself everything.
/ Turning inspirations and loads of experiments into creativity sounds like repetitive work and something artists do everyday. But the truth is that there are struggles people don’t see, to be consistently creative is impossible, it takes hours of practice and hundreds of thousands failed experiments to be successful. It’s tough but at the end of the day, its worth it.
/ I think a lot of people that I have done tattoo with, and say they want to try it, I’d tell them how to do it and where to get the needles and stuff, there’re probably 15 to 20 people that are working tattooists now. People tell me I’m an inspiration, its nice to hear. Its great that people are getting into tattoo so much and I love that, it’s a growing industry and it’s great to see young people getting into it.
Do tattooists have to be good at drawing?
/ NO, I don’t think so. If you look at my work it’s not really drawing based, but if someone asked me to do a drawing, I could do a simple drawing which some people might say its not a good quality design but some people would say they love how simple it is. There’s no right or wrong in tattoos anymore. If you look at a famous tattooist who does nice tattoos, you’d never say they are good painters. You do have to know how to capture feelings or emotions, a drawing has to have these elements. There are so many ways to draw.
/ Sometimes you got to believe in yourself and take a leap of faith. If you never try, you’d never know.
all photo, video and graphic design are produced and edited by Sky Li.