As seen in "Tattoo", written by Del Mitchell, March 1996
Jon Highland started getting tattooed at age 18. No, he wasn't politely waiting until he was legal, the thought of getting tattooed just hadn't crossed his mind before that.
Neither had the idea of being a tattooist, until some of his drawings were displayed at a local gift shop. "People kept coming in and looking at my stuff and asking me if I was a tattoo artist." Was the not-so-subtle hand of the tattoo gods at work here?
Whatever it was, Jon decided that maybe he should check this tattoo thing out more thoroughly. Like all artists, he was up for exploring another medium. Tattooing did take some adjustment though, not the least of which was the weight of the machine. Some folks have compared it to trying to draw with a brick strapped onto your hand. But Jon says now he's gotten so used to having the machine in his hand that he finds it hard to draw with a pencil.
The first tattoo he ever did was on a girlfriend and he says he was more nervous than she was. "It came out better than I ever expected or hoped," he said, "and from there on the whole thing just snowballed."
But what happens to an artist when his work becomes a collaborative activity? Doesn't it become a bummer to have to always draw your client's ideas instead of your own?
"I think the tattooists who don't have any art ability outside of their tattoing... the "pattern people" I guess you could call them, are more in danger of getting frustrated. I don't mean to take anything away from them because you have to have a certain something to be able to tattoo correctly, even if you're not a custom artist. But I would imagine that cranking out the same stuff with no variations, day in and day out, would start to get to you eventually."
Jon tries out new techniques first on himself, and, except for his right sleeve, which was done by Marcus Pacheco, all his work was done by him. Yes, you heard right and check this out - he had to work in a mirror to put his left sleeve on so the whole piece had to be done in reverse!
Apart from giving him credit for sheer tenacity, you've also got to give him courage points. Many artists don't want to even glance at their work from a few years ago, they see all these little faults in it that no one else would ever notice. When asked if he ever gets depressed by looking at his older stuff, Jon said, "Artists are never satisfied, so sure, I look at some of my tattoos and know that I'd do them a little differently today. But I think it's fun to have a record of the progression of my ability on my own body. I'm sort of a walking 'this is my life' portfolio."
The guiding rule he tries to follow with his own tattoo collection is "Plan ahead and the bigger the better. Most people are going to get more than one tattoo and if they scatter little bits and pieces all around their body they're eventually going to want to tie them together. Which you can do, but it's always pretty obvious. You've got a bunch of older tattoos and a fresh new background. It rarely looks like a unified piece."
That's why, when he's working with clients, he always draws their designs up larger than he expects them to go, "and every now and then I get lucky and someone says 'Hey, that's cool, go for it!'
"But people getting their first ink are usually going to want a little 'trial tattoo.' Then they slowly work their way up to bigger and bigger stuff. That's the way I did it, and that's the way most people I know did it. I've never had someone walk in to the studio for their first piece and say to me, 'What the hell, I guess I'll get a full sleeve.'"