SloughTattoo

Potter, tattoo artist

  • 6 Posts
  • 9 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 8th, 2023

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  • We have a VR system set up in our living room. I don’t even want to talk about how long it took me to figure out the receivers were making a steady, high pitched noise. There are 4 of them and they are situated near the ceiling.

    I hear it from a lot of things when it’s quiet enough. Clock radios, tvs, monitors, my pugmill, heaters. There was a noisy power strip with a flashing one-off switch that I’m still convinced was going to kill someone.

    I DON’T know anything about electricity - so mostly it makes me anxious that my house is going to burn down. I have bad enough hearing loss that I have to use closed captions on my TV - but it IS mostly because deep voices are extremely muddled. I’m surprised a bit by how many “not really” answers I see.









  • I’m an artist - I tattoo, do freelance illustration and produce handmade pottery. My husband is also a tattoo artist. My entire income is made through art.

    I have stopped attempting to draw coloring books - AI “prompt artists” have taken over and are pumping out grayscale coloring books at extremely low prices. Not a high income producer for me in the first place, but the entire field is falling apart.

    Tattooing is a different story - I use AI to produce references regularly. Not full drawings, just references I can use to create my own drawings. Pottery remains unchanged.

    The obvious difference is the type of art. The further it moves from a drawing, the better the outcome when AI is involved from my POV.

    To be honest though - how many of you actually have real artwork in your house? Not prints - actual handmade art. Art has been struggling for a long time now - it has little value to the average consumer. Mass production has made it a throwaway product. Most ceramics are made by machines now - vases and “paintings” and dishes are all isles in a home goods store, stamped out and inked by a machine. Most professional artists are employed by companies, not off selling their art. I don’t really need to spell out what will happen when the company gets a hold of a free program to replace their artists.

    There isn’t a good outcome for artists here - consumers want cheap art. Companies want cheap artists. Artists want living wages and for a lot of us that means not making a living off of art already, because the wealthy class that has luxury money to spend on handmade and original art is shrinking as we speak.

    At least - it is here in America.




  • Good eye! I appreciate the feedback!

    Giving my clients what they want is very important to my work. Grandma was quite the avid crocheter, but the artwork I drew up using the center… Stitched(?) Crochet work had a rather unfortunate resemblance to a butthole. Tattoos are permanent and memorial tattoos are very personal - it’s more important to make them attractive and meaningful than factually correct. I would hate to have someone mention something like “hey that looks like a butthole!” thinking they were being funny and cause a client to feel embarrassed or upset about their work. It is hurtful to both their self image and their memories of the person they got the tattoo for.