The Ink in the Needle found Me!!

Lotus Studios UG (limited) iG
Old Engter Str 20, 49565 Bramsche.
Phone: +49 5461 995 9950
Email: info@lotus-studios.de
Managing Director: Daniel Danlowski

I guess it was in high school where I suddenly kept getting A´s for my drawings in Biology! The year after that I dropped Physical Science and took Art for the last two years of high school.

Well it´s an odd kind of story. I moved to England from South-Africa (my home country) to study. I got onto a BA(Hons) degree course in Illustration at the Bournemouth Arts Institute. Like all students, I was very short of cash and needed to earn money somehow. It just happened that on the same road as my Student digs there was a tattoo and piercing studio called White Flame. I went in there to get a piercing. Having just given up a call center job selling insurance to elderly people after eight at night (hell on earth) I randomly asked the piercer if he needed an assistant. I didn´t even think about asking about tattooing because I had already been told by the first tattooist I ever met that it´s nigh on impossible to get into the business and if you do it usually involves working your butt off for no money for at least three years. (This turned out not to be true thank goodness). Needless to say the piercer was not looking for help but after having heard what I was studying, he mentioned that the tattooist was looking for an apprentice. He gave me some tips about what I should present in a portfolio, stuck a needle through my lip and sent me on my way. I spent the whole week drawing portraits and presented them to the tattooist the following Friday. He was impressed with my work and asked me to come in the next day and do a drawing for him in the studio, which I did, and he offered me the position. Now I was studying Illustration as an addition to a computer programming qualification that I had already received in South Africa. My plan was to get into character design or animation…. I had never planned to become a tattooist. To be honest I always thought it would just be a student job! Today, eleven years later, I´ve been running my own studio (together with my husband) for seven years, it´s a roaring success and I cannot imagine myself doing anything esle. I didn´t find my dream job….it found me!

RYG: Do you think more women are emerging in the industry? Why?

Hmm….I think they are yes. Why? I guess the same reason more women are becoming lawyers and surgeons…..Sexual equality is on the up and up in the west and women are taking the bull by the horns!

That very much depends on the piece I am doing, the client and why the client is getting it done. Sometime someone has a really deep story behind the tattoo, so the session is very emotional. It can sometimes end with the client getting tearful as soon as they see the finished piece. This is very heartwarming and  makes me feel like I´ve really touched someone, even if I am emotionally drained. I tattooed a girl once who had burn scars on the entire length of her leg. I covered the scars with beautiful flowers. She proudly told me that she was looking forward to wearing shorts for the first time in her life. I felt amazing, and thankful that I have a job where I can really help people sometimes… Stories like these are however few and far between, most people just want something awesome on their bodies, are totally stoked throughout the session, are stoked when we´re done, and I feel stoked! *grin*….Unfortunately I tend to quash my euphoria with a cold bucket of self criticism as soon as I look at the photos of the finished piece. I think all artists are often dissatisfied with their work, which in my case pushes me to strive for the next level.

If you aren´t prepared to live this 24 hours a day 7 days a week, and to be more passionate about it than anything else in your life you should do something else. If you can´t draw or paint like a boss, stop tattooing and learn. If your eye is only on the money, you are in the wrong career. Stay humble!