We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ji Yong Yoon a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Ji Yong, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?
As a tattoo artist, my life has been full of valuable moments.
Whether good or bad, they built my foundation and here I am enjoying my life.
To be honest, I don’t have a lot of tips to share because I’m not a huge influencer like other famous artists.
But I can share my thoughts and lessons learned from not failing as a tattoo artist.
Many people think that artistry is the key for being a tattoo artist.
It is one of the important factor but not the most.
I think consistency is the most important key that keeps you grinding.
The worst enemy to the consistency is yourself.
As long as you keep your mind set and keep doing what you do, things will be fine.
Tattooing is just like a freelancing job that you get paid for what you work.
You put more efforts and time, a better result comes out.
People say learning never stops and it really does.
Ji Yong, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My name is May and I am a tattoo artist based in LA.
I have been doing this for about 7 years and I am enjoying so far.
My style is based on the botanical designs.
I focus on the realistic flowers and plants.
The most important elements in my design are naturalness and wildness.
I prefer to work on a wild flower bundle than a well made bouquet.
My mom used to do flower arrangement by gathering all the wild flowers.
That’s how I fell in love with flowers and incorporated their wildness into my designs.
Recently, I am grinding myself to work on grayscale flowers and plants.
I really like the contrast and expression of black and white.
My inspirations bloom when I work on them.
I am the owner of studio Nooy.
We are a private tattoo / photograph studio located in LA.
I am running it with my fellow artists who have been friends in real life for a long time.
The best part of us is that we respect each other even we are so close as friends.
I love my job and hope to be able to spread good influence to our clients with my designs.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
As a tattoo artist, I always strive to receive good feedbacks.
I feel happy and joyful when my clients send me photos of their tattoos that are from months and years ago.
Most clients want to lend me full control over their designs.
Whenever they are unsure about the design, they let me handle the situation and agree with my decision without any complains.
This is very grateful experience that my clients respect me as an artist rather than a technician.
Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
I’m not a fan of social media, so I started doing it after I started my career.
That’s my only regret, since almost everything is connected by social media these days.
Especially SNS is very important for freelancers like us.
It is where I can promote myself and build my portfolio.
Not only that, you can also connect yourself to great artists around the world.
You never know what’s going to happen in your future, so connecting with people who are working in the same industry is very important.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://studionooy.com
- Instagram: @frommay_tat / @studio.nooy
