We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jessica Boyle. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jessica below.

Alright, Jessica thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I learned to tattoo by way of a traditional apprenticeship in 2002. In exchange for my teacher’s guidance, I did odd jobs around the shop—housekeeping, paperwork, errands… My apprenticeship took a year to complete, but I was not permitted to pick up a tattoo machine until I was about nine months in. At the time, I was anxious to get the ball rolling and start practicing the actual craft. But, in retrospect, I understand why my mentor demanded that sort of commitment, and I appreciate having the gravitas of this work impressed upon me.

During my apprenticeship, I spent a lot of time scrubbing tubes, drawing, and watching my mentor work on his clients. I learned how to do a tattoo safely—preventing cross contamination and using proper biohazard techniques; that’s still essential. I was also taught how to make my own needles, which is something you don’t see much anymore. It was tedious, and I wasn’t very good at it, but it taught me a lot about needle configurations. In those days, practice skin didn’t exist, so the first thing I ever tattooed was a grapefruit. When it was time to start working on actual people, I tattooed fee-free for about three months. The folks who volunteered knew that the only guarantee was safety, but, thankfully, they were brave enough to let me get my footing. I still very much appreciate their willingness to step up.

Today, the industry landscape has drastically changed, with how-to videos and chintzy starter kits readily available online, often with the promise of rapid entry into the field. While these resources offer exposure to diverse techniques, they fail to emphasize the profound privilege of permanently altering another person’s body or to uphold the tradition of intergenerational knowledge transfer within the craft. Knowing what I do now and watching the industry change in this way, I wouldn’t do anything to alter the way that I learned to tattoo at all–or to speed it up. I’m glad that I had to dig deep, earn my keep, and demonstrate proper commitment before a machine was put in my hand. Honestly, my apprenticeship probably should’ve been longer; some things shouldn’t be rushed.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a tattoo artist with 14 years of professional experience who owns and operates a small, new, private tattoo studio in North Raleigh. As an artist, I am comfortable with a wide variety of tattoo styles, cover-ups, add-ons, and reworks—some from client-sourced designs, some completely custom, and some that land in between. I especially enjoy black-and-gray realism, minimalism, watercolor, dot work, sketch-style, blackwork, and anything that involves botanicals.

Growing up, I was always attracted to the visual arts, but I didn’t enter an art-driven profession until I was in my mid-twenties. That’s when I completed a formal apprenticeship at FineLine Tattoos in Texas, and I stayed there to work alongside my mentor for about a year thereafter. In 2004, I moved to North Carolina and worked in a busy street shop for several years. After that, I spent considerably less time at a couple other shops in the area before putting my tattoo career on hold to focus on family and my then-young children. After a decade-long hiatus, my kids were older and more independent, and I decided it was time to go back. I spent five years tattooing at a custom shop downtown before I left and decided to open SkinScribe.

My background and experience have led me to approach my work with a specific set of values. When I’m tattooing, the first and most obvious points of focus are quality and safety. If you’re not paying attention to these things, you probably won’t be tattooing professionally for long. Beyond that, though, I think it’s important to turn my attention to the humanity of my clients; their canvas does not belong to me, and their tattoos are not an opportunity to empty their pockets or finagle an interesting addition to my portfolio. I’m always happy to provide artistic and practical tattoo guidance, of course, and (like anyone) I have to pay my bills. But I also assign great weight to meeting the individual where they’re at in their personal and/or creative journey, and I consciously seek to honor their intentions.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

When I started tattooing in the early 2000s, there were very few publications that discussed the particulars. We had plenty of magazines with biographical information and portfolio work but nothing much in the way of technical details. During my apprenticeship, I got my hands on a copy of Huck Spaulding’s Tattooing A to Z. It was a relatively comprehensive how-to book on the mechanics of coil-based machines, techniques for pushing pigment, approaching cover-ups, stencils, sterilization, and more. Originally published in 1988, it was the only readily accessible resource of its kind, and I was happy to have access to it—even more than a decade after its release. But some of the content was outdated, and it left a great many questions unanswered.

A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to stumble across The Science of Tattooing. Published in 2019 and subsequently revised, this book is an incredible reference that provides craft-centric information in concert with rigorous findings of academic scholarship in chemistry and physiology. The author, Hannah Wolf, is a veteran tattoo artist who collaborated with MDs and PhDs to produce a textbook teaming with research and educational material. It’s an invaluable resource, and I am grateful to have found it.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

My mentor taught me that any design I can’t execute with only a 5-round liner and/or a 7-mag shouldn’t be tattooed. Given the cost and limited availability of premade sterilized needles twenty-some-odd years ago, this advice was perfectly sound. But, while it’s certainly possible and valuable to be proficient enough with few or limited tools, this lesson has become less relevant with time.

In the years since, the tattoo supply industry has grown exponentially, and a plethora of needle configurations are affordable, readily available, and being modified all the time. With that, I think it makes more sense to use whatever is both comfortable in my hand and technically efficient. I treasure the old, purist adages, but I also think it’s important to try new things and glean from that any process improvements I can.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.skinscribetattoo.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/skinscribetattoo/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/skinscribetattoo/