We recently connected with Charlie Karnage and have shared our conversation below.
Charlie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?
I’m honestly pretty “self taught”. I did start several apprenticeships at low end tattoo shops but they didn’t really teach me much, most of my learning was from master classes, practice, and asking better artists for help directly haha. If I could start over I would apprentice with an actual mentor and not just some random tattoo shop looking to make money
Charlie, 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?
I’m a multiple award winning tattoo artist, specifically a dark art black and grey tattoo artist. I do horror tattoos, mythology, anime, demons and skulls mostly. I got into tattooing kind of by accident I was selling pot to a lot of tattooers and eventually I ended up with a job. Every tattoo I do is 100 percent original and I’m super proud of that, the worst thing in the industry is copying something as personal and permanent as a tattoo. It’s unnecessary and lazy.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
I used to believe if you were making money you were doing good, I would do as many tattoos in as many styles as I could just to make money, I made a lot more money but the tattoos I were making were definitely lower quality and it was much less fulfilling, by focusing on less styles and less tattoos per week I was really able to hone my skills and create good are for people that they really love!
How did you build your audience on social media?
I built my audience through consistency, I have 20k+ followers on Instagram and my Facebook friends are maxed out honestly just posting the same style of content and keeping professional goes a long way
Contact Info:
- Website: Charliekarnagetattoos.com
- Instagram: @charliekarnage