What's Your Go-To Outside of Tattooing?
What's Your Go-To Outside of Tattooing?
Quick question for the tattooers out there: outside of tattooing, when you're off the clock and you just want to go home and make something for yourself — what's your go-to?
Ceramics? Acrylics? Oil painting? Watercolors? Do you stick close to the traditional tattoo approach — bold lines, classic subject matter — or do you use it as a chance to get weird and go somewhere completely different from what you tattoo all day?
What I've Been Working On
Right now I'm deep into a black light painting for Studio 21's black light art show. The whole crew's donating their time on this one, everybody working on group projects, and it's been genuinely motivating to see people create outside their usual lane.
What You Told Us
We asked this same question on the socials, and the response was honestly one of the best comment sections we've had. Watercolor came up more than anything else — clearly a favorite across the board. Right behind it: Copic markers with prisma pencils and gel pens, charcoal, acrylic and spray paint, sumi ink, stained glass, photography, and alcohol markers with color pencil. A few of you even said ink on paper is your go-to specifically because it dries fast and forces you to work loose and quick — good for the ADHD brain, as one artist put it.
A couple comments stuck with us more than the rest.
@outlineisland talked about going to the library on lunch breaks in high school just to print out @bigtoeart's work and redraw it — now, years later, they're doing actual collabs together. @ryzarttattoo never stops creating: airbrushing, sign painting, custom motorcycle paint, murals, and tattoo-inspired art using watercolors and liquid acrylics, all mixed together. Turns out a lot of us didn't just stumble into art — some of us built a whole practice around never putting the brush down.
@thee_fallen_prophet put into words something we think matters a lot: they keep their personal paintings completely separate from tattoo-related imagery on purpose, calling it "a lil escape." That's worth sitting with. If your outside-of-work outlet is just more tattoo flash, it might not actually be functioning as an outlet.
And to the folks who mentioned this outlet has gotten harder to hold onto lately — that's real, and it's more common than people say out loud. It doesn't mean it's gone for good. Sometimes the well doesn't dry up — it just needs something to fill it back up. That might be its own conversation for another day.
Your Turn
If you haven't told us yet — what's your go-to? Medium, style, whatever you turn to when tattooing isn't the outlet. And if you're around Friday, come check out the black light show at Studio 21. Good chance to see what tattooers make when nobody's paying them for it.
Want more of this? Come find us — follow Maverick Supply Co. on Instagram @
— Austin