Three years ago, Donnie Leverette decided to become a full-time tattoo artist.
 | | Cariño Casas / The Business Press | | Donnie Leverette tattoos works on a Statue of Liberty image on Jon Martin at Sub-Q Tattoo in San Bernardino. | | | |
"I was a forklift operator and I was making peanuts," said Leverette, 24, who works at Sub-Q-Tattoo at 165 W. Hospitality Lane in San Bernardino.
It turned out to be a smart career move, because by that time tattoos were becoming mainstream. Doctors and lawyers, not just sailors and motorcycle riders, were getting body art.
Income tripled
"I'd always been artistic, but I was reluctant because I didn't think there was much money in tattooing," Leverette said. "But I decided to give it a shot and did an apprenticeship for a year and a half. I ended up tripling my income."
Today, Leverette makes $100 an hour, minus a 35% fee he pays to lease a 10-by-13-foot space. He tattoos as many as seven people a day and has some regular clients, people who can't squeeze enough tattoos onto their skin.
"A lot of people can't express themselves artistically so they let us do it for them," said Pete Koskela, who opened Sub-Q-Tattoo in 1999. "Tattoos are art, and for the people who get them they're a lot like buying a piece of art to display in your house, or putting on a favorite shirt. They're ways of expressing yourself."
But art and shirts can be discarded. Tattoos are a lifetime commitment unless a person wants to remove them with lasers, a long and expensive process.
Still, tattooing has been around for centuries, and it's probably more popular today than it's ever been. A 2003 Harris Poll estimated that 16% of all adults in the United States have at least one tattoo, and that 36% of the population age 25-29 have at least one tattoo.
Because so many tattoo artists operate out of their homes - so-called "scratchers" who often work with crude equipment and no license -- it's impossible to say exactly how many tattoo businesses there are or how much revenue the industry generates each year, said "Sailor" Bill Johnson, spokesman for the Alliance of Professional Tattooists Inc. in Maitland, Fla.
"We have at least 400 or 500 in Florida alone, so it's impossible to say," Johnson said. "I would guess there are about 10,000 shops nationwide, but that would be a rough guess."
The association, which has 1,500 members, is a nonprofit that primarily teaches safe tattoo practices.
All of its members must take an eight-hour course on safety that has been approved by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Johnson, a tattoo artist since 1979, is at a loss to explain why tattoos have become so chic in all segments of society. Athletes and actors regularly display them. Even former Secretary of State George Shultz has one: while a student at Princeton, he had a Princeton Tiger logo tattooed on his backside.
A lot of celebrities have always had tattoos, but they're more likely to show them off today, Johnson said.
"Sean Connery had one on his arm, but in the movies they used to hide it with make-up," he said. "During the 1970s and 1980s there were celebrities who got them. You just didn't know about it."
As tattoos have become elaborate and sophisticated they've become more attractive to consumers, Johnson said. Like them or not, tattoos are art, and the skilled people who draw them deserve to be called artists.
"I think people respect the artwork," he said. "The skin is a canvas and the tattoos are art on the skin. They can become an addiction. You see people who get all of their arms done, or they get them on their face. I don't think they should interfere with a person's professional life, but people can use them to identify themselves."
Tattoo expo draws a crowd
More than 15,000 people attended the Tattoo and Body Art Jan. 6-8 at Fairplex in Pomona.
More than 200 tattooists and body piercing artists displayed their wares, while attendees pored over catalogs deciding which piece of body art might suit them best.
The expo, which occupies two exhibition halls every January and July, is one of Fairplex's largest events, spokeswoman Wendy Talarico said.
Donna Marino Loop, a registered nurse and the owner of Sensational Solutions, a camouflage cosmetics business in Mira Loma, said tattoos have become popular now that the baby boomers have assumed control.
"The older generation believed that only people who were deviant got them," said Loop, who applies tattoos to imitate eyebrows and eyelashes, for example, for people who are injured or who suffer from disease. "But that generation is dying off and the baby boomers are in charge now, and they're a lot more open-minded. Sure, there are people who are compulsive about it, but there are a lot of reasons people get tattoos. They can be a way to express patriotism or religious feelings. Some people like to stand out in a crowd."
For years tattoos were associated with the military so they fell out of favor during the Vietnam War era, said the owner of Vintage Tattoo Art Parlor in Los Angeles and an exhibitor at Body Art Expo, who goes by the name Baba.
Baba, who said he has been fascinated with tattoos since he idled at a tattoo parlor during his childhood, called the tattoo industry "heavily regulated, but also self-governing." "It seems like the more realistic the tattoos get the more the industry grows," he said. "It used to be considered low-brow, but that's not really true anymore."
Nearly all states require some kind of training and a license before a person can work as a tattooist, and tattooing of minors is prohibited in most states.
While the drawings have become more elaborate, the process for applying a tattoo is pretty much the same now as it was 100 years ago. Most tattooists use stencils and patterns from catalogs, but some like to develop their own ideas.
Iron oxide inks, most often black, green, blue or red, are inserted into the skin with a needle.
"That's why they're so difficult to get rid of," Loop said.
"A person has seven layers of skin, and with a tattoo the ink gets all the way down to the third and the fifth layer of skin. That and the fact that the spots are so big make them hard to remove."
Tattooists develop their own standards, like refusing to work on anyone who is obviously under the influence.
"I always offer people a drawing first so they know exactly what they're getting," Koskela said. "And I won't do anything that's racist or derogatory. I try not to judge anyone by what kind of art they want to put on their bodies. Bottom line, everyone has a right to a tattoo."
