City Of Ink

My name is Maya Bailey. I'm a founding member of City of Ink when Atlanta, Georgia, and Castlebury Hill. City of Ink is an art gallery and tattoo shop. Been open for six years now. Atlanta is the hub, place for really everybody. You got one of the biggest airports. A lot of tourists come here. Everybody come to Atlanta. You got LA folks come here, New York folks, Chicago. Everybody want to come in for a weekend and party in Atlanta. Stop by City of Ink and get some work done. The name City of Ink came from, it was inspired by the movie City of God. I was thinking about all those different kids, man, and how they was coming up. And in America, we got kids coming up the hard way too. So it was just These are some kids that I found. We train them. And they weapon this instead of guns, they weapon up paint brushes and pencils, markers, and tattoo machines. And the logo, we use the dripping star. The dripping star means that we all are stars. And only a few drip down and inspire the next star. Everybody can say they're stars, man. I don't believe in nobody better than the next person. But only a few people inspire the next person. And usually I go to art shows and look for artists. I see this young, hungry, and then I train them from there. It is competitive business, especially when you've got a lot of untrained tattoo artists. And then especially tattoo artists new in the black community still. So if you're not educated in what to look for, you'll just go to anybody to get tattoos. So the n Personally, I look at business I just really want to destroy any competition that we got. So that only us and a few other businesses that we're allies with. We friends with other tattoo shops. And we just kind of I get that part of town. We share this money. Anybody else that's not on our team is destroying them. I think it's already a part of American coaching no matter what. Is there anywhere from 75% to 80% of America's tattoo now? So it's definitely part of culture. Now, if it's a good culture, a bad culture, we got to determine that. I think in a couple more years. I think I could be big as Starbucks. I'm looking at it I look at tattooing on a commercial level, because no matter what, somebody's going to take it. And it might as well be tattoo artists make all the money that people who not in the tattoo. We didn't have any money at all to start off with. And so we just tattooed one at a time. One person tattooed. And if I tattooed, then I would put half my money up back into getting some draw all or some paint or some wood or something like that or buy some more electric wires or some pipes or pl And we just did it piece by piece, one tattoo at a time, one piece at a time. And so it was safe enough to open up. Because it was We had to do everything by hand scratch. Now that I gave you the story of City of Ink, let's walk inside and check it out. Well, City of Ink, we are known for our freehand tattooing. The reason we do freehand tattooing, especially when you're dealing with, And so what I do is we draw directly on top of the skin. And we do that with markers and everything. And that we try to make sure that our work don't look So the whole process we do, it looked And it goes natural with the natural flow of the body. Because tattooing by skin clearly is way harder. Because you got to deal with the elements of pigment already there. Our skin is way more delicate and way more gentle. You can really scar them. So the importance of knowing how to do that is not to tear them up. You got to really be gentle, really take your time on black skin, and really know how to pick the colors that match that person'skin complexion. You want to make sure you tell people how to take care of because the work reflects you. And then people blame you for messing up somebody'stuff, even if the client messed it up. Any tattoo you put out is going to be a reflection of who you are as an artist. And the type of work is going to come back to you. And so you're not cooling cross-contamination. Somebody sneezed. Next thing And you'll infect this person when they do the tattoo. I would draw it out, sketch it out in red, ain't it? And that's a sketch. That'something you would ignore. If the client, you wouldn't look at the red. You only look at the black lines. And the black lines is the design that you would see. And if they You start off with the outline first. Start off with your shade next second. And then from that, you do your colors. And I'm not breaking out the tubes because people steal your stuff, man. They don't know what type of inks you're using. They know what type of needle grouping I'm using. They know what type of machines I'm using. That's none of nobody's business, man.