Autobiography

"Art has always been a big part of my life; long before tattooing even came into question. I used to be really into comic books and I still am a goober like that. It was my main goal in life to become a comic book penciller. I tried a bunch of times, to no avail. So I said “fuck it”, and went to college just to kill time.

 I was working graveyard shifts and a full time student at the local college. I took several art classes and was a few units away from an Associates Degree in computer graphics. But that didn’t inspire me; working on a damn computer rather than hands on stuff, but I was gonna do it anyway, how else can an artist now-a-days make ends meet?  

I had some ink already and wanted a big assed piece I had designed for myself as usual since I’m a picky fucker. So I ordered 500 bucks worth of equipment with inks, a tattoo machine and etc, knowing I would have spent 2 grand instead at a tattoo shop. So I just started scratching up my leg. I spent a combined total of over 35 hours on it and I touched it up enough just to show people I was a decent enough tattoo artist so I could work on them (sort of like a portable business card). I worked on a few friends and realized I wasn’t learning shit just by going to conventions and watching the professional tattoo artists work as fast as they did, with my slow ass behind them trying to keep up and take notes. I knew I had a lot to learn and needed a lot of guidance.

 I asked all of the tattoo shops around town and then some, and finally a friend of mine from college told me about a good friend of his who was opening a shop in town. I checked it out and met Ron Rams at Dermagrafict. When I first saw the work in his portfolio, he had huge biomechanical pieces that were bright and colorful and I knew I could learn a lot from him. We talked it out and I got lucky, he apprenticed me for about 6 months until he let me loose and told me I was good enough to work on customers.

 With a lot of watching fellow tattooists work, cleaning the shop, doing drawings for everyone in the shop, and busting my balls to practice on anyone that would let me, including a few semi-huge pieces on myself I did. He let me do the simple shit, and then I just kept working at it until I could do more and more complicated projects. I’ve been at Dermagrafict since. I’m basically still a kid, really (22), so what can I say but to be continued…" -John Miller