News / Tattoo Art
From farming to ‘tattooing every single day’
From tending cattle on a farm in Somerset to tattooing people in Bristol, a former farmer is now an inspiration to young artists.
Andy Init’s body was covered in tattoos long before he began tattooing.
When lockdown hit, Andy’s then partner – a budding tattoo artist – moved in with him and he began spending time sketching on pseudo skins with her as a way of learning.
Andy Init spoke to Bristol24/7 while he completed a tattoo on his client’s arm
Andy, who used to be the manager of a dairy farm near Yeovil, explained what happened: “Right before lockdown we went on one date, and then everything got shut down.
“She was unable to work because tattoo artists weren’t allowed to. I was still working. I said, ‘Why don’t you come and hang out with me on the farm?’
“She stayed with me for the whole of lockdown. While she was living with me, in the evenings she practised tattooing on tattoo skins.
“I just started doing some with her in the evenings, and it was never really a plan for me to be a tattoo artist but from there I just started getting better and better at them.
“Before I knew it, I was tattooing every single day.”
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Eighteen months since the swap, Andy now co-owns Stush Tattoo with Matthew Robbins on North Street which also has branches across Bristol and in Spain.
Andy continued narrating his story, as he shaded ink on a client’s arm to bring together a lady’s face partitioned with a joker’s face.
“It was scary,” he said talking about the career shift. “The unknown is always hard.
“The hardest thing for me was that I changed everything – career, house, where I was living. Coming to Bristol, not knowing anybody, it was hard.”
But through Stush, Andy and his team now give young artists a platform to explore, make mistakes and learn on their own.
In Bristol, Andy can be found either on Stush Tattoo’s North Street branch or in its Downend branch
Andy said: “I’d like to tell beginners to get into a tattoo studio and show your work because I think it’s very easy to sit on social media and send out a generic message.
“We get them all the time (at Stush). But people who have genuinely ended up with apprenticeships are the ones who have walked into the studio with their portfolio and put themselves forward.
“It is scary walking into a tattoo studio, showing someone your work – but generally speaking everyone (in a tattoo studio) is an enthusiast of tattoos, so they want to look and see.
“If anybody comes in to show us their work, everybody comes to have a look because at the end of the day, we all like tattoos.”
Now the owner of three studios, Andy takes a moment to think about the hardships he encountered when starting off.
“I never really had a traditional apprenticeship. I found a negativity towards me, because I didn’t go through the processes that a lot of the old school tattoo artists did.
“They don’t believe I should be tattooing, because I hadn’t done what they deemed to be an industrial standard apprenticeship.
“Then when I was opening tattoo studios, I encountered a lot of like – ‘you haven’t been tattooing long enough to open these studios’, ‘you don’t know what you’re doing’.
“But my attitude towards it was that ‘I know what I’m doing and I’m going to do it’. I didn’t really care what people thought was right or wrong.”
All photos: Karen Johnson
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