Skin for training review

Today its time for a little review on the surfaces I started my tattoo training and Skin providers I met on my path.

As per my previous post you might know that my first attempts to actual tattooing I made were on fake skin. I bought the cheapest option ever from amazon with the fastest delivery option to get my hands on it ASAP.  That’s how desperate I was :)

I didn’t expect too much from that product due to the price and general review of it so there was not much of a disappointment. The fake skin happened to be an 8x10 piece of skin colour rubber, which didn’t held ink whatsoever.  It’s still good to check the machine set-ups, training machine holding position and line thickness but its nowhere near real skin.

I did my research on the best options to start with and so I tried to find good quality pigskin. I didn’t think of butcher back than cause I didn’t know what to expect from it. I thought that there must be some online place to get a properly prepared piece of pigskin for tattoo purposes only. How happy I was when I found this website www.skin-for-sale.com and decided make an order. Due to its advertising and price (it is really expensive as per piece of pigskin) this should be the best option possible for new tattoo artist. How wrong I was!

I got the pig skin in nice airtight packaging (huge and the only plus for that) which apart from mechanical texture marks was scored all over the surface like it was treated with sand paper. Obviously I couldn’t tattoo anything on it as the ink was getting in to the scratched and scored places. After wiping it I ended up with black patches all over the skin. I obviously send message to the shop explaining what the issue.  Not very nice lady confronted me trying to convince me that I am wrong as no one else ever, made such a fuss. Even though I send her images of the clean piece and the piece after tattooing. After a lot of messages eventually I got my refund and stuck the rest of the pig to the bin. I was trying to leave a honest opinion on their website but because it wasn’t very nice they didn’t upload it. Lesson learned. My advice is to no bother with web this kind.

I can tell you today that the best choice is actually going to your local butcher and for few coins buying a whole bag of pig skin patches, which will stay with you for ages. No scoring no ‘sanding’ or however you would call it.

I was also sent to some company called ‘Realskin’ who apparently produce very nice quality fake skin but I couldn’t bother. The pricing just put me off so I prefer to stick to my piggy. The only obstacle with pig is that it dries very quickly if you work on it for some time and you cannot keep it ;)

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Happy tattooing!