Blackwork, Ornamentals, and the Apprenticeship She Didn't Know She HaD
Q&A with tattoo artist AnEcho.
What’s your name (and studio name/location etc...), and how long have you been tattooing?
My name is Alyssa, but I go by AnEcho. I started tattooing back in 2016, although due to health issues, I had to take a few years off from pursuing my career in between pockets of time. I currently work at Guadaña Tattoo, located in Bayamón, Puerto Rico and regularly travel to work at Golden Night Studio, located in Manhattan, New York.
What got you into tattooing?
To be honest, the idea of carrying art with oneself was fascinating. I grew up seeing friends from my family and around the neighborhood being “permanently decorated” and it sort of stuck in my brain — even though I didn’t have any interest in doing them, I was more into collecting them.
It wasn’t until I was already in college that a couple friends got some tattoos that didn’t turn out too good. When I saw them my first thought was, “maybe I could give it a chance, see if I’m any good and eventually fix them up?”
Did you start off as an apprentice? If so, what was that like?
I didn’t have a traditional apprenticeship, but over the years I came to the conclusion that I sort of did have one.
Like I said, I became friends with people who grew up to become amazing artists. When I was in my early college years and transportation was an issue to get to my main job, one of my friends offered me a job as his assistant in his private studio.
He taught me how to properly set up a station, as well to break it down and clean up. Had me answering his consultations, teaching about pricing, and setting up his calendar. Some days, he’d even ask me to look up reference pictures and he would sit down to explain how he was using them. On particular days he’d ask me to print the final design and trace stencil by hand and all.
I personally didn’t have any interest myself in tattooing yet, so I didn't realize this was sort of an apprenticeship until years later, after he'd been telling me I should take up tattooing. Little did I know this was super important a few years later when I decided to give it a go.
When you were starting out, were you inspired by other artists?
Even before deciding to take on tattooing, I liked to try out illustrating while taking into consideration different tattoo styles. I remember back then being super influenced by Godmachine, Gustave Doré, Milo Manara and M.C. Escher.
Did you work in other mediums first or go straight to tattoos?
I used to draw with pens a lot and worked with photography for years. Then in college I discovered printmaking and specialized in relief printing, especially xylography and screen printing.
Currently, I enjoy the process of sketching more than making an actual drawing and use graphite as my main medium. If I have a bit more of spare time, gouache and ink at home, cross stitching, working with mirrors and smaller scale printmaking for the sake of just making art whenever I can.
Do you have a specific niche or style that you specialize in?
I feel like my style changes with time over and over, but it has been settled to work with black and grey through the years. My current fixation is between a lot of illustrative blackwork as well as exploring ornamentals and decorative tattoos, incorporating symmetry and balance between the body.
How do you handle the pressure of knowing that when tattooing, it’s permanent…there’s no “undo” button.
You just learn how to work around mistakes. I like to picture Bob Ross telling me that it wasn’t a mistake, just a happy little accident and then figuring out how to incorporate it without being noticeable.
Some tattoo styles seem to come and go, is there one style that’s gone away that you miss?
I wouldn’t say that it’s gone, but with all these new styles and trends coming up, I feel like every time I see less artists working full time on neo-traditional and even though it’s not something I specialize in, it’s one of the styles I enjoy seeing the most.
Do you prefer clients who come with a finished idea, or ones who give you a vague concept and let you run with it?
While I do love a full vision, I prefer when clients have a vague idea or reference, or even just a placement to work with! I think it allows more space to have some personal input and experiment with subjects and compositions we normally wouldn’t have thought possible to work on by ourselves.
Do most clients give you freedom to be creative?
I always try to negotiate some freedom one way or another to secure a better outcome and thankfully, most of the time they agree!
You’ve probably heard a lot of back-stories “behind the tattoo”, is there one story about a tattoo that you’ve done that’s stuck with you?
There’s been a LOT of wild ones! But I have one that instantly comes to mind and still makes me feel very sentimental.
I was already being constantly booked for my pre-drawns up for sale, or something along the lines of what I promoted and going on bigger scales each time. Then I had a 50 something year old lady come in to ask for a handwritten style tattoo that read “por ahí vamos”, which translates to “we’re on our way”.
I didn’t think of it much, until we got the stencil on and she was crying and approving it to get it started. When we’re working on it I got to ask if she was okay and she told me that she recently lost her son, to whom I made his first tattoo which she didn’t approve of (moms, you know?). He was a recovering alcoholic and heavy drug user, and was successfully clean after rehab and meetings for a while now.
Every couple of meetings they would give him a coin as a milestone, and he would bring his mom that token with a handwritten note that read “por ahí vamos”. He died in a car accident on his way home, crushed by a drunk driver. His mom got that tattoo exactly a year after the loss of her son. She said he had a lot of tattoos by the time he died, and every time she saw someone tattooed, it reminded her of him so she figured she’d cope by continuing his journey by getting a tattoo herself.
I didn’t even have the heart to charge her for the tattoo and ended up gifting it to her. Up to this date, she still comes to me to get a small tattoo yearly and I feel honored to do so.
Aside from that story, do you have a favorite tattoo that you’ve done?
It’s always hard to pick a favorite, as they seem to change every now and then. I’ve always treasured a portrait of a cow I did on my one year anniversary of tattooing. A more recent one was combining my love for memento-mori, armors and ornamentals as a result of total creative freedom to work on a forearm.
Aside from the actual drawing, what’s a skill a tattoo artist needs that people don't realize? What challenges do tattoo artists face?
Organization and time management! I feel this is not spoken of as much as necessary.
I think it’s important to manage time, as our jobs require us to bring our work back home. Limiting oneself to a certain hour to prepare designs, set a date to pick out photos or videos to post on social media planning up for a week ahead, and having a cut off time to stop replying to messages and inquiries is key to make time for yourself and your loved ones at home.
It’s important to have some balance. We’re so much more than our work (as time consuming as it is). But hey, here we are.
