Jesse Levitt

Jesse Levitt

- Dan Henk

Dan Henk: What lead you into tattooing? Was it direct, or a sidestep? I went to art school and moved to NYC with the plan of being a comic artist.

Jesse Levitt: I was about to graduate from college and I knew that I needed a direction to go in that was going to pay bills, but still be artistically satisfying. One day I was looking for references for a painting I was making and I came across some Tommy lee Wendtner and Victor Portugal work which absolutely blew my mind. I knew then that I wanted tattooing to be my future. At the time I was going to school for computer art. So, I moved to Chicago to find an apprenticeship and after a couple months I did find one.

DH: Tell me who was that with? How did it go?

JL: It was a tano-name shop, being loosely mentored by some street shop/walk-in artist. I think the apprenticeship could have been better, but it could have been worse. I had very little direction and I think if I wasn’t as driven as I was it could have gone badly. However, I spent almost 100% of my free time drawing, sketching, and trying to find people that let me practice on them. I had people letting me free and entire sleeves of skulls and bio only 4-5 months into my apprenticeship. I think they trusted me because of my already developed art skills. Some of those early sleeves came out better than you might expect from such an inexperienced tattooer, but still they were nothing spectacular. As time went on, I learned very fast, mostly through trial and error, not to mention the occasional technical help from my “mentors” at the shop. But come to think of it, I doubt a traditional apprenticeship would have allowed me to develop my style so quickly.