There’s nothing new about a parent wanting their child to one day follow in their footsteps, career wise. It happens all the time; family passing on the tricks of their trade to family. Though it’s a common enough concept for most trades and lines of work, you don’t often hear about tattoo artists passing on their legacy to their sons or daughters. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen.
Thirty-six-year-old Blane Dickinson runs his own tattoo studio called Inkaholics Anonymous from his home in Penmaenmawr, Conwy, Wales. He’s more or less like any other hard working family man, except that in his home, he’s not the only tattoo artist: Blane’s 3-year-old daughter Ruby is currently being apprenticed by Blane himself.
For her fourth birthday this coming October, Blane will be giving his daughter a miniature tattoo kit, specially designed and made for small hands, shipped all the way from the United States. Blane wants his daughter to contribute a tattoo of a spider to his leg. Ruby currently takes “tattoo lessons” after nursery school and practices at her father’s shop with a toy tattoo kit.
It’s really not that surprising that something like this should happen. You see it all the time with sports or music or even painting. As long as there’s publicity to be had, people far and wide are always too eager to foist their kids into the limelight. In this case however, if Ruby truly enjoys tattooing, then I guess this is the best way to learn. Far better that she be doing this now under her father’s supervision than ordering equipment off Ebay when she’s 14 and scratching in some dingy basement somewhere. Of course, that could still be a possibility even with her dad’s training, but it seems far more likely that as Ruby grows up she’ll learn a respect for tattooing, thanks to her father. At least I hope that’s what her father’s teaching her.