Andy Howl has been tattooing since 2002. He’s seen lots of changes in the industry.
“First with Miami Ink, then LA Ink and then Ink Master, and then all the offshoots of that, tattooing came from being an underground thing associated with sailors and criminals to being mainstream,” Howl noted. “Everybody in the world wants to get tattoos and every kid wants to be a tattoo artist. It completely turned the industry upside down.”
Aside from upgrades in tattoo technology, Howl says the biggest change in the industry is the proliferation of tattoo styles.
“With the influx of different artists getting into tattooing, you see a lot more different styles and a lot more singular artist’s visions, almost like a painter in the fine art world,” Howl added. “There are tattoo artists that are just as highly regarded and sought after like an expensive painting. The art of it has come out with the added exposure and attracting talented artists to it."
According to Howl, the predominant style remains American traditional.
“That’s like a bold, bright style that’s meant to look good as you age because tattoos do change as you age, as your skin ages,” said Howl.
Howl prefers black work, which is characterized by bold lines and a graphic, comic book look.
“Then all these other styles branched off from that, including more illustrative or cartoony stuff with a lot of detail,” Howl explained. “Watercolor tattoos became popular in the last 20 years, and that’s just making something look like a watercolor painting, a splattery watercolor painting. Fine line is another that kind of came out of single needle line work, where you’re doing a really thin straight and curvy lines. Basically, for every style that exists on paper and on canvas, there is an equivalent to it in the tattoo world. The question is how is it going to look in 20 years?”
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The list of tattoo styles that Howl gave above is not exhaustive.
“It’s not just American traditional,” Howl clarified. “It’s realism, black work, traditional black work, new school. There’s like a million different realms of tattooing now, and it’s like that worldwide. Because of the amount of interest in it, it’s really blown up and there’s all different styles and there isn’t just one thing that everybody gets now.”
In addition, tattooing is now universal.
“Even in countries that you wouldn’t think would have great tattoo artists, like Korea and China, there are now amazing tattoo artists.”
While every artist ultimately finds their own niche, most will employ other styles if that’s what a client wants.
“You kind of have to take what comes your way also,” said Howl. “That’s why it’s really good to be well rounded if you want to stay busy. We’ll have people come in that want very traditional designs. We’ll have people come in that want very realistic designs. Or something in the middle, or something very simple, like a Pinterest tattoo – an infinity symbol with names on it or a feather or something like that. So in order to get by as an artist and stay busy, you kind of need to be well rounded.”
Howl comes from a fine art tradition.
“I took private art classes from middle school all the way to college classes while I was in high school,” said Howl. “I was like the art kid.”
Howl states on his website, “I was completely focused on drawing and fine art as a kid and was encouraged by my mother to pursue art from a young age. My first piece of exhibited artwork was in a Russian gallery while I was in 1st grade (via an exhibiting pre-school art teacher). I was obsessed with drawing, and later painting, throughout grade school. As a senior I self-published a underground newspaper and comic (via long nights at Kinko's). The paper, entitled the "Hymenopteran Proctologist," was almost immediately banned by my art teacher and the principal. But it began a DIY career of making and doing shit on my own, including t-shirts and lots of bad photocopies.”
Howl then went to Savannah College of Art and Design, where he got a degree in visual storytelling.
“My love of bold, high contrast black and white horror comics, logos, and op-art was quenched when my professor, Bob Pendarvis (who created the sequential art program and also nicknamed me ‘Satan-boy’"), brought in comic book legends Bernie Wrightson and Charles Burns for private workshops,” writes Howl in his online bio. “During this time, I also started to crystalize a dark, psychedelic and pop art influenced visual language that I had been working towards since high school. My influences of horror movies, comics, metal, and pop art began to coalesce.”
While he was in college, Howl also began hanging out at tattoo shops, where he got acclimated to the tattoo world.
“I liked the imagery so much and liked the style and attitude of the subculture and all that, I got really interested in tattooing and got tattooed myself,” Howl recalled. “That was ’94, ’95 and it just went from there.”
Howl eventually ended up tattooing, but more than a decade would pass before he opened up a shop.
“In 2008, I signed the lease for HOWL Gallery/Tattoo, an art gallery and tattoo shop,” Howl states in his online bio. “I hosted shows with well-known artists like Derek Hess, Death album cover artist Rene Miville, BASK, Skot Olsen, Seldon Hunt, Frank Frazetta (via Sara Frazetta) and many more. We also hosted well known tattoo artists such as Mike Fite and Clay McCay.”
He also created, managed, and did artwork for the popular community events Art Walk and Music Walk, which revived the River District in the aftermath of the highly disruptive Streetscape project that blighted downtown Fort Myers from 2004 through 2008. Those events continue to drive business to the historic district of Fort Myers.
“The first year in business I was also featured on German television, Tattoo Berlin on DMAX, and hosted a monthly local morning news segment on CBS WINK-TV featuring local bands,” continues Howl’s online bio. “Within a few years, I was given a 40 under 40 business award from Florida Gulfcoast Business magazine, Best Tattoo Shop in Southwest Florida awards and Trailblazer awards.”
Throughout it all, Howl continued perfecting both his tattoo and visual fine art.
“Art and tattooing, I don’t separate the two things. It might be weird for people to think about it like that, but art on a wall and art on a human body, there’s really no difference to me.”
They’re just two canvases, so to speak.
“Life is art,” Howl added. “And the more you integrate art with your life, I think the more enjoyable your life can be.”
Although no two tattoo artists are alike, in Howl’s experience, most tattoo artists have some art background.
“I think that people that excel in tattooing are always working on art on the side in their free time, pursuing their own artistic vision, and the best ones do it the most. That’s really what separates somebody just sitting around waiting for walk-in, Pinterest tattoos from somebody that is trying to like be an internationally known tattoo artist. It’s the time that you put into it.”
According to Howl, most tattoo artists do watercolor work.
“That’s the traditional medium of tattooing, like flash art designs that you would see on the wall. Those are usually watercolors. It’s all interrelated. It’s all connected.”
Howl reports that about 20-30 percent of the people who come to his studio know that they want. Another 30 percent have a fairly pretty good idea of what they want or a reference image of some other tattoo that they like.
“Then there’s people that come in that know what my work looks like and they want one of my designs,” said Howl. “They’re like, ‘do whatever you want.’ In many of those case, I go free hand, where I draw the design on them in real time with markers and then tattoo it. Those are the most fun. When you can just draw on people without having done any preliminary drawing at all and then tattoo it, that’s like a very artistic way of life, you know.”
When creating a tattoo free hand, Howl uses multiple colored markers to create a light sketch. From there, he layers darker and darker colors to create a final drawing, much like the underpainting for an oil or acrylic composition on wood or canvas.
If the client approves the design, then Howl converts the free-hand drawing into a permanent tattoo.
“I have to explain it to some people who are new to freehand tattooing,” Howl added. “But it is literally a 100 percent original piece of artwork. There’s no stencil. It’s just me drawing on you. You give me an idea of what you want, like skulls and flowers, spider webs or whatever. That’s really the most gratifying. I have the most fun when I do it that way.”
When creating or suggesting a design, Howl is always mindful of the tattoo’s longevity.
“That’s why a lot of people go back to the American traditional and black work styles,” Howl said. “Tattoos do fade. They blur. The sun’s UV rays destroy your skin. A full-color, very bright tattoo could look very dull in just a few years depending on how much time you spend outside, what kind of skin you’ve got and how you take care of your skin.”
Howl cites his grandfather as an example. He got a tattoo of his wife’s name, Jane, when he was a young man.
“By the time my grandpa passed, the tattoo that he had of my grandmother’s name, Jane, was completely unreadable. It was just a black blob. So how you live, how much time you spend outside. If you have a tattoo on your forearm and you spend all of your time outside on the golf course, it’s probably going to age and blur pretty fast. So you have to keep that stuff in mind.”
Once an artist becomes established, the vast majority of new clients come from referrals.
“I’ve had people come in here and say that they went to five different bars and asked the bartender what the best tattoo shop was, and every single bartender told them to come to Howl. True, that’s an extreme referral situation, the best case scenario, but it is a word of mouth thing. Advertising online is about the only thing you can do nowadays. Print material is kind of dead. There’s a little bit left. But in general, it’s referrals. It’s word of mouth. It’s ‘Who did that tattoo. I really like that tattoo.’ That’s the bread and butter.”
Although online advertising produces mixed results, Howl noted that most artists have portfolios on Instagram. But because of shows like “Miami Ink,” “LA Ink” and “Ink Masters,” there’s now something of a celebrity aspect to tattoo advertising and referrals. Some clients gravitate toward artists who are well known. Others gravitate to artists who’ve tattooed celebrities such as musicians and film and television actors.
“There are people that are very attracted to ‘What’s the most famous person you tattooed?’ I’ve been asked that plenty of times,” said Howl. While he has indeed tattooed a number of celebrities, he prefers not to mention them by name.
“That’s not what I want my reputation to be based in,” said Howl. “And when you get into the higher realms of tattooing, and who’s like really a superstar kind of person, it’s about the integrity of the artist and how good they are at tattooing and how original the stuff that they’re doing is.”
Howl ended the interview on a sobering thought. Noting how much tattoo technology has improved in just the last few years (all the needles and utensils come pre-packaged and are disposable, with the machinery being completely wireless), he expressed concerns about AI.
“We’re living in a very odd technological time in a lot of different ways,” Howl observed. “That’s definitely straight up affected the tattoo industry. Everything is changing constantly, mostly in a good way. When it’s going to start going bad is when somebody invents a robotic AI operated tattoo machine, and people are going and getting computer-generated tattoos from a vending machine. That’s a no. One of the things that tattooing has going for it is that there’s still a human element in it. You can’t replace a tattoo artist yet. You can replace an illustrator by using AI-generated images. You can replace concept artists in movies. You can replace directors with AI now. The world in changing very rapidly, but it seems to me that tattooing is kind of here to stay.”
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.