We recently connected with Paul Smith and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Paul, so excited to have you with us today, particularly to get your insight on a topic that comes up constantly in the community – overcoming creativity blocks. Any thoughts you can share with us?
I have found the best way to overcome Artist’s Block is two fold – 1. To have as many interests as possible. And 2. Develop daily habits that create a clear path to daily success. Those two things keep me on track creatively more than anything else I do. As a tattoo artist I am constantly drawing…like 2-4 hours a day, plus full-time tattooing, so running dry creatively is pretty common. Something that I find helps me get through it is that I pursue various interests outside of tattooing and I turn to those hobbies for inspiration , or just to clear my mind, when I just can’t think of what to draw.
Some of those other interests include, Kayaking, Fishing, Hunting, Camping, Music (Guitar/Drums), MetalWork (fabricating parts on plasma cnc), tattoo machine building, Brazing/Welding, Collecting Military Surplus, and of course spending time with my Wife, Daughter, and bulldog.
It’s very important to take care of your mental fitness if you want to stay creative. Burn-out is real, so don’t overlook your own needs!
For me there is nothing that resets my soul like spending time in nature. 4 nights under the stars kayaking and camping in the riverbed of the Guadalupe River, or gazing at the Milky Way from a hillside in Rocksprings, Texas. Nature has a way of bringing me back to my center and helps me refocus on my place in the universe. I believe it is vitally important to spend time outside.
Another thing I mentioned is that creating a clear path to success, on a daily basis, is very helpful to being creative consistently. Try to eliminate unnecessary clutter in your daily routine. Arrange your tasks so that each one gets the best “you” that you have to offer at that particular time of day. For me, my creative brain is most active in the early mornings. So I get up every day at 6:00am, make a French press of coffee, and sit down to draw for a couple hours. I do this every morning and approach all of my morning routine in the same order each day. Side note, there is an art to making a good French press coffee, so I take my time and enjoy that process too. Embrace the small things and enjoy them…enjoy the habit.
And because my brain is most creative in those morning hours, then my drawings for that day receive the best creative me I can give them. I try to arrange the rest of my day in that same way as well. Putting my tattoo appointments early in the day when I’m sharpest, and tending to the more menial tasks later in the day, like restocking supplies at the tattoo shop. This is my pathway to daily success and it helps create a flow, or a rhythm, to everyday life. When you really get it nailed it can give you the sensation you are controlling your environment and that is a great feeling indeed.
So, what I’m saying is, great habits and constant learning will help you control the world! …and will probably help with that artist’s block too.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I first got to Austin in the early 90’s. I moved here to pursue music and art. I played in a Roots Rock/Punk Rock band with two friends. We played at a bunch of bars in Austin. I’m most proud to have played on a regular basis at the legendary punk dive, the Bates Motel. As well as playing venues like Hole in the Wall, and Red Eyed Fly. During this time I got a job at an art gallery in downtown Austin called Galleria Sin Fronteras. I spent a few years working there and got my first look at the fine art world. I spent the last year of that job taking over most of the Director’s duties and was generally responsible for keeping the gallery going. That gallery housed the largest collection of modern Mexican art on paper in the world. The owner eventually took a job at Notre Dame and shut down the gallery and moved away.
After that I got a job learning to build guitars with a gentleman named Bill Collings. I think that was about 1996. I spent the better part of a decade with Bill and the crew at Colling’s Guitars, making guitars for the likes of Kieth Richard’s, John Fogerty, and Lyle Lovett, just to name a few. Little did I know the fine hand skills I had learned making guitars would later translate so well to the art of tattooing.
In 1997, I got my first real tattoo at the age of 27. I was immediately hooked. I’ve always been someone who likes to figure out how mechanical things work, so I was obsessed with understanding the physical application of tattoos from the start. I spent the next year or two getting more tattoos and finally approached my artist about learning the art.
I got my first job at a tattoo shop in 2003 working for Mike Terrell at Gully Cat Tattoo in Austin, Texas. I spent a wonderful six or seven years there. Eventually relocating to another shop in Austin called Bijou Studio. While at Bijou Studio I was able to take on an apprentice tattooer. His name is Caleb Morford. He got so good at tattooing that eventually Caleb and I opened a shop together called Red Stag Tattoo (@redstagtattoo) in South Austin where we have been making great tattoos and art for the last six years. I currently have another apprentice/student named Chris Simm that is maturing into a fantastic tattoo artist in his own right.
Along with owning the tattoo shop, I am also a tattoo machine builder, tattoo ink maker, lover of stand up comedy, and family man.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Developing good habits is very important. I have always found that when my habits are in order that I find more success in my daily tasks, and that leads to reduced stress levels and increased confidence and happiness. Like attracts like, so if you’re happy, you will attract happy people into your life. For me personally, studying and reading about persuasion has been an absolutely life changing journey. It has made me a nicer and more calm person. Now I realize and accept that everyone lives in their own reality, and that reality is truly different for each individual. We have no special pass to understanding objective reality, everyone is hallucinating at some level, it’s what brains do to help make our environment make sense. Accepting this has helped me to let go of a lot of anger I had about “how the world works”, or anger over someone else’s different opinions, or someone’s lack of “common sense”, haha, the anger of youth. Studying persuasion science has helped me be a more accepting and nicer person, and that has brought me personal peace. This understanding has helped me when dealing with customers at work too. Tattooing is a very personal experience and being able to be tolerant and understanding of others is a must for a good tattoo artist.
Lastly, something I want to mention that has been of tremendous value to me as a person is being a mentor. I have taught two people the craft of tattooing. I believe it has been a Godsend for those two people’s lives, and I know it has been for mine. Passing on knowledge through apprenticeship is one of the greatest things I have done. It’s a way to see my art and influence outlive me. In the end, as artists, our legacy is to be found in what and who we leave behind. So create like you have no tomorrow, and find deserving people and impart your knowledge and experience to, the world depends on it.
Tell us what your ideal client would be like?
At this point of my tattoo career (22 years), my perfect customer is someone who is wanting a tattoo from me because they want my art on them. Not because I was the tattooer who was available that day, but because they looked me up, liked what I was doing, and decided to let me do my art on them. It’s pretty simple really. I draw tattoo flash constantly and would say I have thousands of designs drawn at this point. Picking something from my flash designs is the ultimate high for any tattooer.
Tattooing is an unusual art in that it takes the participation of the person who has to wear the tattoo around forever as well as excellent effort from the tattoo artist who is applying it. However, the fact that a person wears a tattoo forever doesn’t mean the tattoo artist wants to be held to the customer’s ideas without any input from the artist at all. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but an experienced tattoo artist should be able to come up with much better ideas and tattoo concepts than someone who is simply a tattoo fan or collector. If that’s not true, and your ideas are much better than your artist’s… you should consider going to a better tattoo shop, lol! I’m only half-way kidding.
As artists, tattoos are what we dedicate our lives to, it’s what we eat, sleep, and breathe. That being said, my perfect customer knows what’s up and picks from my flash designs and says, “do your thing”. That customer will get the best tattoos 100% of the time.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.tattoosbypaul.com
- Instagram: @tattoosbypaul, @redstagtattoo
- Facebook: Red Stag Tattoo
- Youtube: https://youtu.be/UkmGJOpVGVU?si=hH1jT_EfdOyMSpWq
Image Credits
Photos by Paul Smith
