We recently connected with Dolce Guevara and have shared our conversation below.
Dolce, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?
I think the self esteem of an artist is a very fluctuating thing. I think self esteem can be like that for most people. But for an artist, or someone that dedicates their life to a craft, you can develop a certain way of constantly and almost instantly looking for mistakes everywhere. So you do that to yourself a lot, even if you’re not trying to do it. So you end up for sure being your biggest critic.
In my personal experience, it has been a very intense process to learn how to believe in myself. It took me many years of learning from other people who were more experienced than me. I personally think that being confident in your skills comes in great part from having experienced a thing or two. If I use my own life experience as an example then that means years of work! Sometimes you have to sit in a corner and watch, listen, try to absorb as much as you can, make some mistakes and then make some more. After that you may start being right about things, how to do them and why. It’s ok to take time to perfect your art, your craft or your work.
I think most of my confidence comes from my gut, that little inner voice I guess we all have that is telling you how it really is but you don’t want to listen! My gut and a lot of mental training. Since I was a gymnast for more than 10 years, that helped me develop not only confidence in myself, but also made me my biggest and worst judge in life. Even as a little girl there were so many judges who I had to stand in front of and who would judge every inch of my body and every movement I made. So I was trained to push myself, to believe in myself, to give it all, the sweat, the blood, the long training days. All this since a very early age. And I became very competitive in every aspect of my life.
However, being confident in your work as an artist is very different than being confident with who you are or how you look or what you know you can do with your body. As an artist, a tattoo artist specifically, there are days that I can feel like a rockstar and then I look at my work and I feel like shit! Sometimes that alone can mess with my self esteem. I think this happens to a lot of artists, because what we do is completely connected to who we are and what we think our capabilities are. It’s all connected in art: mental, emotional, physical, you give all of you.
That’s probably why I love reading books and finding information about emotional intelligence. I think people that are able to give their emotions a direction and a purpose can do amazing things! I would like to think that I strive to be like that. And that’s why art for me is a great way of constantly growing. Growth is something that requires some time and some loving. So I try to remind myself that and remain as teachable and humble as possible. Because I know I’m not perfect. Growing in this way is what has helped me develop my own version of confidence and strengthen my self esteem.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I am a tattoo artist from Los Angeles, California, and I am now also a business owner. I’ve been tattooing for 14 years and I run a tattoo shop located in La Crescenta. This year, 2023, was officially my third year as a business owner.
One of the things I love the most about tattooing is working together with people and doing something that makes them happy. It is a very demanding job, both physically and mentally, emotionally too, but it’s also very rewarding! I definitely think it’s one of the coolest jobs in the whole world and I feel honored and thankful every day for being able to do what I do for a living.
I’m originally from Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico, and I came to this country when I was 19 years old. A lot of my background and what inspires my art is coming from that influence and nostalgia, from all the years that shaped me and the experiences I had while growing up. That was my whole life up until then, having my parents, being a gymnast, going to school. But now I think I’m also from Los Angeles. I have lived here for almost half my life, this is where I finished growing up, where I got married, found a profession, bought my first car, opened a business. So I have a strong influence from this culture too. Especially when it comes to tattooing. And especially from the Chicano culture since it is very tied to the black and grey style of tattooing.
After 14 years I can finally say that I specialize in realistic, large scale, black and grey tattoos. I can do other types of tattoos, and still do from time to time. But my clients seek me to customize and tailor their concepts, ideas and body type into an original tattoo, something one of a kind that only they will have. I don’t repeat my designs, I draw up everything specifically for each client to reflect their idea of self, who they are, and wear it on their bodies for the rest of their lives. And although there can be a lot of feelings of being repetitive when it comes to black and grey tattooing, I believe that you can still make every piece unique, as unique as your client, and that’s when your own individual touch as an artist comes in.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
I’ve been drawing and painting since I can remember, but I’ve only been tattooing for 14 years, and sometimes that can feel like either a very long time or not that long at all. The industry has changed a lot with technology, the machines, inks and social media. But it has very deep roots, and they go back years and years, way before I had any idea of what tattoos were or how to get them.
I think all tattoo artists have a very different journey from each other. Even what it means to be a tattoo artist can sometimes be different from one person to another. Tattooing, as a profession and as culture, varies so much from place to place, and nowadays everything around us changes so fast sometimes it’s hard to catch up. I personally discovered tattooing once I stepped out of my comfort zone, once I moved to Los Angeles at a young age. I thought it was a great way to make people happy with art and in my situation, to survive. I had no dreams of being famous or being like anyone else I had seen.
In my personal experience I spent a lot of years just sitting quiet, learning from people who knew more than me and who I wanted to learn from. People who had already made their own mistakes. I’ve invested a lot of years in training, in learning and making a lot of my own mistakes. If you are early in your career I would recommend to take the time to develop a strong foundation of the basics first, I mean to really understand what you are doing and where you are taking it. Because at the end of the day it’s a service you are providing. To acquire experience by working with many clients through the years, working at different shops, learning the good and bad. And then, whatever your style of tattooing is or may be, to develop the ability to represent with images what’s going through people’s minds in the best possible way you can, to try your best to make any image come to life in a way that will please not only your client emotionally but that it will also be aesthetically pleasing.
And while you should develop some social skills, communicative skills and so on in this industry, the most important thing to develop is the quality of the product/service you offer. I think that will help all other skills along the way.
No matter what I went through or how I learned it and why I learned a certain way, I’m pretty sure that much of what I could say to someone younger who is starting their tattooing career, doesn’t really apply any more because of how much things have changed in the last 14 years. Like I said, machines, inks, technology, but also individuals and how we perceive the world and how we think we have to act in it. Despite all of that, what I would always stick to and what I would always recommend is training, experience and knowledge of your craft. The first two will lead you to the third one.
How can folks who want to work with you connect?
Because I love to have an ongoing personal art project at any given time, I think I’m always open and receptive to work with other creative people. I really like working alongside other artists, and I think that’s how we grow the most in the arts, whether it’s music, poetry or in my case tattooing. When I worked with other tattoo artists and when I humbled myself enough to admit they knew something I didn’t, was when I was able to elevate my craft the most.
Now that I opened my own business it does get harder to find the time to work with others. So finding people who are excited about putting in the work and the time and who come with new and fresh ideas is like a breath of fresh air and inspiration.
For me there’s not a specific type of individual that I seek out to collaborate with, I don’t think we’d have to agree on everything or have the same background or beliefs to be able to work together. But whenever someone who is passionate or talented about something, is also able to be humble enough to admit they don’t know how to do something, in my experience that can make the creative process much more enjoyable to everyone involved.
Since opening my shop that’s where I can be found whenever I’m at work or tending to my clients. That’s where I do my brain work and heavy lifting. But like any other artist or business owner I get most of my clients, requests and inspiration through social media, which is where people can see my work and contact information.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @dolce_guevara
- Twitter: @dolce_guevara
- Other: TikTok: @dolce_guevara
