Does Getting A Tattoo Hurt?

Short answer: yes.

In depth: yes but it's bearable for the first couple of hours.

Tattoo pain can be compared to getting scratched by a cat, or my favorite description by a past client of mine, "it feels like a bunch of needles being dug and dragged across my skin." It sucks but it's not excruciating or non-doable. I would argue ripping a band-aid off hurts more.

The pain really kicks in after a couple of hours since your body will try to actively heal itself as you do more damage.

Here's a graphic description:

So picture this: your skin is actively trying to heal, your blood is trying to coagulate in order to scab and repair the open skin but it keeps getting wiped off. Your skin is also swelling as well as heating up. Your skin is the largest organ in your body (yes this is a fact) and it is doing its best to fix itself. Here comes your tattoo artist injecting ink and needles into your swelling skin. You can imagine how much more painful a needle in a swollen body part hurts more than a healthy piece of skin. Therefore, the first couple of hours are totally cool until the swelling kicks in. And the wiping.

If your artist is wiping you with a dry paper towel, its for either 2 reasons:

1. They're trying to make the ink smear less so they can see their work better or

2. They hate you.

A wet or dry paper towel will make all the difference in a tattoo. But once you're done with a bigger tattoo, those final wipes are spicy.

So ew, why would you want to go through that? Majority of people forget about the pain once the tattoo is complete. I cannot tell you how many people swear they're only getting one tattoo and end up returning for months for many other tattoos. And these are people who despise the pain. It's worth it.