SHANE MCCORMICK

Self-taught tattooer with over 16 years of experience. I was born in Monroe, Louisiana, and moved to the mean streets of Shreveport, Louisiana, when I was 14 years old. I’ve been getting tattooed since the early 90s and have seen on myself how tattoos age. Due to my own experience, I draw/tattoo in a way that will allow your tattoo to age gracefully ⸺ Was it hard getting an apprenticeship? How was yours? I didn’t do your typical apprenticeship; hell, I didn’t do an apprenticeship at all. Sometime in my 20s, I was running around with some really shitty people and got myself caught up and thrown in prison for a couple of years. While I was there, I would draw portraits and traditional tattoo designs on envelopes for a hustle. I had a gang member who liked my work ask me if I would tattoo him, and I was like, “Naaa man, that ain’t like drawing on paper, and he was like come on, man, I’ll get you the ink and gun and everything. I wasn’t really into it, but after he kept pushing for it, so eventually, I said fuck it let’s do it. Initially, I tattooed his gang logo on him, and it was such a rush that I did some more tattoos...next thing you know, I was tattooing the entire unit and had become one of the top tattooers in the joint. I eventually got that book, Tattooing A-Z by Huck Spaulding, and carried that thing around like a bible. I told myself I was going to do this for a living when I got out and started to learn everything I could about traditional tattooing. When I was released, I got one of those Spaulding and Rogers kits out of the back of a magazine and started fucking people up. I eventually got some better equipment and started doing some okay tattoos. I was a single dad raising a baby, so I couldn’t put in the work of your traditional apprentice, and I would tattoo on the side from my 9-5 job. Eventually, my work was decent enough that I took my portfolio and drawings into a tattoo shop and was like, what do you think? They hired me on the spot, and the rest was history. The place I got hired was a very busy street shop at the time, so I was able to build up my skill set pretty quickly ⸺ When did you get your first tattoo, and why? I got my first professional tattoo as soon as I turned 18. I got $50 for my birthday and ran down to the tattoo shop and got a skateboard logo tattooed on me and thought I was the shit. I remember looking in my Thrasher magazine and seeing all these old skaters with tattoos and thinking they looked so cool. I really thought Team Alva was the coolest, especially this one guy named Fred Smith, who had this big ole dragon on his chest. For my second tattoo, I went and got a dragon on my chest, and by the time I turned 20, I was already heavily tattooed. ✕