How Tattoo Ink is put into the Skin

At Speakeasy Tattoo in Los Angeles California, I am studying the layers of the skin and how tattoo ink is put into them. For the longest time I thought tattoo ink was injected into the skin but the actual process is much cooler. Let us start from the top. The top of the skin layers that is.

There are three layers to the skin; the epidermis, dermis and hypodermis. The Epidermis is the top layer of skin that you scratch at and damage horribly in your daily life most of the time. It is made up of stratum corneum cells at the top, stratum lucidum cells, stratum granulosum cells, stratum spinosum cells, and stratum basale cells at the bottom. Lots of stratum. In fact this layer can have around 50 layers of stratum cells but it appears to be very thin to the naked eye. 

The dermis is made up of papillary dermis and the reticular dermis layers which contain elastic and collagen fibers. The papillary dermis is the upper section of the dermis that has projections that go into the epidermis. The reticular dermis contains sweat glands, blood vessels that divide the reticular and papillary layers, and the sebaceous gland attached to the hair follicle coming up from the hypodermis. 

The hypodermis is made up of adipose tissue, which is fatty tissue, and contains the base of the hair follicle, the blood vessels, and the nerves that run up into the dermis. 

When tattooing, it is important to inject the ink into the dermis layer. If the ink is injected into the epidermis the ink will not hold and will flake off with the constantly regrowing layers. Injecting ink into the hypodermis causes blowouts where the tattoo ink will spread into the fatty tissue. 

The process of tattooing involves poking many little holes. The needle punctures a hole into the dermis layer while ink is deposited on the surface layer of the skin. When the needle retracts back into the machine it creates a vacuum and the ink is sucked into the hole where the needle was. As the tattoo machine is poking holes into the dermis, the needle has a specific movement to get the ink into the skin. This movement is a back and forth motion called the throw. The throw of the tattoo machine measures the distance the needle is moving from its most backward position to its most forward position. The drag is how much the needle is sticking out from the tube. A shorter drag would mean the tip of the needle is closer to the tube and a longer drag would have the tip of the needle be farther away from the tube. 

Since the epidermis is constantly regrowing and flaking off, and the dermis does not, the ink is safely stored in the dermis. Because ink is a foreign substance and not naturally occurring in the body, getting a  tattoo causes the inflammatory process to get activated. The white blood cells in the body travel to the sight of the ink and begin to engulf the ink. White blood cells are used to digesting biological matter, not ink particles. Instead of digesting the ink, the white blood cell contains it so that it will not spread to other areas of the body. When the white blood cell dies it releases that ink and the ink is then engulfed by a new white blood cell. The cycle continues until you die.