Ink Master
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Jay Fiedler
Talking Social Media
Students Teach Freestyling With the Lions
College Athletics
Ink Master Jay Blondel Competes on Tattoo Reality Show
14 April 20
Artist in Residence Vies for Title of ‘Ink Master’ Jay Blondel competes on a popular television show against some of the best tattoo artists in the country.
that didn’t appeal to me at all. At some point tattooing came into the conversation and that caught my attention. When I picked up my first tattoo machine, that was it. I was hooked.”
Laying ink to skin
The Massapequa resident’s trip to the top has been a long one. After spending time in art school, and dropping out, he found himself working as a party designer for the simple fact that there was an artistic element to the job. Creating 3-dimensional centerpieces out of foam board was fun while it lasted, but it wasn’t the career that he was looking for. Then some friends saw some of his drawings. “I didn’t find tattooing, it found me,” Blondel said. “Friends saw my drawings and suggested that I paint motorcycles, but
At 23 years old, Blondel put the needle to the first piece of skin he would tattoo — his own. “Nobody else was around at the time and I was just so excited, so I tattooed this terrible little skull on my hand with the date,” he said. “I’ll never fix it or cover it up. It’s part of my story and it’s one of my favorite tattoos.” Since that day, Blondel has been gaining confidence while working up the ladder in the tattoo world. He started as an apprentice, helping out around the shop and eventually earned the right to tattoo someone other than himself. The first tattoo he did on another person was a skull breaking through the skin on a kneecap — not the easiest place on the body to tattoo while still learning the ropes. “A lot of people think that tattooing is pretty easy, but in the art world, there’s nothing like it. Skin can be really hard to work on. It bleeds, it sweats, it has involuntary spasms, it has to get up to go to the bathroom, it talks to you,” he said. “This isn’t a canvas that never changes, that you can work on in a quiet room by yourself. It’s such a unique medium.” Not to mention the fact that there are no do-overs when it comes to tattooing. The lines that are drawn and the ink that is placed can’t be erased. Most of the time the artwork is there for life, which adds a mountain of stress to the situation. “I have seen artists completely break down while tattooing,” Blondel recalled. “There was one girl who was Continued on next page
Jay Blondel designs a portrait tattoo on the show “Ink Master” on Spike TV.
Jay Blondel gets to work on a tattoo during the filming of the show “Ink Master” on Spike TV.
Photo courtesy of Spike TV
Photo courtesy of Spike TV
by Brian Radewitz Editor
G
rowing up, Jay Blondel always knew he wanted to work in a creative field when he was an adult, but becoming a tattoo artist was never on the radar until he stumbled into it in his early twenties. Now, 14 years after putting ink to skin for the first time, Blondel is one of the best tattoo artists in the country and is competing for $100,000 on the fourth season of the hit television show “Ink Master” on Spike TV.
14 April 2014
Jay Blondel poses for a photo in the shop. Photo courtesy of Jay Blondel
April 2014 15
Tips On Tattooing Jay Blondel offers up a few suggestions for artists and people looking to get tattoos of their own. Picking a tattoo If you don’t know what you want to get, you’re not ready to get a tattoo. Think about what you want. You don’t need to have an exact tattoo in mind, but you do need to have an idea. The artist can turn that idea into a design. Take your time and don’t rush into anything.
Aspiring tattoo artists If you want to become a tattoo artist, go and hang around a shop. Don’t go in there and say that you want an apprenticeship. Just go to the shop and get to know the people working there. Help out with things that need to be done.
Price Pictured is the season 4 cast of Ink Master on Spike TV.
Jay Blondel works on a tattoo in the shop.
Photo courtesy of Spike TV
Photo courtesy of Jay Blondel
Continued from previous page doing her second tattoo ever. She was halfway through with her line work and she started shaking and began to crack. She completely flipped out, dropped the machine and ran out with her gloves still on. We never saw her again.”
In the limelight The show “Ink Master” brings a whole new meaning to the word pressure. At his home shop — Alchemy Tattoo in nearby Bellmore — Blondel has the luxury of taking his time when
A Creative Career is Born.
1999 The year that Jay Blondel began his career as a tattoo artist on Long Island.
16 April 2014
designing tattoos. He can also spread a tattoo over a couple different sessions and work slow if he wants to. On the show, contestants have a short period of time to develop and design the artwork. They then have a set period of time to ink their canvas. Just making it onto the show is a form of validation for Blondel, who had a number of people try to divert him to other career paths early on. “My family hated what I was doing at the beginning,” he said. “My dad is a member of the Local 3 electricians union and he kept getting me different applications for civil service jobs. Getting selected to be on ‘Ink Master’ really shows people that I’m great at what I do.” “There are a few different tattoo television shows out there now, but ‘Ink Master’ is really the most respected one,” he added. “Just to make it onto the show is like a football player making it into the NFL. There were tens of thousands of people that applied. We had to go through so many steps and show so much of our work to get selected. The contestants are some of the best tattoo artists in the country.”
A master of ink “Ink Master” caught the eye of Blondel a few years ago and he immediately thought that he could easily win the show. Thinking and doing are two completely different things, though. Everything the producers do on the show is done to throw the artists off of their game.
“I was such an armchair quarterback watching the show at home,” he said. “Under those conditions, though, it is so much different when you are actually there. There are cameras everywhere, it’s like you’re under a microscope. We knew that our work was going to be criticized, even if it is really good they are going to dissect it and find something wrong with it. The pressure was unreal, but it was also a lot of fun.”
People pay hundreds of dollars for designer jeans, but want to be cheap when it comes to a tattoo. This is something that you will have for the rest of your life. Save up and go to a good tattoo artist. Bad tattoo artists outnumber good ones 100 to 1. You get what you pay for.
Trends When I first started everyone wanted a Chinese symbol or a tribal tattoo. Now people are getting the infinity symbol with a word in it. I urge people to be different. Thankfully, I’m at a stage in my career where I do mostly custom work.
Back to reality Overall, Blondel enjoyed the experience of living in a house with strangers and tattooing under extreme stress. “I made a lot of good friends on the show that I plan on keeping in touch,” he said. “I love my job and I really like the people that I work with. If I could do the show over, I definitely would, without a doubt. I am happy to be back home, working at Alchemy, which is the best shop I’ve ever worked at.” The first episode of season four of Ink Master premiered in late February. The show airs on Tuesday nights at 10 p.m. Anyone interested in getting a tattoo done by Blondel can reach out to him on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter by searching for Jay Blondel. He can also be found at Alchemy Tattoo, located at 2771 Jerusalem Avenue in Bellmore where he works six days a week.
Like this story? Tell us why.
Jay Blondel does a tattoo on the television show “Ink Master” on Spike TV. Photo courtesy of Spike TV
hibumagazine.com/survey April 2014 17
Jay Fiedler
Talking Social Media
Students Teach Freestyling With the Lions
College Athletics
Ink Master Jay Blondel Competes on Tattoo Reality Show
14 April 20
Artist in Residence Vies for Title of ‘Ink Master’ Jay Blondel competes on a popular television show against some of the best tattoo artists in the country.
that didn’t appeal to me at all. At some point tattooing came into the conversation and that caught my attention. When I picked up my first tattoo machine, that was it. I was hooked.”
Laying ink to skin
The Massapequa resident’s trip to the top has been a long one. After spending time in art school, and dropping out, he found himself working as a party designer for the simple fact that there was an artistic element to the job. Creating 3-dimensional centerpieces out of foam board was fun while it lasted, but it wasn’t the career that he was looking for. Then some friends saw some of his drawings. “I didn’t find tattooing, it found me,” Blondel said. “Friends saw my drawings and suggested that I paint motorcycles, but
At 23 years old, Blondel put the needle to the first piece of skin he would tattoo — his own. “Nobody else was around at the time and I was just so excited, so I tattooed this terrible little skull on my hand with the date,” he said. “I’ll never fix it or cover it up. It’s part of my story and it’s one of my favorite tattoos.” Since that day, Blondel has been gaining confidence while working up the ladder in the tattoo world. He started as an apprentice, helping out around the shop and eventually earned the right to tattoo someone other than himself. The first tattoo he did on another person was a skull breaking through the skin on a kneecap — not the easiest place on the body to tattoo while still learning the ropes. “A lot of people think that tattooing is pretty easy, but in the art world, there’s nothing like it. Skin can be really hard to work on. It bleeds, it sweats, it has involuntary spasms, it has to get up to go to the bathroom, it talks to you,” he said. “This isn’t a canvas that never changes, that you can work on in a quiet room by yourself. It’s such a unique medium.” Not to mention the fact that there are no do-overs when it comes to tattooing. The lines that are drawn and the ink that is placed can’t be erased. Most of the time the artwork is there for life, which adds a mountain of stress to the situation. “I have seen artists completely break down while tattooing,” Blondel recalled. “There was one girl who was Continued on next page
Jay Blondel designs a portrait tattoo on the show “Ink Master” on Spike TV.
Jay Blondel gets to work on a tattoo during the filming of the show “Ink Master” on Spike TV.
Photo courtesy of Spike TV
Photo courtesy of Spike TV
by Brian Radewitz Editor
G
rowing up, Jay Blondel always knew he wanted to work in a creative field when he was an adult, but becoming a tattoo artist was never on the radar until he stumbled into it in his early twenties. Now, 14 years after putting ink to skin for the first time, Blondel is one of the best tattoo artists in the country and is competing for $100,000 on the fourth season of the hit television show “Ink Master” on Spike TV.
14 April 2014
Jay Blondel poses for a photo in the shop. Photo courtesy of Jay Blondel
April 2014 15
Tips On Tattooing Jay Blondel offers up a few suggestions for artists and people looking to get tattoos of their own. Picking a tattoo If you don’t know what you want to get, you’re not ready to get a tattoo. Think about what you want. You don’t need to have an exact tattoo in mind, but you do need to have an idea. The artist can turn that idea into a design. Take your time and don’t rush into anything.
Aspiring tattoo artists If you want to become a tattoo artist, go and hang around a shop. Don’t go in there and say that you want an apprenticeship. Just go to the shop and get to know the people working there. Help out with things that need to be done.
Price Pictured is the season 4 cast of Ink Master on Spike TV.
Jay Blondel works on a tattoo in the shop.
Photo courtesy of Spike TV
Photo courtesy of Jay Blondel
Continued from previous page doing her second tattoo ever. She was halfway through with her line work and she started shaking and began to crack. She completely flipped out, dropped the machine and ran out with her gloves still on. We never saw her again.”
In the limelight The show “Ink Master” brings a whole new meaning to the word pressure. At his home shop — Alchemy Tattoo in nearby Bellmore — Blondel has the luxury of taking his time when
A Creative Career is Born.
1999 The year that Jay Blondel began his career as a tattoo artist on Long Island.
16 April 2014
designing tattoos. He can also spread a tattoo over a couple different sessions and work slow if he wants to. On the show, contestants have a short period of time to develop and design the artwork. They then have a set period of time to ink their canvas. Just making it onto the show is a form of validation for Blondel, who had a number of people try to divert him to other career paths early on. “My family hated what I was doing at the beginning,” he said. “My dad is a member of the Local 3 electricians union and he kept getting me different applications for civil service jobs. Getting selected to be on ‘Ink Master’ really shows people that I’m great at what I do.” “There are a few different tattoo television shows out there now, but ‘Ink Master’ is really the most respected one,” he added. “Just to make it onto the show is like a football player making it into the NFL. There were tens of thousands of people that applied. We had to go through so many steps and show so much of our work to get selected. The contestants are some of the best tattoo artists in the country.”
A master of ink “Ink Master” caught the eye of Blondel a few years ago and he immediately thought that he could easily win the show. Thinking and doing are two completely different things, though. Everything the producers do on the show is done to throw the artists off of their game.
“I was such an armchair quarterback watching the show at home,” he said. “Under those conditions, though, it is so much different when you are actually there. There are cameras everywhere, it’s like you’re under a microscope. We knew that our work was going to be criticized, even if it is really good they are going to dissect it and find something wrong with it. The pressure was unreal, but it was also a lot of fun.”
People pay hundreds of dollars for designer jeans, but want to be cheap when it comes to a tattoo. This is something that you will have for the rest of your life. Save up and go to a good tattoo artist. Bad tattoo artists outnumber good ones 100 to 1. You get what you pay for.
Trends When I first started everyone wanted a Chinese symbol or a tribal tattoo. Now people are getting the infinity symbol with a word in it. I urge people to be different. Thankfully, I’m at a stage in my career where I do mostly custom work.
Back to reality Overall, Blondel enjoyed the experience of living in a house with strangers and tattooing under extreme stress. “I made a lot of good friends on the show that I plan on keeping in touch,” he said. “I love my job and I really like the people that I work with. If I could do the show over, I definitely would, without a doubt. I am happy to be back home, working at Alchemy, which is the best shop I’ve ever worked at.” The first episode of season four of Ink Master premiered in late February. The show airs on Tuesday nights at 10 p.m. Anyone interested in getting a tattoo done by Blondel can reach out to him on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter by searching for Jay Blondel. He can also be found at Alchemy Tattoo, located at 2771 Jerusalem Avenue in Bellmore where he works six days a week.
Like this story? Tell us why.
Jay Blondel does a tattoo on the television show “Ink Master” on Spike TV. Photo courtesy of Spike TV
hibumagazine.com/survey April 2014 17
