While the tattooing process is age-old, as technology has advanced, sophisticated machinery has replaced the crude single needle with ink. Basically, skin has two layers, the epidermis which changes and renews with time, and the dermis which never changes.  In the normal body, the epidermis protects the dermis from injury, scarring, and staining.  The body can then get tanned, coated, painted, etc, without permanently changing the dermis.  A change in the dermis, otherwise known as a permanent scar, in usually to be avoided, and is considered unsightly.  Tattooing bypasses the god-given protection provided by the epidermis, and allows a permanent design to be embedded in a layer that cannot be removed by the body.

During the actual process, the ink is injected in little pin-points basically with one ink dot per stick. In the distant past, sailors would take weeks to complete a design (since they were at sea for months at a time, that was not an issue).  Now, with the aid of electricity and modern technology, the tattoo needles are sophisticated, and are able to stick the dermis multiple times a second, and needle bundles can do larger areas at one time. Despite the change in the speed of the process (elaborate designs can be done in a fraction of the time it took years ago) it is still just a stick and a tiny drop of ink.

 

 

 

 

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