Tattoo Artist CV Examples & Writing Guide

One page for an established artist applying to a private studio. The name and studios are invented. Notice that the council registration and infection control training sit under the name, that the portfolio link is impossible to miss, and that the numbers are the ones a studio owner cares about: booking fill, rebooking, deposit no-shows and touch-up rate.

No studio owner hires a tattoo artist off a CV. They look at your work first, on Instagram or a website, and then they want to know whether you are safe, properly registered and reliable. The CV answers the second half, and it is the half that loses people the job.

• Put your portfolio link in the contact line, not at the bottom. Website first if you have one, Instagram handle second. Make sure both open on a phone.
• Show healed work, not just fresh. Owners can tell the difference, and a portfolio of only day-one photos raises a question about how your lines settle.
• Say what you are strong at and what you do not do. "Black and grey realism, fine line, cover-ups; does not take colour realism or Japanese" reads as professional. Claiming every style reads as inexperienced.
• Give real volume. Tattoos completed, clients a week, session lengths, how far ahead your books run. This is how an owner works out whether you will cover your chair rent.
• Include your hygiene record: council registration, current infection control training, and "no issues at environmental health visits" if that is true. A studio with a poor record can lose its registration, so this matters more than anything else on the page.
• Add anything that brings clients with you: your following, a client list you can move, guest spots, conventions, published work.

“I look at the work for two minutes and the paperwork for ten. Is your registration current, when did you last do infection control training, have you ever had a problem with environmental health, and do you actually fill a chair. If someone cannot answer those four in writing, the portfolio does not matter to me.”

This is the section an owner or a studio manager reads properly. Use the exact name of the registration, licence or training, who issued it, and the date. Do not paraphrase and do not guess.

Three or four lines. Years at a station, your styles, then one or two numbers that show your books are healthy. If you are also writing an artist bio for Instagram, keep that separate and looser; a CV personal statement is for the owner, not the client.

The numbers for these come from your booking app, your deposit records, your cleaning and autoclave logs and your own count of pieces. Nothing here needs a spreadsheet you do not already have.

Three groups: what you can put on skin, how you keep it safe, and how you run a chair as a business. Skip generic lines like "creative" and "detail-oriented"; the portfolio already proves those or it does not.

• Styles you take: black and grey realism, colour realism, fine line and single needle, neo-traditional, American traditional, Japanese, blackwork and geometric, script and lettering, watercolour, dotwork, cover-ups and reworks.
• Technique: linework consistency, grey wash packing, colour saturation and blending, whip and pepper shading, stretch and hand speed, needle and cartridge selection, machine tuning on rotary and coil, voltage and stroke length choices.
• Design and prep: consultation, custom drawing, reference gathering, stencil creation and transfer, placement and flow on the body, sizing for ageing skin, Procreate and Photoshop mock-ups.
• Safety and sterilisation: single-use set-up, cross-contamination control, barrier film and clip cord covers, autoclave operation and cycle logs, sharps and clinical waste disposal, skin prep, glove technique, station set-up and breakdown to a written procedure.
• Client care: ID checks (no tattooing anyone under 18, under the Tattooing of Minors Act 1969), skin type and healing assessment, pain management conversations, aftercare instructions, follow-up and healed photos, handling a client who wants something you should refuse.
• Running the chair: booking software, deposits and rescheduling policies, hourly and piece pricing, chair rent and income tracking, supply ordering and stock, Self Assessment records if you are self-employed.

Apprenticeships are handed out on drawing ability and attitude, and almost never on a CV alone. But a lot of studios now ask for one, mostly to see whether you can hold down a job and follow a procedure. Keep it to one page and be honest about where you are.

1. 1Lead with the portfolio link and say what is in it. Owners want 30 to 60 finished drawings that show line control, shading and composition, not tattoos you did on friends at home. Say how many pieces and in what medium.
2. 2Do not hide unregistered tattooing. If you have tattooed at home, most studios treat that as a problem rather than experience, and in most areas it breaks the registration rules. Say what you have drawn instead, and that you want to learn properly under a registered artist.
3. 3Put any real art training on the page: an art degree, HND or foundation diploma, life drawing classes, illustration or graphic design work, murals, commissions, or a print or sticker business you ran.
4. 4Show you can work a studio floor. Reception, retail, hospitality and any customer-facing job proves you can talk to nervous strangers all day and clean up afterwards. Give the hours and the volume.
5. 5Get the training you can get yourself. An infection control course and a first aid course are open to anyone and cost little. Put them on the page with dates, and check what your council expects of apprentices before you start.
6. 6Say what you can commit to. Apprenticeships often run one to three years, are often low paid, and involve long studio days. One line saying which days you can be in the studio, and that you have your income covered, answers the owner's real question.

• One page. Nobody in a tattoo studio reads two.
• Order: name and styles, contact with portfolio link, registration and training, personal statement, studios worked with dates, skills, education. Put registration and training above experience if you are new.
• No photo of yourself, no date of birth. A photo of your work belongs in the portfolio, not the CV.
• PDF, and keep it under 2 MB so it opens on a phone. Owners open these between clients.
• Match the words a studio uses in its advert: "registered artist", "chair rent", "commission split", "walk-ins", "appointment only", "custom", "cover-ups", "infection control", "cross-contamination", "guest spot", "apprentice".
• Bring a printed copy when you drop in. Calling in with a portfolio and a one-page CV still works better than an email in this trade.

A tattoo CV also gets used in places people forget: guest spot requests to studios in other cities, convention booth applications, studio manager and piercer job applications, apprenticeship applications, and any loan or lease paperwork if you open your own studio. Keep one clean version updated with your registration dates so you are not rewriting it under time pressure.