My Racquel Natividad Experience Part 1

It's November 2nd, 6am and Coco and I are on a bus to Sta. Cruz, Laguna. It's a cloudy day which is a good thing because I didn't have to worry about the sun getting on my arms. We didn't get much sleep the night before probably because I was hella excited of my first of three to four tattoo sessions with none other than the first female professional tattoo artist in the Philippines, Ms. Racquel Natividad. 

Ms. Racquel Natividad

Finally we arrived at Sta. Cruz and headed straight to Racquel's shop after having breakfast. When we entered her shop, I could not stop staring at everything because the entire room was beautifully decorated with a lot of cool stuff, cool merchandises, cool artworks and the coolest plaques of her winning different sorts of tattoo competitions. The shop was a huge room with a mezzanine that creates a second floor. Downstairs is for purchasing merchandises and for bookings while upstairs would be the main tattoo area where all the magic happens. 

Rakel Tattoo, Sta. Cruz, Laguna

Finally we were called upstairs to start the whole process. We met Sir Macos who was Racquel's husband/manager/assistant. Both of them worked on the design that was going to be my tattoo. The design contained nature-inspired bio organic artworks from both Racquel and Macos and from a drawing that my cousin, May Ann Licudine, made for me. 

From my previous tattoos, I was used to having the design stenciled onto my skin before tattooing it but in this case, the design is, er. . .designed to follow the contours of my arm to make it flowy and beautiful. Meaning, Racquel freehanded the design onto my arm using pink and blue ballpoint pens. It took about more than 2 hours to draw the whole thing onto my arm.

Once I heard the buzzing sound of the tattoo machine, I just felt that natural high of getting a tattoo. It is painful but you don't think about the pain specially when you dedicate yourself to the art. And this type of commitment is vital in the valuation of the art of tattooing. The first session was just to finish all the guide lines or the outlines and then the following sessions would be to fill in the color and other important details. Can't wait for this tattoo to be finished. It will surely be a masterpiece!