Meet David of Kestrel Studios in Littleton

Today we’d like to introduce you to David.

David, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I started getting tattooed as a teenager and was pretty hooked from the first one. I got started like a lot of tattooers do, tattooing myself and a few brave friends out of cramped apartments. After a couple of years of making less than stellar tattoos out of my home, I decided to stop tattooing and instead focus on growing as an illustrator. I spent the majority of my early twenties glued to my drawing table, and after a few years, I was able to luck into a tattoo apprenticeship. The first three years of my tattooing career were spent in street shops taking walk-ins, and every once in a while I would be lucky enough to tattoo one of my own designs. A little over a year ago, my friend and fellow tattooer, Melanie Steinway, approached me with the idea of opening our own private studio. Since opening Kestrel Studios, I’ve been fortunate enough to work with an amazing clientele making designs and tattoos that I love!

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I don’t have much to compare my experiences to, but I’d imagine I went through a lot of the same hurdles as other upcoming artists. During my apprenticeship, it was trying to balance working my day job to support myself and also making time to be at the studio enough to show my dedication. Finishing my apprenticeship created a similar problem since a lot of tattooers don’t necessarily have a line of people waiting to get tattooed by someone fresh off an apprenticeship. There was a good amount of time where I was making pizzas forty hours a week and doing a couple of tattoos on the side. When I decided to quit my other job to focus completely on tattooing, there was a long stretch of scraping by, but ultimately I’m glad I took that leap because I couldn’t be happier with where it’s lead me.

Please tell us about your business.
Kestrel Studios is a private tattoo studio where Melanie and I work exclusively with our clients to create a fun, mellow, and personal tattoo experience. I love it when a client comes in for their tattoo and I’m told how relaxing our studio is. Getting a tattoo can be an intense experience and for someone that has only been in the street shop with five artists working at once with death metal blasting over the speakers, the one on one experience of a private studio can be refreshing and calming.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
Oh goodness, well one thing I would definitely do differently starting over would be never ordering my first cheap tattoo kit off eBay. That’s also the biggest piece of advice I could give to anyone wanting to get into tattooing. I was so eager to get started that I just jumped right in. I think if I had spent those early days of home tattooing working on my design/illustration abilities instead, I would have set myself up for a lot more success once I finally got my foot in the tattoo door. I’ll always be so grateful for all the friends that helped me along the way through the early years, and I can look back at myself then and be proud of the super eager kid I was and where that motivation took me, but tattooing outside of an approved studio with cheap equipment when you have no idea what you’re doing is definitely something I’d do differently if I could.

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