When I first met Nate Esteras he was doing a guest spot at a shop in Denver, Colorado. He seemed quiet, at first. When I bumped into him again at the Paris convention I got to know him better. By the end of the convention, I decided to do a little tour of Amsterdam (and a few places in between), so I grabbed Esteras and a couple of his friends and persuaded them to come with me. A few days and many smoky conversations later I knew I had made a friend. Esteras is a family man and a good, old-fashioned, opinionated, hard working tattooer. He’s the kind of person I like, and he makes a good interview.

Tell me how you started tattooing.

After I graduated high school, I started taking art classes at the community college in my hometown. I met a tattooer in my class who told me they were looking for an apprentice. Before then, I had been a little interested in tattooing but didn't really pursue it until it fell into my lap. I tattooed two grapefruits, and then did my first tattoo: a heart with some solid black tribal around it. My second was on my friend, Rob. I did this Asian dragon that I had no business doing, but it didn’t come out half bad. I just did the scales backwards on the bottom, but I relined them and they looked good.

I did those two tattoos and then got thrown in to working. As the relief guy, the hours were 5 p.m. to whenever we closed. The owner was an ex-biker, an ex-drug addict, and he was in AA. So I worked there, in this biker shop, for five years and then came out knowing fucking nothing. Before I tattooed the grapefruits he gave me this Spaulding A-Z book and told me to read it. He explained that he would take a 50% cut and supply me with everything I needed. When I eventually wanted to know how I could get my own machines, I got cut off from any information, so I quit.

Similar situations for many people.

A few months later, I moved to California. I looked for any job I could get, because I didn’t think I was good enough as a tattooer. I had a machine, a Bickney tattoo machine. So one day I have an interview and I go in with the artwork I had and some pictures on a zip disk. They looked at my artwork, then they’d come up with an idea and have me draw it. And then they would huddle around it and have me draw something else. They had me jumping through hoops drawing that stuff.

The next day, Mike, the owner, had me come back and do an audition piece. I did this cling-clang monkey on their shop help. It was remedial as shit because I didn’t know how to tattoo. He saw that and told me I could do relief crew work, like lettering and tribal, but that it was all I was allowed to do because it would take a little time for me to get up to speed. At the biker shop I had used between a three-round or a five-round as a liner, and a 14-round shader to do the filler, so I didn’t know how to use a mag. Mike taught me how to use a mag on that first tattoo, and after he showed me how to use it I picked it up quickly. So the next day I did a couple of tattoos, some lettering and a rose. At first I was the three-day-a-week relief crew. Then, after a couple of weeks, Mike told me that I could come every day, for as much time as I could be in the shop. The first year I spent seven days a week in the shop, just trying to do whatever.

Which shop was it?

1st Amendment, owned by Mike Ferguson.

So you've been there since then?

Yeah, that was seven years ago.

How long have you been tattooing?

It will be 10 years in May. The first year I gave up everything and just started over. Since then I’ve been able to learn and get better with the help of guest artists, personal traveling, and being more able to gain knowledge. Just having a central headquarters with so much happening inside of it has really helped me to learn a lot about tattooing.

What kind of tattoos do you like to do?

I like more illustrative stuff which means a lot of custom work. I came to doing tattooing through art. I learned how to draw from comic books, so I like to do a little bit of everything. I love doing art, but it’s a hard way to make a living, so it’s nice to be able to do as many styles as possible. That way there will always be work. You can learn to do specific styles well if you’re a solid tattooer, and you can always incorporate your style into that style, and it’s always fun to do traditional shit because those tattoos are the foundation of what I do anyway. I also like doing monsters and bloody stuff.

Do you paint the same kind of stuff that you tattoo?

Sometimes, but not always. There are some things that you can’t really achieve in tattooing that you can with paint. Instead of tattooing being the center of my artistic universe, it’s just another facet of art for me. I can paint like I tattoo, and sometimes when I’m tattooing it’s like doing a painting. It’s just another thing I like to do as far as art is concerned.

That’s interesting, and not surprising, given that you work in an illustrative style. So do you have any projects going on?   

I’m working on putting together a sketchbook with the other guys I work with. Working in a custom shop creates a lot of overflow.

So you have a good dialogue with the guys from the shop?

We all just do things. It’s not like anyone’s going to approach you about doing a project, you just do it because you have the access and the ability.

Pretty much the truth, you just have to jump in there. What has been keeping you busy lately?

Painting and a couple of group shows mostly. I think every thing's mostly done right now...I’m doing some music album/T-shirt artwork.

What are your plans for the future?

I’d like to go to Europe this fall, but I don’t know if that’ll happen. There are only four of us in the shop, so we’re trying to put together a show. There’s enough room for a small gallery space in the front of our shop and, like I said, you just have to do it. It’s just a matter of getting enough friends and artists together to have a show.

Yeah, it doesn’t take too much. Got any rants you want to go off on?  

I want everyone to just accept the fact that everyone’s a tattooer, everyone’s doing art. I hate it when tattooers complain about people biting their shit—everyone references everyone else’s shit. When I go to conventions, I hate to see people all doing artwork in a similar vein, because they’re all obviously influenced by the same art set. It’s supposed to be more individualistic. They’re all fucking lemmings. Still, no matter what, it’s just whatever is the popular idea at the time. We’re a demographic. They’re selling shit to us now because we’re a demographic. We’re supposed to be fucking outcast pirates! And now they’re part of it. They’re a fucking T-shirt on Hollywood Boulevard.

Well, I think that there’s still a fire there. Some good things are still happening.

There are still people exchanging ideas. I love exchanging with other people in the industry and just learning from them. You get to see so much amazing artwork. You see so many possibilities that can be added to, endlessly. I don’t mind talking about how I did something. There’s knowledge that should be gained through respect and through hard work. But if people are going to ask me questions about something, if I’m actually having a conversation with an artist, I see no reason to say that these are my ideas, that I own them, and claim that no one has ever painted or tattooed like I do.

As long as you’re not giving it away to a bunch of jerks.

And that’s why I think that there is definitely knowledge that should be gained through hard work. I’m just sick of the clique, cool-guy bullshit.

When you get into your 30s who gives a shit, anyway? The cool clique are those you like and trust. I know there are other factors, but they’re easy enough to marginalize.

It’s just the fucking ego thing, I mean, when people get published or something, it just becomes fuel for their ego. And it’s like you’re not even doing it for art, you’re doing it so other people will see it and say you’re the guy.

Yeah, they should just enjoy their jobs.

Yeah, it pisses me off. I‘ve done artwork in retaliation, then I’ll take a step back and think, “They’re still getting energy out of me.”

Which is why you shouldn’t put a great deal of energy towards them. You’ve got to duck your head down and do your thing…easy enough.

And that’s the thing to do because there are so many possibilities, so many amazing people to work with, and so many places to go. How many other industries can do this? How would I be able to go to Paris and sell used cars to pay for my vacation? It’s really fucking cool to be able to do that and to have access to do that, and doing what I love for a living.