eli5 if tattoo artists numb the area why do people still warn you about how painful the tattoo will be?
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Tattoo artists don’t numb the area, at least not with any topical ointments or creams. They might put some alcohol or disinfectant down to help prevent infection, but that’s usually about it. Otherwise any sort of “numbing” comes from your body’s own reaction to the drilling of the needle and sometimes the posturing of the artist themself (since they might be leaning on you in a very uncomfortable way).
edit: Apparently some do. In my experience, *not all* do.
Most tattoo artist don’t offer numbing cream.
For legal reasons they don’t want to be responsable for providing medication. If a client has a bad reaction they could be in a lot of trouble.
The cream can leave a film on the skin that can make the needle slip, messing up the tattoo.
Some people think numbing cream makes the tattoo take longer to heal.
There is a sentiment among avid tattoo people that you take the pain and earn the tattoo. So numbing cream isn’t a big part of tattoo culture.
So to answer your question. They warn you about the pain because they assume you will not get numbing cream, AND the creams sometimes don’t work very well so you end up feeling it, or it doesn’t kick in fast enough, or it wears off before the tattoo session is done.
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The numbing cream some put on does not fully numb the area and from experiences only lasts anywhere from an hour to maybe an hour and a half. While yes, the numbing cream will help. No it will not be as if you feel nothing, depending on pain tolerance you will still feel pain.
Everyone’s pain tolerance is different. Now, if you were to have to sit for a large piece that could take multiple hours ME personally would advise of not using the cream, as the farther in you get, when it wears off will hit you like a truck.
The numbing spray/cream used is topical, and doesn’t really work deeper until the needle has broken the skin, so most tattoo artists that do use it won’t bother until the outline is done, which also makes sense since it wears off quickly and doesn’t completely numb it anyway. Plus, even if the numbing was 100% while you were getting the tattoo, that doesn’t cover the healing process, which imo is almost always worse pain/discomfort wise.
Tattooist don’t numb the area that’s being worked on, I’ve never had any sort of numbing cream applied to my 7 tattoos over the years.
The artist who did my tattoo didn’t offer me any numbing, and in fact warned me against taking painkillers because aspirin thins the blood and when you’ve got tiny needles going into your skin multiple times, you want the (minor) bleeding to stop as soon as possible. Plus what everyone else said about not wanting to be responsible for allergic reactions, plus if you can feel it, you can feel if something is going wrong and get them to stop. I have a mole on my elbow that FUCKING HURTS if I accidentally scratch it, and I don’t want issues with that if I get a tattoo that goes past my elbow.
So the pain I felt was two-fold. The first was the needles going in, the second was the healing process. After a tattoo is done, you’re basically left with an open wound that you need to keep clean and let heal.
I only have one on my upper arm (but I want to get plenty more on various parts of my body), but mine wasn’t really that painful. It just felt like someone was scratching at a sunburn, and after a few hours I found myself wanting more, plus tuning out the pain (the artist has a TV mounted near the chair and we were watching episodes of Trailer Park Boys and Archer and shit while he was doing it.
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