The Beginner Tattoo Program by Patch Tattoo Therapy

We offer a beginner tattoo course, followed by an optional 4-months apprenticeship program to help apprentices grow into real tattoo artists as the 1st step.


The beginner tattoo course contains two parts: online and in-person training.


In the part 1 online training, you'll learn:

  • How to get a tattoo license
  • Tattoo supplies and how do they work, including machine, needles, ink, etc.
  • What are the major tattoo styles, and what skill sets need to be learned in each style
  • Sanitization and safety protocol
  • Skin principles and tattoo physics principle.
  • And more


In the part 2 in-person training, you'll be hands-on trained for 5 days together with experienced tattoo artists who wants to solidify their tattoo foundations. You'll learn:

  • All the tattoo liner skills, practice each one of them
  • Build good habits to tattoo in a sanitized and safe way, leading to long-term benefits
  • Understand the machine-skin relationship: how do tattoo machines work, how do skins react to certain motion, etc.
  • Get watched for your potential bad habits/ misunderstandings
  • What to practice on fake skin to further develop your tattoo skills
  • Career advise, and more


Request Training

We select our tattoo apprentices from the students who attended this beginner tattoo course. When signing up for this beginner course, you have the option to choose "Want to become a tattoo apprentice" or "Just for the course".


Tattoo apprenticeship is a mutual-selection, we believe the students need to experience our shop environment and training method to decide if they want to join us as part of the team, and likewise, we deserve to observe the students a little bit during the beginner course to know if they're a good fit for us.

We see our tattoo apprentices as future team members in Patch Tattoo Therapy, thus we offer a thoughtful constructive training to help people grow into real tattoo artist. The training pace as below:


  • 4 months tight curriculum
  • Several new concepts to learn every week
  • Meet with your mentor 1-2 times a week, each time 2-5 hours
  • Apprentices must be self-motivated and finish all the homework in time.


We would guide you to:

  • Transfer fake skin tattoo skills onto real skin
  • Get familiar with the whole tattoo process for real clients
  • Develop a personal tattoo style & build a portfolio
  • Build good habits for real skin tattooing
  • Learn marketing skills as a tattoo artist
  • Tattoo design skills
  • Booking, charging, and following up with clients
  • Independently exam and improve your skills as an artist
  • And much more.


This apprenticeship is limited to liner skills. The goal for this apprenticeship, is to help our apprentice become a self-sufficient artists ASAP. From our previous training experience, mixing a lot of different tattoo skills at this stage can be confusing to the apprentices, and will extend the apprenticeship to 1-2 years. Thus, we decided to move the shading/ coloring skills training to after the apprentice become a mature independent artist- that would be several months after graduating from this apprenticeship.


For more details, email us at training@patchtattootherapy.com