So far I've only watched my mentor tattoo while he explains the process, I've yet to pick up a machine myself. I've seen him set up and tattoo a hundred times now, and recently hes been getting me to set up for him while he supervises so I can get it down path. Theres a lot of little things that I never noticed him do until he pointed it out. I've also been forcing myself to finally draw again, mostly portraits and still life. I haven't really drawn with a pencil in a very long time, and back when I did I never really took it seriously, but I've always had a knack for portrait art and im curious to see where my skill lands now that Im actually trying to develop it. I'll also have to work on developing my own custom tattoo designs, I fear that may be one of the hardest areas of focus for me. I expect that if I end up developing my full potential, I'll likely end up being more on the 'fine art' end of tattooing, a 'replication artist' as Tom Renshaw refers to himself (my personal favorite tattoo artist). i enjoy photo realism and feel thats my strongest area, and its also the most interesting to me.