Today we’d like to introduce you to Paul Smith.
Hi Paul, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
My name is Paul Smith. I was born in Abilene ,Texas in 1972. I was a child of the 70’s, a young adult in the 80’s, a 20-something in the 90’s and now an old man in the 2020’s. I am a professional tattoo artist with 26 years experience. I’ve tattooed my entire career in Austin, Texas. I currently own a tattoo shop in South Austin called Red Stag Tattoo with my business partner and dear friend Caleb Morford. I am also Art Director for a clothing company called Third Pin, based in Houston, Tx. Third Pin sponsors two annual festivals called KalashbashTX and Lethal Weapons Tx, and I supply all of the art for those events as well.
One of my most cherished roles is as a husband and father. I’ve been with my wife Eliza for 24 years, and we have an amazing daughter named Ivy who is a total rock star.
We recently departed Austin, and bought a house north of the city in Leander, Tx. The new house has an attached apartment so I can look after my wonderful mother who is battling Parkinson’s Disease.
We lead a pretty low-key lifestyle these days, but I took the wild road to get here…and I wouldn’t change a thing.
As a young person I was always obsessed with drawing. I knew I was going to pursue art in some way from the time I was very young. In the early 80’s I got into skateboarding and was heavily influenced by skateboard art/artists. My favorite to this day is the old Zorlac skateboards with art by Pushead. It was during this part of my youth that I also started listening to, and playing music. Like many of the kids I hung around in west Texas, we listened to Texas punk rock like the Big Boys, Butthole Surfers, Scratch Acid, and the Dicks. When I graduated high school in 1990, I immediately moved to Austin where the punk rock scene was on fire. I remember going down to the drag across from the University of Texas and skating around on the sidewalk out in front of dive bars like Raul’s (I was too young to go inside) and getting to hear the music emanating from inside. By 1993-ish I had formed a trio with two of my hometown buddies. We were called Whip Ass McCracken. I guess we were sort of a garage-roots-rock sort of thing. We would play shows at the old Bates Motel and the famous Hole in the Wall. Some of the coolest experiences of my life.
During this time, I became friends, and eventually roommates with a guy named Evan Johns. Evan was a well known musician from Richmond, VA. who moved to Austin in the late 80’s. He had been part of the Danny Gatton Band, and when i met him was fronting his own band called Evan Johns and the H-Bombs. Evan taught me the bulk of what became my guitar skillset…and I still lean heavily on what he taught me to this day. I will never forget those years playing music in Austin. Truly one of the greatest time-periods in my life. Like most bands, we eventually fell apart and moved on to other things.
By the mid 90’s I landed at an art gallery in Austin called Galeria Sin Fronteras. I started there as the gallery framer and exhibit preparator, and eventually took over Gallery Director duties overseeing the largest collection of modern Mexican Art on paper in the world.
The gallery closed around 1996, and so I went on the hunt for my next adventure!
It was at this time that I took on the task of becoming a luthier (stringed instrument maker). I found a position at a small Hill Country guitar manufacturer called Collings Guitars. I was absolutely blessed with learning to build guitars with arguably the world’s greatest living luthier (at the time), Bill Collings. Bill has since passed, but I will forever be grateful for the skillset I learned while working with Bill and all of the other amazing people there. Over my 8-9 years at Collings guitars, we made instruments for artists like Lyle Lovett, John Fogerty, Steve Miller, Keith Richard’s, Billy Gibbons, and many more.
This was truly one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. But in true artist fashion, there was still something in my soul that was yet to be nourished and so I set my sights to moving on.
Around 1997 I started getting tattooed. This quickly became an obsession with me. I have always been intrigued with how things work, whether mechanical, or art related. And after getting tattooed a few times I knew I had to learn the art just so I had a deeper understanding of it. I approached my artist, a gentleman by the name of Bobby Love, about learning to tattoo. Bobby was a tattooer who came out of New York in the days when tattooing was still illegal and was done out of “speak-easy” style tattoo shops. He was an old school tattooer, and a great human being. He agreed to teach me the art. Unfortunately, the apprenticeship did not last all that long, as he went through a divorce and eventually quit tattooing to become a monk. Yes, he became a monk.
I was not deterred though, and eventually secured a spot at the famous Gully Cat Tattoo, just south of Downtown in Austin. It was here that I put in all of my formative years of tattooing and got my reputation established. I was working under shop Owner Mike Terrell. Mike has since passed away and Gully Cat closed its doors this year (2026) after more than two decades serving Austin’s tattoo community. I spent 8 years at Gully Cat before moving on and going to work with one of my former co-workers and friend, Megan Emery. Megan had opened a shop in East Austin called Bijou Studio. I spent 8 years working along side some amazing artists there, Megan, Billy Baca, and Matt Morren. It was at Bijou Studio where I was able to bring my friend Caleb Morford onto the team as an apprentice. Caleb had been getting tattooed by me for several years and had expressed a desire to learn. Before this point in time I had never had the ability to take on an apprentice so I seized the opportunity to teach him. Caleb was a dedicated apprentice and picked up the skill quickly. He has matured into one of my all-time favorite tattoo artists and I am so proud of him and honored to have met him and call him a friend. In late 2017 Caleb and I decided to open a shop together, which resulted in our current tattoo shop, Red Stag Tattoo.
We are very lucky to enjoy a stellar reputation at Red Stag Tattoo, I’d like to think we are one of the more highly regarded shops in the city. We have had some serious talent come through Red Stag as Staff Artists, and Guests. Artists like Bobby Padron, Stacy Martin-Smith, Ona Greenberg, Taylor Bristow, Margaux Ulrich, Drew Linden, Knarly Gav, Denton Watts, Josh Nichols, Jason Eatherly, Hector Fong, and Dan Crowe.
Austin is one of the hardest markets in the entire USA to make your way in and it’s a constant struggle to remain relevant and to keep the bar high for quality and service. So we feel blessed to have been around for all of these years, and so thankful to everyone who has walked through our doors and left with a new tattoo.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I think my biggest challenge these days is balancing work life and non-work life. Now that I live outside of Austin I have to commute (sometimes 2 hrs one way) into the city for work. On a bad traffic day, I may spend 4 hours behind the wheel round trip. This has forced me to only come into the shop on days when I have an appointment on the books. In a way, it has served as a sort-of forced retirement…even though I am certainly in no position to retire. The rest of the time, I am at home working on graphic art jobs and working on the new house..
My Mom living with us has also been quite a challenge. Helping her while she navigates the effects of Parkinson’s disease is a constant battle. Symptoms can change from day to day, for better or worse. I spend a good amount of time taking her to Dr. appointments, and every Friday I take her to get her hair done and then to lunch. I am so grateful for the ability to spend this time with her. You should go out of your way to spend time with your loved ones. Once they are gone, that’s it. So I really try to soak in the time we have together. My Dad passed years ago from brain cancer. He had 7 months from diagnosis to death. And even though we were devastated, our family feels very lucky that we were afforded those 7 months with him before he left this earth.
As an artist, the biggest challenge is staying relevant. Keeping your name in the front of people’s minds. As a tattooer, in particular, you have to stay visible or people will stop booking tattoos with you. Outta sight, outta mind. So you must constantly be looking for ways to stay engaged with the community and those around you. It’s very time consuming and stressful to say the least, and this can have a negative effect on things like taking care of your overall health, both physical and mental. Staying centered and positive can be a real undertaking, and it’s something that I tend to struggle with personally.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Tattooing is a unique and often stressful career. In a market like Austin (more tattoo shops per-capita than anywhere in the world), you experience a rollercoaster of success and failure. Feast or Famine as we say. One minute you’re riding a wave of business, the next minute you’re wondering if you’ll ever get to do another tattoo again. Tattooing is seasonal, Often lining up with tax return season, or experiencing “slow” seasons in the heat of the summer or right after the first of the year.
This leads most artists to develop side-hustles or supporting skills that can generate income to bridge the gaps in the on-again, off-again nature of tattooing.
My extracurricular activities have changed over the years, I have had several business ventures and one of those was tattoo machine building. I made professional tattoo machines for a number of years. I quickly started getting attention and selling machines to many great artists that I looked up to. Machine building was a really great experience for me. During that time I was chosen to be a part of a short-film project sponsored by Frontier Films and Bulliet Whiskey that focused on my machine building. Six tattooers nation wide were chosen for that project, and I was indeed lucky to be included as one of those six. That film can be still found on YouTube.
I also knew how to make good powder-pigment tattoo inks and decided to start a small-batch ink company called Smith’s Parlor Secret. I had made a connection with a gentleman who had access to vintage powder pigment from the old United Tattoo Supply, owned by Texas Tattoo Legend Bob Shaw. I was able to procure a healthy amount of this vintage pigment, and so “vintage powders” became my niche. I made inks with vintage powders that had not been available for purchase for many years. A lot of tattoo nerds, myself included, geek out on stuff like that. Legacy and lineage play huge roles in tattooing, and getting to use inks sourced from Bob Shaw’s old company was just too cool!
Unfortunately, when COVID hit, it turned my world upside down, and I ended up walking away from machine building and ink production. When everyone’s businesses were shut down and tattooers were out of work, I realized that both of my side-businesses were also tattoo related. When there is no tattooing, tattooers are not purchasing machines or inks. So all 3 form of income dried up overnight during shut down. And even though Texas re-opened quicker than some other states, slow business plagued us for several years after reopening.
It was at this time that I turned my focus to developing graphic art skills via Procreate. And these days, graphic art jobs make up a good chunk of how I spend my time. I like it, and find it to be very mentally stimulating.
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
My best advice for those wanting to tattoo is, don’t. Haha,seriously. But if you must, make sure you put your best effort forward. Be respectful, no one owes you anything, and there’s no reason for established artists to just show you the way. Be prepared to work hard. If you don’t have an intense drive to always be drawing and improving, don’t even bother. You will put in thousands of hours drawing over a tattoo career and if that spooks you, you should consider doing something else. You have to be in it for the love of the craft. Even if you’re super talented, there’s no promise you will be successful or make good money. So many amazing tattooers struggle to make ends meet. It is a common outcome, and an outcome you have to be comfortable with to a certain extent.
Thats probably a bit of an old school mentality, but when I started tattooing there was not much of a tattoo presence on the internet, and there was no such thing as tattoo tv shows. Everything we knew about tattooing was learned from other artists at conventions, or from tattoo magazines. Finding real useful information required a lot of effort back then.
So I guess my real advice for those interested in tattooing, is: find an artist who’s work you like and pay them lots of money for tattoos. Invest in yourself and in that relationship. Become friends. Give the artist a reason to invest their time and energy into you. Work hard, and be an honest person. Be reliable and follow through. Your mentor will not only be imparting their wisdom and time to you, but also their money. Speaking for myself, I know I would often take my apprentice to lunch or make sure they were getting by. If your mentor is a shop owner then they will also be footing the burden of paying for the shop space you take up. Commercial rent isn’t cheap and they will be paying for that square footage you inhabit, the electricity you use, and shop supplies you burn through. Keep that in mind and work hard and contribute positively to the shop.
Be respectful, put in extra hours, make sure the shop is spotless and reflects the very best that you have to offer. Make yourself a positive and trustworthy addition to the shop environment,
If you do that, tattooing will return all of that and more to you. It’s an amazing job, and has been a life saver for me personally. But you must be willing to put in the work!
Pricing:
- Tattooing $200/hr.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @tattoosbypaul @smith_design_works
- Youtube: https://youtu.be/UkmGJOpVGVU
