Some artists work in watercolors or oils, their work stuck to a wall.

Other artists, like David Baker, work in ink-and their art moves wherever the body it is on takes it.

Baker, owner of Nostalgia Ink at 334 Pennsylvania Ave. West, has been creating art “forever” and started tattooing 10 years ago.

“I’ve always been good at it,” Baker said about art in general. “I always did it in my free time for fun.”

Tattoos, however, are something that have impacted Baker on a personal level.

“When I was younger, I was a little crazy,” Baker said. “I didn’t do a lot of anything but partying. I had a really traumatic life experience that made me want to grow up, and I had friends who said, ‘you’d be really good at this. You should do this.’ So I decided to try it.

“I wasn’t very good at it,” Baker continued. “Just like anybody who decided they’re just going to try to tattoo their friends, I did a lot of bad tattoos on my friends. But, they weren’t the most horrible thing ever. If you’d seen it, you’d think, ‘that’s…good, for someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing.’ But I decided to actually learn so I could continue enjoying it.”

That’s when Baker went to Detroit to learn the art form.

“From there, I was in Jamestown (N.Y.) working in Almighty Studios for about six years or so,” Baker said. “In between that, I did my own thing. I had a shop that wasn’t open very long before I ended up going to Almighty.”

Baker said he learned a lot while working for Almighty. “He wasn’t a great teacher, but I just learned from being around him,” said Baker.

“It took a few years to get decent,” said Baker. “I spent probably two years just trying to teach myself and I just wasn’t getting anywhere. Then I went to Detroit and learned a lot of basic stuff I needed to know. After that, I just got consistently better and better.”

But despite the experience, Baker said tattooing is intimidating.

“It’s stressful because you have to strive to be perfect at everything you do,” said Baker. “You can’t please everyone-it’s just not possible-but you do pretty well with it for the most part.”

Among those people Baker’s pleased are Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson of “Ghost Hunters” fame.

Baker said the plumbers-turned-ghost hunters would visit Almighty yearly with their wives while in Lily Dale, N.Y. for annual appearances.

When Almighty closed and the owner moved to California, Baker jumped on the opportunity.

“Once again, I opened my own place,” Baker said, which was located in Jamestown and stood in that location for about a year.

Family, however, spurred a different direction.

“Jamestown was getting a little too crazy and I have four kids and a family. Jamestown just wasn’t a cool place anymore, so I moved here,” Baker said. “I got sick of driving to Jamestown every day so I just moved the shop to Warren.”

Baker’s been busy with business and it’s not just new clients. People who liked his work in Jamestown have followed, making the drive for more of his art.

It’s art that he’s had to teach himself to be versatile with.

“When I was younger, all I did was bloody, gory things that my parents hated. That’s pretty much all I ever did,” said Baker. “Now that I tattoo, I have to do what other people want me to do, not as much of what I want to do. I’ve become pretty versatile. I can’t really say I have a favorite style anymore. I kind of try to be good at everything. I do anything from the old traditional style tattoos to realism.”

It’s an ever-evolving art form with trends taking the internet by storm through Pinterest and BuzzFeed lists. Baker, however, still wants to keep things creative.

“Every year there’s a new trend. Every single year. Then you spend half the year doing that same thing. People just follow these online trends,” Baker said. “People are always bringing in things from Pinterest and say, ‘I want this,’ and it’s someone’s tattoo. For the most part, it’s my job to give people what they want. But I’ll try to convince them to switch it up so I’m not giving people the same tattoo. I literally have ten people coming in with the same exact image saying, ‘I want this.'”

The lines of creativity also find ways to cross in those instances.

“I don’t mind when it’s an artist’s artwork because I feel like most of the time they’re honored that someone wants to get their artwork tattooed on them. But if it’s another tattooist’s artwork, that’s a no-no,” Baker said.

You also won’t see a book of flash-or pre-printed designs-in Nostalgia.

“I try to do everything custom. I don’t have any flash laying around. People just give me their ideas and I’ll make it come to life somehow,” said Baker.

Just like other things, TV shows like “Bad Ink”, “Inked” and “Tattoo Nightmares,” to name only a few, lend to a lot of misconceptions about tattoos.

“They cut a lot of the process for those shows (out),” said Baker. “They know you’re not going to sit there and watch all of the drawing and preparation. They skip all of that, which is really the most time consuming part of the whole thing. People have a misconception of how long it takes because they think they can just come in, five minutes later they’re in the chair and they’re done five minutes after that.”

That preparation, for Baker and any other shop that cares about what it does, includes a lot of cleaning supplies.

The room is cleaned with MadaCide disinfectant and bleach, all of the tools are steam sterilized and discarded after use. The needles go into a sharps container that is taken to the hospital for incarnation once its full and even the markers are single-use and thrown away.

It’s something that those who are looking for ink need to be aware of and do their homework before getting a tattoo, Baker said.

“There’s not a health department official that’s going to come in here and check up on me,’ Baker said. “There’s nobody, really. There’s no laws in place so there’s a lot of shops open that don’t even know how to keep things clean. There’s a lot of shops open by people who don’t really know how to tattoo, but anyone can open a shop because there’s nothing stopping them, even in the states that have regulations.”

The lack of adequate space and cleaning supplies significantly escalating the chance of cross-contamination is one reason Baker doesn’t go to conventions or tattoo parties. He said the lack of regulations overall is something he hopes changes.

One thing that has changed that Baker enjoys is how much art he’s worked on outside of the shop. The art on the walls is all his own and he said that he’s recently started delving into oil painting. “It’s a lot of fun,” he said. “It’s different than anything else I’ve done.”