INSIGHT: Teen expert Lisa tells of pleasure and pain of her art...

WHEN pop stars Robbie Williams, Sporty Spice and All Saints' Melanie Blatt decided to take the plunge and get a tattoo, young people across the country followed suit.

It seems that decorating your body with colourful designs has become the latest fashion statement and the once seedy image of tattoo studios is fast disappearing.

All this is good news for Burnley teenager Lisa Clark, who has clocked up a string of awards for her daring and sometimes outrageous designs.

After watching her father Rod work in his studio, she began training at the age of 13 and now knows more than most about the colourful - and sometimes painful - fashion accessories.

Not only has she got two large tattoos of her own, spreading across her right shoulder and lower back, she has also created a wide selection of weird and wonderful tattoos for other daring individuals.

Lisa, 19, of Sunningdale Gardens, started working at her dad's studio when she left St Hilda's RC Girls' High School.

She now does up to 30 tattoos each week and is the youngest tattoo artist to have won awards in England and Europe, including Best Newcomer at the Living Art Tattoo Convention in Brighton, in 1997, and Most Outrageous Tattooist last year, at the First Eye of the Hand Convention, in Cumbria - where she combined several designs in the style of a pair of underpants.

But there is a price to pay for the latest accessory - up to £350 for an intricate back design and hours of sitting still while it is completed.

A large tattoo can take more than 30 hours and be split over several two-hour sessions, costing £30 each. A less expensive design, which at just under £20 is a favourite among women, is the small rose and takes up to 20 minutes to complete. Lisa has worked on men and women aged 18 to 60, including doctors, police and solicitors. She said: "My favourites are wildlife tattoos and celtic designs because there is a lot more detail to them, and with the wildlife ones you have to get it to look like an animal rather than just a cartoon stuck on to someone's arm.

"But the most popular for women tend to be the Chinese symbols, roses and dolphins usually on their stomachs. A lot more women are coming in now because all the stars are having them done and it's more of a fashion statement for them.

"Men under 30 come in for tribal or Celtic armbands and older men want typical lions and tigers ripping through their skin."

Lisa had her first tattoo of a shaded woman done by her father three days after her 18th birthday, followed by a tribal tattoo on her back when she was 19. She now plans to have a fairy tattoo on her thigh and already has the designs drawn up for a back piece, which would take up to 35 hours to complete.

She said: "It will consist of a celtic design with a woman entwined in it in blue. It will hurt a bit because I haven't a lot of flesh on my back. The podgier you are the easier and less painful it is with tattoos."

Once a tattoo has been chosen and designs are drawn up, the outline is transferred on to the skin with a line machine before being coloured in using pigments. Lisa has designed and drawn many unique tattoos, from animals and flowers to cartoon characters and Burnley FC crests. But however fashionable they have become, tattoos are still off limits to people under the age of 18. Lisa said: "It is classed as GBH on a minor if they are not 18 and we are having to turn a lot of people down because they are too young."

As members of the Scottish Tattooists and Body Piercers and the Association of Master Tattoo Artists and Piercers, Lisa and her father have had to ensure their studio is up to the correct standard of hygiene set by the environmental health rules.

Lisa is preparing for the Motherwell Tattoo Convention in May and the Bulldog Bash convention, in Kent, in July. She also hopes to hit the big time when she travels to the United States in February for an artists' convention.

Lisa said: "Tattooing is a continuous learning process throughout your life with a lot of different techniques to perfect."

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