After leaving the Marines in 1975, Rudy began his career as an apprentice at Goodtime Charlie’s Tattooland, in East Los Angeles.[2] Under the watch of Charlie Cartwright, a friend he met while visiting the old Long Beach Pike, Rudy and Cartwright began to hone their craft of single-needle, black-and-gray style tattoos.[3] Rudy was known for his use of light and dark shades of black and grey. In addition to creating a softer and more realistic style of tattooing, with the advent of the new single needle tattoo technology, artists were now able to use a much greater level of detail than previously attainable utilizing older and more readily accepted tattoo machine and needle configurations.[2] As the client base of East Los Angeles began requesting this "penitentiary-style", the pair decided to create a single-needle configured tattoo machine.[4]
Rudy was the president of the Beatnik's Car Club - a car club which requires the members to own 50s-styled hot rods and "lots of tattoos".[5] He was the owner of Tattooland, an "old school" street shop, located in Anaheim, California.[6]