Geometric Couples Tattoo

I love this double design running across a couple, done by Montreal’s Maika Houde (maikatattooart.com, also on Facebook and Instagram). You may be reminded, as I was when I saw this, of some of the pieces done by Little Swastika, and Maika told me that she’s always found inspiration in his art, so when this couple came to her looking for a shared tattoo she jumped at the opportunity to adapt the style to her own portfolio. It’s still in progress in these pictures, but already stands on its own. I really like that each tattoo is great on its own, but when you bring them together they become so much more… this of course works as a great metaphor for love.

Zoom in for a closer look.

Maika is actually in Toronto right now, doing a guest spot at Exotix, although her week is already full. I actually had a chance — by complete surprise — to see some of her fresh work in person because we hosted Russ Foxx‘s suspension event at our studio yesterday. Here are two pieces she’s done in Toronto, the one on the left being the one I got to see. Hmmm… I think she likes hexagons?

Tattoo artist Dick Cherry has lasting influence

He is primarily a graphic designer and does not sport ant kind of real tattoos or body art but he designs temporary tattoos for the different characters in the movies. Dick Cherry’s amazing works can be seen in supernatural thrillers such as “Mama” and he has also done work in action movies like “The last stand”. He likes the idea of a tattoo but not on his own body. Dick Cherry said that he is not capable of keeping the same painting on the wall for a very long time so having a body art or tattoo on his body for the entire life is out of question.

 

Dick Cherry however considers the art of tattoo making a wonderful art form and is intrigued by the idea of creating tattoos that will look wonderful on other people and characters. Dick Cherry is the name that he is fondly known as but his real name happens to be Lee Richard Gren. Dick Cherry developed fondness for art in a very young age and it was all thanks to the G.I.Joe sketches that his mom made on the lunch bags. He adopted his artist name when he got to Los Angeles and began designing rock posters.

It was in the year 2009 when he got his big break as he was approached by his friend who was employed in Tinsley Studio to design for the next movie of Walt Disney. Tinsley Studio recognized the wonderful artist in him and offered Dick Cherry a full time job. As per Dick Cherry a tattoo is a wonderful medium to explain the qualities of a particular character. The tattoos designed by Dick Cherry suits the people just fine and they are great help when a lot of people require tattoos in a particular scene.

These tattoos look good as real when nicely applied on the skin and serve the purpose of real tattoos wherever required. Human skin is obviously much different from that of a canvas and therefore special attention have to be paid while designing the tattoos. There are many other things as well that Dick Cherry has to consider and remember while making tattoos for the movie characters. Dick Cherry is a wonderful tattoo artist and his designed tattoos sure look great on the people and no one could make out that they are not real.

Eyeball Tattoo Interview, Five Years Later

Before Howie (lunacobra.net) finished my eye tattoos back in October 2012, a bit over five years after doing the first set of eye tattoos on July 1, 2007 of which mine was one of them along with Pauly Unstoppable and the late Josh Rahn, we did a quick off-the-cuff interview that I think is actually very much worth watching. That first procedure (inspired in part by Rachel’s “jeweleye” corneal implant procedure [video]) was of course the genesis of the eyeball tattoo movement — without that first step, the entire eyeball tattoo concept likely would not exist. I think this video turned out extremely well, probably because we’d just finished writing the first version of the eyeball tattoo FAQ the day before and it was fresh on our mind. Follow the links in this post for lots more information by the way.

Here’s the link to the YouTube video, feel free to share it!

Atypical Facial Tattoos

Facial modifications are probably my favorite kind of body mod — and facial tattoos my favorite kind of tattoo — because they are by far the most aggressive way of pushing the an individual’s personal sense of who they want to be into the social reality. And inside facial tattoos, there are a million different ways of a person expressing themselves, but what I find especially interesting is when the individual does it in a way that breaks the normal rules of tattooing, drawing from outside it’s normal lexicon, or making decisions that are not the most obviously aesthetically acceptable. In this entry I wanted to show a few people who I think have done fascinating things with the way they’ve chosen to recreate themselves.

First is the amazing Rene van Assema (here with Debbie von B), who’s psychedelic facial work has been featured before:

Next another old BME friend, Jason Sand (who’s currently exploring the world on foot — contact him to get involved in a great project).

Another interesting facial tattoo is on Las Vegas’s Kirtus Blue:

Speaking of Blue, there’s Australia’s Paul Bluey:

I could go on forever, and I think I shall in a future post, but I’ll finish for now with Anthony Green of Cholet, France:

Orange and Red Ink Eyeball Tattoos

Leaving aside for a moment the safety debate about red tattoo ink, especially in the eyes, reddish eyeball tattoos perhaps push social boundaries even farther than fully black eyes. I’ve noticed that when people see my eyeball tattoos, they almost never recognize them as tattoos, usually assuming it’s some sort of birth defect. As such, I’ve noticed a certain awkwardness in people’s comments, because we’re socially programmed not to look at people’s “deformities”, and even complimenting someone on them is generally frowned upon. I have to admit that it’s sort of funny thinking about what must be going through people’s heads when they see red, orange, or pink eyeball tattoos — it has to be some variant on “oh my god, what horrible injury or infection is this poor bastard suffering from!?!”

Here’s the latest example thereof, Chris’s orange eyeball tattoo done by Pinhead Mark out of Fat Mermaid Tattoo Company in Fort Lauderdale, FL.

Of course when it comes to this theme, the definitive example is Mary Jo’s red eye tattoo, shown here with her partner Jefferson Saint, who has black eye tattoos — I’d wager that black eyes register as special effects scleral contact lenses in most people’s minds. Until eyeball tattoos have a higher public profile, I think people won’t accurately recognize what they’re seeing… which really makes these much more fun!

What to call this?

I’ve posted creative work before by Courtney Jane Maxwell of Saint Sabrina’s in Minneapolis (saintsabrinas.com) — a creative lobe placement and an unusual helix piercing — and here again she takes advantage of a customer that came in with slightly unusual ear anatomy. Most people would have a fold in their ear where a snug piercing could be placed, but this person presented an entirely flat surface, with the inner conch running out to the edge of the ear. The customer had actually come in wanting a triple forward helix, but Courtney offered her something much more unique.

Dealing with Aging

One of the problems with scars is the way they change over age. Scars in general begin as red or pink wounds, staying quite dark for the first period of their existence, sometimes raising up as well (often unevenly) depending on the part of the body and the individual’s genetic. Over time, the scars lighten and fade, sometimes back to a natural color, or sometimes to a very pale color. This can happen inconsistently across the design, the result being that viewers who once saw the scar as beautiful and impressive are no longer so admiring, to put it gently.

I’d suggest that in general there are three ways to deal with this reality — first of all, to ignore it. After all, body art, especially scars, is most of an individualistic experience and what matters most is how the individual feels about the scar and that doesn’t have to change as the piece ages any more than people have to fall out of love as their spouse ages. The second way to deal with it is to use tattooing to scaffold the piece, to give it new definition as the original linework and design loses its power. I’ve posted scar/tattoo combos many times, but here’s one that was just done, the tattoo addition by Maartje Verstegen at Turnhout, Belgium’s Pirate Piercing (piratepiercing.be).

The third way approach is to design a piece that looks good at all stages. You could argue that this imposes significant limitations on the artform, but on the other hand, you could say that to ignore those limitations and to treat scarification as something it isn’t (ie. scars aren’t tattoos) is the real problem. In general, this means simple geometric or repeating designs that are highly resilient to changes in the scar. A good example of this is the work of Iestyn Flye (search for him on ModBlog), normally based out of London’s Divine Canvas (divine-canvas.com) although this piece I believe was done while touring. You can also find Iestyn at the 2013 London ScarCon in May (fresh back from Kathmandu, the Nepal Tattoo Convention, right after his London scarification seminar with Ron Garza).