"And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter."King James 1611 Bible: Genesis 11
Let go the past, let the winds of fate fill the sails. Somewhere along tattoo culture, we forget the function of tattooing. Tattooing is to communicate and compliment the body of the wearer, not commiserate saturation or appear unnaturally unbalanced. The tattoos I perform are about constitution, character, and the beauty one brings into the world. Medical safety ethics should be priority to any tattoo practice. Who wants a photorealistic tattoo of the Mona Lisa on their back? I am the Mona Lisa. What an impossible comparison to a fine art stretched canvas the human body makes! Who knows where to place a Picasso style tattoo along the body to compliment the natural contours of the individual and lighting angle of the living human body? The tattoos I create seek a balance between those juxtapositions from the Renaissance and architecture, to cave etchings and Impressionism. Pioneer New York Artist John Milton Cage Jr. said, "Every time you look at a bottle of Coca-Cola, should be like the first time you look at it." Not looked at the glass bottle of Coca-Cola using a past tense with ritualistic ownership of the synapse. Perceive the work freshly and innocently, with a refreshed mind and realization. Not conditioning; absorbing, thereby discards the observational for a practical perceptive value. Herbert Marshall McLuhan said, 'the technique and presentation of an art is the whole body of the art.' Art is not to be studied; the mind is the theatre. In Roma, the oceans ran red with blood!
These tattoos use vulgar lines in an Art-Deco Noir Brutalist style with a minimalist motif. While I occasionally perform large full color botanicals with vegan ink, I prefer the minimalism of black. I prefer minimalist techno and minimalist contemporary art, not for the simplicity but for the purity to the medium. A convolution of New York City tattoo perspective development with Chicago style tattoo architectural layouts; I am largely influenced by the remanent mysticism of early West Coast Chicano Silhouette Street Art which evoke the Nuclear War Blast victims with their shadows burned onto the walls behind where they stood at the time of incineration. A computer could not generate nor perform these tattoo lines, they are too acutely complex and the kitsch is too Avant-guard.
People are going to notice! These tattoos are designed to encourage the eye to correct the lines unconsciously and thereby we correct the lines of the body along with the lines of the tattoo, rather than standout as imperfect canvas emulating fine art. Something else we will consider together is where you want your tattoos to be viewed from. For instance when you compose a piece of music, you will need to contemplate what is the ideal forum for the composition? Is the music best played in a car with your stock car stereo, in a night club, on vinyl on steaming MP3, or performed live in a Cathedral? These are the building blocks of mastery. When designing your tattoo you and I are going to take careful attention to where you want what they call in audio engineering the sweet spot where the two speakers converge in perfect balance. But in this case the speakers will be the eyes of the viewer of the tattoo. Do you want the tattoo to look bold and clean from thirty feet away or detailed finely from three feet away? Ideal perspective from 6 feet away, or 6 inches away to really get in and appreciate the display?
My black and gray tattoos subtract a large portion of dark gray in order to create a bolder dark
sections and age more naturally over time. Rather than a intensely gradual scale from black to light
gray, we will skip most of that because the eye corrects for it when viewing the tattoo and it is purely
an academic process; except for masters of a few styles like traditional Japanese and American West
Coast Chicano style tattoos. Those two styles can add a gradual contrast to the composition in a
specified vernacular as a motif. Those tattoos when applied masterfully would standout to you if you
compared them closely with other gradual contrasted tattoos without the understanding of negative space
on the body.
For instance a Traditional Chicano West Coast masterfully applied tattoo will take into account where the deeply saturated gradation begins and place it where the body has a natural shadow, for instance near the shoulder blade, so the actual light cast on the body will play into the gradient. These are closely guarded traditions, that you really have to understand light and anatomy to apply. In Traditional Japanese tattooing the opposite placement is applied, but in a larger scale backpiece for instance. Oddly enough it has a similar effect allowing the natural light to cast a complimentary gradient and enhance the wearer's tattoo naturally.
Create perspective with a childlike wonder and do not give in to awe. Do not learn to unlearn; by emulating your own perceptions. You cannot look at a bottle of Coca-Cola and think of refreshment, then see the contour and colors and cursive lettering and words, and simply call on a memory of every bottle of Coca-Cola you have ever seen and check-out on the experience! The brain does not perceive like that, you are using your memory as the art, not the image nor the eye as the art. In this same way tattooing sort of put the cart before the horse and emulated tattoo styles that were not designed to look nice in the first place and we as tattoo wearers wonder why there is a striking taboo still around tattoos and indeed tattoo placement. Your face or hand tattoo do not need to be bold enough to be seen from across the dinner table, it can be light as a freckle and a traditional tattoo machine cannot achieve this without diluting the ink heavily and that makes the ink unpredictable for linework. I want the tattoos you get from me to be clearly my work and unique to my artistic intuition, adept coordination and understand of human biomechanics. Read more in the FAQ page.
Tattoos coming from aboriginal tradition were mostly applied with the practices of scarification or cutting and packing of the skin with ash. These tattoos did not have to be so bold, because the scar amplified the design. Somewhere in time people started marking each other downcast with tattoos in Rome for instance a escaped slave would be marked a Fugitive with the 'FUG' across his or her forehead. In Japan a convict would have a black ring forcibly tattooed around their upper arm for each time they were incarcerated.
This is the story of modern tattooing. The artists adorning the bodies adopted these bold tattoo style
practices in the USA from primarily sailors and outcast types. But there is no rule that says your
butterfly tattoo on your arm has to be any darker than a light birthmark. Using machine tattoo an artist
would likely water down the ink and still rupture the skin tens-of-thousands of times and might lose
some detail. The machine artist would be asking the water to fill in for the ink and dilute its presence
and water does not always act like it is expected for fine line detail. I can achieve this look with
full potency ink my making limited closely lined needle strokes.
A machineless tattoo, aside from being much gentler and calming to get, can be bold and heavily saturated or in between a light and bold saturation. All made by the number of needle strokes without dilution except for fine gradients. Machineless tattoos take about six months for the ink to settle and blend with, then any stippling will become more of a lightly textured gradient or a solid line. Again, the practical benefits of machineless tattooing is about the number of incisions, application of the tattoo needles and depth not the ink or design. My handstick tattoos are designed to sit in the top half of the derma and take extra care when healing, some ink fall-out is expected and part of the patina and delicate style of the tattoo. These are not over saturated tattoos that you that will be debilitating for a day, these are carefully placed tattoos that have reduced in specific parts of the image. Which I place for instance, along a nerve to make the incisions shallowly there to induce some ink fall-out. I could leave that space negative and unfiled by eye, but I prefer to saturate it shallowly and let the body lightly create the negative space as it heals. It is much more interesting and exciting and ads an exciting patina to the tattoo. No single tattoo I perform is exactly the same. Every tattoo I apply is performed with entirely onetime single-use tattoo instruments for tattoo safety following the sterile technique.
Appointments happen after the Ides of March.
These are freehand drawn/painted on permanent, full-body tattoos for women. Tattoos in these series are performed with machineless instruments applied with fruit derived black
vegan tattoo ink and single-use everything(!) sterility guaranteed.
This custom tattoo designed for women begins on the buttocks with a large smoke-laden black scorpion reaching around the hip with its claw, tail raised in a striking position; the scorpion fills the entirety of the lower third of the back and buttock. Smoke spirals from around the scorpion reaching up to the upper torso of a female Viking silhouetted in a victorious stance protruding out from the smoke. Still the smoke raised higher to reveal The Vatican steeple and above, the smoke continues unto to the shoulders where a large dragon flies across from right to left at the scapulae as the origin of the smoke billowing down. The dragon's wings overlap, unnoticed over each side of the trapezius muscle onto the collar bones and blend seamlessly into Holly leaves and berries, acquiesced by Belladonna plants and a lovely Destroying Angel mushroom in the center of the chest.
Destroying Angel is a group of closely related mushrooms species in the Genus Amanita. The examples I have personally seen in the wild have a pale white, almost iridescent coloring. Destroying Angels have gills, a partial veil, a volva and white spore print. Amanita contain some of the most toxic mushrooms known to the world. The Christmas Mushroom is of the same Genus and called Amanita Muscaria or 'Fly Agaric.' The Destroying Angel has the toxin Amatoxin. Destroying Angel gets its name from bringing some onset symptoms, then subsiding and the fatal toxin destroys the liver overnight.
The bitter berries of the Holly plant contain Saponins. All parts of Belladonna also known as Devil's Breadth contain Scopolamine. Belladonna berries initially taste sweet then leave a bitter aftertaste that coats the tongue. Both Saponins and Scopolamine cause severe confusion and disorientation. It has been said that if poisoned with the deadly, Destroying Angel mushroom drinking vinegar will serve as an antidote. An antidote for Deadly Nightshade is said to be to drink one's own urine. These folk antidotes are from a different age and not to be substituted for a poison control facility.
Download (Save As): 'Losing Streak' free cellphone wallpaper
Tattoo Title: '(Korean) Blue Dragon Flower'
Tattoo Price: $17,500.00 USD
Tattoo Type: Irezumu
Tattoo Time: 6 Hours
Tattoo Session: One (1), Six (6) Hour Tattoo Session for one day!
Tattoo Size:
Back and upper arms.
Stay inside or get fired-up! The name of this flower, I couldn't care less; this design is, I am sure out the door. This style is a beauteous and rewarding Tebori. This design requested by a stubborn Korean HAN neighbor's father. This tattoo could stretch all around the torso like a shall or incorporate gradient feathers. The title of the tattoo is Koraen Blue Dragon Flower. The Korean Hanja badging says "Blue Dragon Flower" in Korean Hanja. This is a Watercolor tattoo design, two-tone blotched color; capped black and gray (Minus Black) style. Completely Sterile Single-Use, Custom Irezumu Blue Dragon Flower Back and Arm Tattoo Design. A Claude Monet inspired blotched image design is considered post Impressionism because it uses rules from more than one impressionist master artist.
I have some other dual-color, capped -black, back piece botanicals to offer such as The Lvcky Sakura Arch, Lotus Flowers, and Bamboo Forest all for $17,500.00 USD Single Six Hour Session. Traditional handstick Irezumu Tattoo Designs will be presentable in the skin after 6 months of gentle heal-time, as the ink settles. Two weeks until healed, two months before you can soak again. Precision tattoo ink delivery has the ink zero just below the nerve layer. The tapers are to make the incision, not to create a larger gap. These tattoos are available in black or white; can be Single-Pass saturation, or darker upon request for the same overall cost. All appointments are transferable.
A Half-Pass (Irezumu) Tattoo is considered to be fully-saturated at about 1/5th of what one would expect from typical, heavily saturated black-outlined, machined-American tattoos. At six-months heal time a Half-Pass Tattoo will appear as a lightly translucent silk layer of fabric across the skin in natural moonlight. This largescale two-toned color tattoo, capped black-and-gray botanical will age superbly for the entire life of the wearer with a minimum of natural sunscreen and regular moisturizing.
Seeking not to emulate any particular style or fusion, these tattoos seek minimalist, articulate black/gray and white artwork that can stand the test of time. There is no reason a tattoo cannot last a lifetime and age gracefully with the wearer. Some ink fall-out is expected. There comes some extra aftercare with such surface oriented tattoos, although once healed in two months they are as durable as any tattoo can be and even more so because they will not blowout over time. Typical fallout is only visible when the ink is not highly saturated.
I choose to step away from that type of vernacular, mainly because I am a minimalist and those styles remind me of automotive airbrushing or a Zen Garden ritual rather than what I consider contemporary American tattooing. I think those styles should be understood and practiced forever as they are a tattoo mastery, but I choose to perform some slight scalpel scarification with ink and ash packing. Not taking away from those traditional Japanese and Chicano styles, that is just where I am at, attempting to take the art further.
Noticeably when I have seen either Japanese tattoo artist apply Chicano style tattoos that subtlety of gradient placement is lost and visa versa in West Coast Chicano tattoo emulating traditional Japanese tattooing the study of negative space and overall large tattoo placement is lost as well. So is it really a vernacular if the letters or motifs of negative space and placement with natural contours are lost in translation? Bringing those two styles together for other artists in a more adequate cognizant display is a movement I am reasonably passionate about and I hope my capped gradient style explores those lessons between the two styles for other artists.
