Search Results for: backpiece

Hand-Poked Backpieces

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Long ago I posted an interview with machine-free (hand-poked) tattoo artist and pioneer Boff Konkerz (read it here), but at that point he was better known for smaller pieces. Boff told me back then that he figured hand-poked tattoos took about three times as long as “normal” tattoos in general, so as you can imagine doing a full backpiece is quite a commitment. Boff is based at King of Hearts in London, but travels extensively across the UK and Europe — follow his plans or get in touch via fb/RoadmapsForTheSoul.

Upcoming tour dates include:

  • Shining Tattoo, Nenzing, Austria… March 21st-26th
  • Íslenzka Húðflúrstofan, Reykjavik, Iceland… April 18th-23rd
  • Funhouse Tattoo, Metz, France… 2nd-7th May
  • Fo Tat Fest, Torshavn, Faroe Islands… 17th-19th May
  • Lucky 7, Oslo, Norway… 27th June-2nd July

Here are a few backpieces, epics of machine-free tattooing, that Boff has done. The first one by the way you may recognize elements of — it is based on Last Embrace by Laurie Lipton (although the motif of embracing skeletons is not an unusual one).

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Fabric-design-esque Backpiece

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Most of the tattoo artists specializing in geometric designs seem to draw heavily from math and sacred geometry (often centered around swastika mysticism), and as much as I consistently enjoy that, I’m always very excited to see the boundaries of modern blackwork and neotribal being expanded with other influences. I don’t want to put words in his mouth — and I am planning on updating it soon, but much earlier in Vincent’s career we did an interview which you can read here — but in this gorgeous backpiece by Beautiful Freak‘s (beautifulfreaktattoo.com) Vincent Hocquet I’m seeing fabric design playing a role as well, and the textures and level work in the faces makes me think of printmaking as well. There’s more as well, maybe in the general layout, that I can’t quite put my finger on but very much sets it apart from similar “texture collage” tattoos. Great work as always. Zoom in for a closer look.

backpiece by vincent hocquet

Update: Vincent just showed me some of the source artwork, a Mayan “Mask of Death and Rebirth” from Tikal, 900 AD. I love the way he’s adapted it for the tattoo.

This Maya mask shows the different stages of life as part of a never ending cicle of human evolution through life and the afterlife as it was understood by the mayas. The mask has three layered faces, each representing one particular stage of life. The inner face represents the beginning of life at birth. The middle face is the most important one since it represents the adult stage when the person comes into his full potential and most of his life experiences happened. The outer or third face represents the end of earthly life. This sacred time was viewed by the Maya as the end of one cycle and the beginning of another one. Death was followed by lavish preparations for the next life.

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Strikingly Beautiful Backpiece Scar

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For a wide variety of cultural reasons, even though dark skin is the ancestral home of the scarification artform, it’s rare for modern artists to have the opportunity to work on such skin. Iestyn Flye at London’s Divine Canvas (divine-canvas.com) recently had the chance to do a scarification backpiece on his friend Moniasse Sessou, and the result is incredible, easily placing it among the great masterpieces of modern scar art. Some of the design work came from friend and magician Touka Voodoo (whose work you’ve also seen here), the middle portion representing Moniasse’s spiritual path. The design was drawn on freehand, and the main part was done all at once, with the flower being done in a second session. It’s six or seven months old in these amazing photos.

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Geometric Butterfly Backpiece

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I was looking at this backpiece — still in progress I should mention — by Cameron Sterwart (facebook.com/cammystewart) and the way that a lot of artists adept in geometric work are starting to explore mixing different fields of geometry, often but not always in identifiable shapes like these butterflies and got to thinking that there’s a lot of kinship between the art of tattooing and the art of quiltmaking. Not just on a surface level either — you can also see it even more profoundly when you look at the history of quiltmaking and the way that artform evolved and changed over time. Although perhaps that is true for all artforms — it’s just more obvious in these cases because some of the technical restrictions make it more visually obvious. In anycase, more amazing work by Cammy.

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Little Swastika-Style Hanya Backpiece

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I’ve said this a few times, and I hope no one takes offense, but after being constantly exposed to the current deluge of stunning — and it really is amazing work — blackwork, oft-sacred geometry, neotribal, it all starts to look the same, without any particular message or explicit unique personality. Simultaneously empty and profound — I think that’s part of the beauty of math, especially when encoded in flesh. Meditative emptiness in a tattoo. But it’s hard for me to separate myself from the ego, and I always enjoy expression that comes with an easily identified unique identity. A good example of that is this backpiece by Marc (little-swastika.com), which combines his bold art-tribal with a traditional Japanese Hanya mask, done in a sketchy trash style… A great fusion of different styles in a tattoo that is unlikely to get mixed up with anyone else’s.

Hanya Skin Removal Backpiece Update

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Over five years ago I posted a photo of this incredible full-back hanya mask skin removal scarification by cross-spectrum body modification master Thorsten Sekira, then at Modified World in Munich, Germany, but now at Silver Studio (silverstudio.at) in Vienna, Austria. As is not surprising, the piece has healed evenly and without complication. Given the chaotic nature of the background, it’s impressive that it stands out as well as it does — and if you compare the picture posted in 2007 with these two pictures (posted a short while apart, as you can tell because the one on the right has additional tattooing), the wearer has been slowly filling in the background with ink, keeping the hanya mask as negative space so the scar will continue to grow more prominent as their body art evolves.

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I’m only giving you a tiny glimpse into his large body of work, but another related scar that Thorsten did is this Kirin (a deer-like dragon for lack of a better introduction to its rich and complex mythology which you can search out for yourself), on untattooed skin this time, and using more traditional cutting rather than heavy-lined skin removal. In these photos it is of course healed, and again, you can see that it is nice and consistent, even though it’s on skin that experiences significant movement and abuse and can be quite difficult to get ideal results on.

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As I mentioned, Thorsten is one of those guys that’s capable of anything — piercings, suspension, implants, ear reconstruction, scarification, and even tattooing. I say “even” tattooing because it’s not uncommon to find piercers who are into other mods, but most of the time there’s a real line between the tattoo world and the rest of the modification world. To be honest, it’s probably one of our biggest problems as a subculture. On that note I want to finish off with a silly little tattoo he poked — I’m sure it’s obvious, but this is German for “right” and “left”. For those forgetful, always-getting-lost sorts I suppose? Unfortunately it only works in sandals with carefully chosen strap designs. Oh, and I like the subtle typographical touch of slightly deviating the baseline of the text so as to make it look like it’s been shaken (or stomped) a bit out of place.

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Full Backpiece Scarification

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I wanted to share this amazing full-back scarification project, well healed and done several years ago by Shane Post of Wingnut Tattoo (wingnutmods.com). For a piece this big, with scars that have raised quite significantly, it’s remarkably even. I like that from a distance people probably think it’s a burn wound or some horrible injury, but then when they get closer — assuming they can bring themselves to look — they realize it’s a beautiful work of art.

EDIT/UPDATE: I wanted to add something that Shane just told me. This piece was done in one sitting, over about eight hours, and the client didn’t complain once. Wow. Very tough woman, I don’t know if I would have been as brave. She must have been on one hell of an endorphin high as well — this really pushes it from aesthetic procedure to ritual, and gives you an insight into the ancient shamanism practices of early humans.

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Joy Division Backpiece c/o Thomas Hooper

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In random browsing I came across this stunning Joy Division tattoo, and since like most things on the Internet it was uncredited it took me some searching before I even knew if it was a real tattoo or a photoshop job, which was my first assumption because it’s just so incredibly bold. I was happy to discover that it was the work of Thomas Hooper (meditationsinatrament.com) of Saved Tattoo (savedtattoo.com) in Brooklyn.

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By the way, if you like that, check out this Joy Division cutting posted last year.

As stunning as this piece is — it’s a beautiful example of graphic design — but not really something that pushed him technically or artistically as a tattooist. His custom work is so top-notch that I thought he deserved proper coverage, so here is a small selection of some of my favorite pieces he’s created. Visit his websites for more. I know I’ve said this to death, but wow, the talent pool that’s out there in the tattoo world these days is unbelievable. I could feature a new artist every single day for the next year and only have scraped the tip of the iceberg. Glad to have discovered today’s polar bear.