Blackwork Tattoo Mastery

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Shannon Larratt

Marc (Little Swastika, little-swastika.com) recently posted this old tattoo he did in Blackie’s Heavy Blackwork group, and emphasized that it was one of his older pieces, during a period where he used much heavier swaths of solid black than he does nowadays. Even though his style has evolved a great deal since then, I wanted to publicly acknowledge it because it’s a beautiful piece of graphic design. The interplay between the heavy “maze” on the left have versus the dance of spirals on the right with a background that’s been tattooed to mimic the splotchy image of block printing, and the two halves separated with a strong scribbled red boundary line, is incredible. For a big bold piece that it is in some ways “simple”, it’s also got some great little nuances — for example, look at the very bottom right how the fine stamp pattern goes over the heavy black bar as negative space.

littleswastika-masterpiece

And in relation to some of the volatile discussion lately about the way tattoos heal, I also love that Marc almost exclusively posts healed tattoos (not that he has much choice on account of the sheer scale). These tattoos will look good forever in my opinion, not just because Marc is technically proficient, but by the very nature of their design being resilient to the natural effects of aging.

Beauty comes in all flavors

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Shannon Larratt

Personally I prefer the beauty of a modified person, but in no way do I think that’s what’s right for everyone. Beyond a few basic rules of aesthetics (and even they are debatable), this is a matter that is very much in the eye of the beholder. But one of the objective things I love about modified beauty is that it is self-actualized. It seizes control away from the biological lottery and the luck of who your ancestors are, and makes the transformative statement, “I will be whoever I choose to be”. That alone I find incredibly attractive… the idea that the beauty can arise from an act of will, a conscious dominance over fate.

on-beauty

On the left is Mary Jose Cristerna, and on the right is Martyna Wojciechowska. I must add that Martyna is plenty modified herself, although it’s not obvious in this particular photo, so everything I said above is true of her as well, if perhaps to a different degree.

Pauly’s eye tattoo, plus before/after

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Shannon Larratt

Pauly Unstoppable just posted a new picture of his eyeball tattoo. Along with me, he’s one of a tiny handful of people with a partial eyeball tattoo. On the frightening day when Pauly, Josh, and myself sat with Howie debating who would be the first person in almost a hundred years to offer. Pauly, who already had extensive work by Howie, stepped up to be sacrificed to the mod gods first. This also meant that his eye was done with a traditional tattoo needle, rather than injection. Not long after doing it, we could see that most of the ink was coming right back out of the pinprick holes, and Pauly wasn’t going to be walking away with much of an eyeball tattoo that day. First to go under the needle definitely, but he would have to wait for a later encounter to add some more ink via the now-verified injection method. Unlike mine, which looks like a strange diseased lump, Pauly ended up with something that’s more like a flower or a purple cloud of troll fart gas depending on your point of view. Deceptively beautiful either way, and I think it is about five years old in this photo.

Click for an uncropped version.

I wanted to add some trivia as well while I’m talking about Pauly. A while back one of Pauly Unstoppable’s fans had some well-meaning fun in Photoshop attempting to edit off his body modifications. There’s something a little strange about how it turned out, although it is a passable amateur shop-job. But there’s something about it that doesn’t feel right.

pauly-shopped

It’s not quite “cover-up makeup” or anything but Pauly just posted a picture of himself with a facial mudbath (deep cleansing blue corn mask to be specific) or in preparation for his job as a mime or something. I’m sharing it here for those who are curious as to the impact that the facial tattoos and piercings have on the aesthetic of his face. Unlike with the Photoshop job, it’s easier to hide his tattoos than his cheek scars!

pauly-the-mime

Scarification Progression

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Shannon Larratt

This is going to go down as one of my top-picks I think when people ask me about my favorite scarification work of all 2012. One of the biggest signs that this really worked out right is that it looks dramatically better healed than it did fresh — although that’s not uncommon with scars over blackwork. But for example, the central logo in the fresh photo is a sort of Obama logo or something, but healed it’s obvious that it’s a beautifully executed captive bead ring (since it’s on a piercer). The small nuances in the shapes of the diamonds seem perfectly executed, and the tiny detailed horizontal linework around the ring healed without a single apparent flaw.

This superb scarification was performed by a man you know well, Brian Decker of Pure Body Arts (purebodyarts.com), and is on Jose Tallon of Adornment Piercing in Palm Springs, California, with the original blackwork tattoo being done by James Haun (of Private Tattoo, the other half of Jose’s shop). Again, great work, and thanks to Jose for putting together this set of progression photos.

jose-vs-brian

Posted with apologies to Rob for not leaving this for him to post for his “Friday Followup”, but it’s so superb I couldn’t stop myself from starting the day with it.

Three weeks of The Modified World

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Shannon Larratt

I realized today that lately I’ve neglected to feature J.C. Potts’s “The Modified World” when it airs on Friday nights. I have so much respect for what J.C. is doing with his videos, and think they’re an incredibly valuable contribution to body modification culture. As I’ve said before, if it wasn’t for one important fact I’d do everything in my power to have Rachel offer him a job at BME and have ModBlog host his videos rather than just linking to them. But that big important fact is that one of the things that makes J.C. so valuable is that he is a true independent, and is beholden to no one other than himself. He’s not afraid to say what he feels needs to be said. I can’t say I agree with every word he’s spoken — although I do more often than not — but I can say emphatically that he’s an intelligent person whose opinions and knowledge I always take the time consider. He’s broadening horizons and spreading the gospel of the modified world for the betterment of this community, and I hope he continues finding the energy to produce “The Modified World” for a long time to come.

Anyway, his most recent show is a continuation in his excellent body jewelry series, this week focusing on Glass Body Jewelry Basics — a follow-up to his earlier introduction to wood body jewelry — seven minutes of stuff every piercing lover needs to know (about four or five minutes of actual “meat” — as he admits, there’s not all that much to say about glass). As a side comment, beautiful production and editing on this show as always — even though it’s only seven minutes of video, serious time and effort went into creating it. This is a true “television show”, not some vlog with a kid rambling into his webcam.

As I write this, Rachel is still moving BMEshop to its new location, but she carries some beautiful glass jewelry made by our old friend Jason from Gorilla Glass.

The glass video was admittedly brief, so hopefully you’re hungering for more. The previous week saw a quick interview with Jared Silverman, a St. Louis-based professional piercer. Personally I like the long videos and you may recall my interviews on BMEradio were often well over an hour, but five minutes is admittedly much easier to fit into your day. This interview I think will be of great interest especially to people thinking about a career in piercing. I also always enjoy interviews from different areas because it gives me a peek into the way this culture that’s so dear to my heart expresses itself in different geographies.

That’s actually part two from an earlier video from the same day that I won’t embed here but you can follow a link to it. It shows you what J.C. got himself up to in St. Louis both as a tourist, and while doing a guest spot at TRX.

But I also wanted to feature another interview that J.C. did a week before that one, with young but very sharp piercer Courtney Maxwell — she’s no stranger to ModBlog either, as you may remember from this charming older client and even a guess where (adult) that better shows off her skill-set — who recently set up a site for professionals to share information via a private forum without the restrictions of being on something like Facebook (that is, she’s seeking to create a safe space). Another great interview that I again would really recommend to people interested in becoming a piercer.

Speaking of ears: pawprints and geeks

Posted on September 11, 2012 by Shannon Larratt

A while back Ryan Ouellette of Precision Body Arts (precisionbodyarts.com) invented an incredibly clever combination ear piercing project that captured everyone’s imagination that saw it. He took four flat round ends for toes and a flat heart end for the footpad, and combined them with five needles to make the cutest little ear project. That’s his hear on the left. As is no surprise, others are starting to ape it, because it’s a super idea, with the example on the right being done by Beans of Dragon FX Kingsway (dragonfxtattoo.com/kingsway), giving full credit for the idea to Ryan of course — this isn’t a “look at the plagiarism” entry. Both are beautifully executed and I have no doubt that in each case the wearer are being driven nuts by the number of compliments they’re getting.

pawprint-piercings

While I’m talking about ears, I have to also share with you this little “GEEK” ear tattoo that Fabio Ryuk Nini, owner of Only For Friends in Italy had done by Chiara Callegari, one of the tattooists at the shop. There’s something just really charming about it that I thought fit the character of this entry nicely. I also wanted to draw your attention to his tragus, which I assume has lost a piercing, but is actually much more interesting for its misadventure, having a little “notch” taken out of it by the experience. Neato!

geek-ear

I choo-choo-choose you!

Posted on September 11, 2012 by Shannon Larratt

The most amazing thing about my old friend James’s ears is that they look so natural. You’d think that cutting off a third of someone’s ear would be an odd looking thing, but because it’s a straight cut, and because it healed so smoothly and beautifully, from a lot of angles you don’t even notice. It’s most obvious straight on as you see it here and even there it looks quite natural I think. Both ears are identically done, and this has given James a picture that apparently is going to be next year’s Valentine’s Day card!!! I say go for it!!! Unfortunately James is a eunuch too, so there’s no little mini-James to give the cards to for their young classmates — I’m sure that would go over grrrrreat. This was done by Matt Vermillion by the way.

james-ears

PS. James was interviewed by Sean a couple years back on ModBlog. If you don’t know the remarkable history, read the (tantalizingly brief) interview.

Now I get to do one!

Posted on September 11, 2012 by Shannon Larratt

I know Rob does lots of them, but I haven’t done a “guess what” in almost five years, so this is fun for me. For the answer, click the picture to see the uncropped version. I know that they say my personal motto is “it’s a cock, it’s always a cock”, so place your bets on whether my borders have expanded in the last half decade.

Fraud in Tattooing

Posted on September 11, 2012 by Shannon Larratt

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I’ve been talking to an old friend that’s a tattoo artist who’s pretty straight-shooting and no-bullshit in his attitudes about some of the trends we see among top artists these days. The one that I whole-heartedly agree with is this tendency to fill portfolios with pieces that couldn’t possibly heal well, but look great fresh. Tattoos that look incredible the day they’re done — bright color realism with almost no black-shading is a good example of stuff that often turns into a faded out nothing in time — but looks like garbage when it’s healed. I’ll quote some of what he said, keeping things anonymous because I’m not looking to point fingers here.

There is a very ugly tendancy today in tattoo business of taking pictures of fresh tattoos, doing realism that will look like shit in twenty years — or in four months even — and going from convention to convention, making 100% black money, with no touch-ups, no follow-up of clientele. Those are the most famous artists in the world. I have no problem doing tribal [edit: he is referring to an image I posted of a “less than inspired” tattoo that I spoke ill of] for people who ask. If I can’t change their mind, I’ll do it. It allows me to keep cool pricing for everybody, to keep tattoo art something it SHOULD remain, that is, a POPULAR art form.

You can build up a realistic tattoo that is stable — P*** A*** and J*** G*** can do it, so it’s possible, but when you see older tattoos from D*** or S*** [edit: he’s naming top artists here and I don’t need another lawsuit], it’s nowhere that impressive. As a matter of fact, the “convention” tattoo artists don’t give a fuck, at least, a solid majority of them don’t. When you work mostly in your shop, you see people again, and therefore you can’t afford to mess up that bad. I would even say that *** *** Inks, as a whole concept, are just done for that — put in a single-pass easy color that will look cool till you’re paid, took your photo, and took part in the “Best of Day” competition… but it’s just the worst shit I’ve ever used. It’s a whole culture that is taking over, and it’s a shame, because everybody feels forced to adapt to it.

I agree whole-heartedly. Although I can’t say whether “convention artists” doing these pieces that fail once they heal are willfully committing fraud when they fill their portfolio with fresh pieces that look nothing like the healed examples, but that is what it amounts to, intended or not. I want to show the example that my friend shared with me. This is a fresh tattoo on the left from a well-respected artist, and on the right, the same tattoo not long afterwards. And to be honest, this example isn’t even that bad. I’ve seen loads of tattoos that fresh look world-class — I mean, the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen — from “name brand” tattoo masters, that look like scratcher garbage when healed.

If a tattoo artist’s portfolio contains nothing but fresh photos, consider it a warning sign — to say nothing of being paranoid about Photoshopping to pump up saturation and levels. And if your tattoo artist can not show you well-healed examples of their work, they are not someone you should be going to. You do not have the luxury of wearing a photograph of the fresh tattoo. You will be spending your life with the healed version, and if it doesn’t stand up to what you were expecting, it is you that will suffer. Insist on seeing healed photos!

Click to see that picture a little larger of course.

Edit/Update: Because I am sick and tired of people STILL claiming this is deception on my part, here are screencaps from Facebook showing both images in the tattoo artist’s gallery, full unedited versions, including the name of the artist. They may well have pulled the images by now, but these screen caps are accurate. Damn all the haters for dragging the artist’s name into this, because that was never the point of this.

Russian Suspension and BodMod Documentary

Posted on September 11, 2012 by Shannon Larratt

The full-length body mod documentary below is all in Russian I’m afraid, but I still watched every minute of it and greatly enjoyed seeing so many friends and BME members that I’ve known over the years — Sinner Team for example is broadly featured as are a number of other well-known Ruissian body play icons. I also really liked it because it feels like body modification in America has gotten very “fashion conscious” and gentrified, but most of the people in this video felt very “real” — not all dressed up with lots of makeup and styling for lack of a better way of explaining it. I felt like I could relate to it, and it was just really nice seeing lots of modded people with a real purity about them. Or maybe because I couldn’t understand what was being said I was just projecting what I wanted to see? I can’t say for sure, but I do want to recommend this video. Put on some music if you can’t understand the words.