Partial ear reconstruction with keloid removal

Since I seem to be in the mood for posting stuff about ears being chopped up today, let me share another. My friend Gabriele from Max Art Body Piercing in Rome had a client come in that had a large open lobe that had been previously scalpeled (Ludovico’s ears were 2″ last time I remember them) — as you can tell from the distinctive shape, a “U”-loop of flesh hanging down from the ear — and also had a keloid covering a solid area of it’s upper-outside edge that the client wanted excised, complicating the procedure. To make the procedure even more tricky, they wanted to keep the piercing, but alter its shape and reduce its size. To accomplish all of this, Gabriele cut out the body of the keloid and closed the wound, as well as removing part of the lobe “worm” to tighten the ear to the new size. The jewelry used for the healing is glass with silicone o-rings. Glass is an ideal material, but for some people the o-rings can cause irritation (and must be kept clean to avoid a build up of waste — and becoming a home for bacteria), so the client will have to keep an eye on that. The bruising in the third photo went away quickly, the tissue relaxed, and healing is going well so far.

no-more-keloid

Ear Pointing Evolution

To generalize, ear pointing works by cutting a piece out of the top of the ear, and then stitching the open portions together, folding the helix rim up into a point. It is a wonderful optical illusion that this makes it seem as if the ear has a point coming out the top, when in fact the ear has actually been lengthened very little, if at all, since we can only remove tissue — nothing is added. While additive procedures are theoretically possible, they appear currently beyond the reach of the body modification practitioner, if not beyond the reach of most reconstructive surgeons. In the majority of ear pointings done since Steve Haworth first invented them in the mid-1990s, the wedge-removal procedure has changed little — only the location, size, and shape differs (and varying the shape of the piece removed the result can cover a wide range of appearances).

However, Samppa Von Cyborg expanded the procedure by removing more than just what’s needed for the point, allowing one to reshape the entire contour of the ear. This related example is by Matias Tafel of Rata Body Art in Argentina. You can see from both the stitches and the animation that a long strip running much of the height of the ear has been excised, giving an end result where the ear is narrower as well as pointy. This narrowness brings with it the optical illusion of additional length/height, because it changes the length to height ratio and tricks the mind of the observer.

matias-ear-animation

Bright Color by Dominick McIntosh

Long-time BME readers and IAM members will remember tattoo artist Dominick Allen McIntosh of Dead Gods Tattoo (deadgodstattoo.com) in Oregon from the MASH-themed tattoos back in 2006. An amazing Alex Grey inspired tattoo (the one you see below) of his creation was recently featured on Juxtapoz and wowing the online world.

Because in the tattoo world we see so many bright tattoos that look amazing the day they were done, and then look like faded “meh” when healed, I wanted to ask Dominick for healed pictures before posting. I was both pleased and surprised that this is a healed tattoo, taken two and a half months after the tattoo was first done. To get a better picture, he shaved the client and moisturized the skin — something I’d recommend to anyone who wants to show off their tattoos. You’d be amazed how much even a light covering of hair can obscure a tattoo, and moisturizer makes the upper layers of skin slightly more translucent, allowing the colors glow at their brightest. Anyway, what an amazing tattoo this piece is, and I’ve also included a small collection of other tattoos from a photoshoot at Dominick’s shop earlier this year. Unlike what you see in many magazines and portfolios, all of them are healed, and truly representative of the wonderful tattoos these clients will carry for life.

dominick1

A Piercer’s Tattoo

Eric Mezzanotte, owner of Living Canvas in Columbia, MO, has been piercing since 2006, and is also a huge fan of the Steven King opus The Dark Tower. He wanted to get a Dark Tower tattoo, and when Adya Crawford was working on it, she suggested combining his love for piercing with the story of the gunslinger, and thus the tip of the castle became the tip of a needle, creating an iconic tattoo for both piercing fans and Steven King fans — “and those are the reasons why I love artists”, he says!

the-dark-needle

Tattooed Ear Rim Stripes

I saw a great ear rim tattoo today by Delphine Noiztoy of Divine Canvas (divine-canvas.com) that seemed very reminiscent of the sweet triangular ear rim tattoo by Su at Buena Vista Tattoo Club. Besides the basic design, the other difference is that Delphine’s piece is done using dotwork technique rather than a normal flat tattoo fill. I have no idea which of these two pieces I prefer, but if I was the client on this piece, I think I might consider pulling the patter further along the top of the rim.

striped-ear-rim-tattoo

Speaking of the blackmasters at Divine Canvas I also wanted to quickly include this “NEKRO” text palm tattoo by Matt “One Hit” Black. Remarkably, this is a fully healed tattoo that has never been touched up. Not a simple achievement.

nekro-palm-tattoo

Making Black Eyeballs Look “Right”

I don’t quite know how — I don’t think it’s as simple as “extreme makeup” acclimatizing us — it’s more cohesive than that — but somehow Roni Lachowicz (iam:xronix) really pulls off those black eyes… I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but on Roni, they actually look “natural”… Maybe natural isn’t the right word, but they at least look like they’re “supposed” to be like that. I wouldn’t have thought that would ever be true for black eyeballs. I wonder how much of this is just me integrating alternate eye colors into my mental model of “what a human face looks like”, and how much of that is me having a special mental model of “what Roni looks like” that’s distinct from human?

xronix

PS. Photo copyright 2012 Robert Millward. I photoshopped the colors in this picture. Click here for the original.