A while back I made a post about Marta’s UV-ink Ichi The Killer-inspired tattoo, and was asked to follow-up with exactly how it looked under UV light, fully healed. Marta just posted this wonderful follow-up picture, which gives me the perfect chance to answer that very query. And of course it looks even better with an assortment of matching UV acrylic jewelry.
Almost a decade ago I remember admiring pictures from Gus Diamond and Paragon in Hawaii doing suspensions, often on a beach or in the water itself — Suspension.org has some great photos of a sandbar suspension and ModBlog as well posted a nice pulling/suspension combo — using a large bamboo tripod allowing them to set up anywhere quickly. I was reminded of these pictures when I saw the tripod rig in use at the recent Italian Suscon, which is a similar design, but realized in metal for both increased durability and because it’s hinged at the top, even faster set-up and break-down. And like with the Hawaiian style suspensions, the resultant photos are quite beautiful. The first photo was posted by Marjolein Lankester van Rijn and the second by Giuseppe Beppe De Palo.
Here’s the latest video — the sixth run — from Sinner Team who have been defining the art of free-fall suspension. In this incredible video they climb up on top of some huge derelict warehouse in Russia that looks like it’s the size of a small city and jump through a skylight to get a just massive swing. I’m always struck by the brilliant and complexity of the rigging in these videos — these guys really know their stuff. If they didn’t, well, they’d be dead. This is not the sort of thing you want to do without massive amounts of experience and expertise keeping you and your team safe. Don’t miss the previous posts on Sinner Team here on ModBlog. They’re all amazing.
I want to start off with a “guess what”… Click to see if you were right.
The mod you see in that picture is on Walker Bod Mod and was done by Oscar Kbza Santos. While I’m talking about Oscar, I wanted to show you his hand implants, because they’re a little unusual — unique would be a better word.
That reminds me that I’ve been meaning to show you Sandy from True Body Art, a beautiful looking studio in Zurich. Anyway, I spent some time looking at her hand implants, trying to figure out what they are — my first guess was some sort of I Ching symbol.
The truth more enigmatic and amusing — it’s actually a random shape devoid of specific meaning, and is there to confuse the viewer!!! This is especially funny because Sandy isn’t some strange troll that no one sees, or that when they do see, are afraid of them… She’s actually a very beautiful model in addition to being a body modification artist, so these unusual implants have been featured in the work of many photographers (the photo on the left is by Siete Ramirez, and the one on the right is by Dark-Style Fotografie), and I’m sure as a result a great deal of time has been spent pondering their meaning. She has an implant on her chest as well that is similarly strange. I always enjoy people who have a sense of humor.
Oh and you can click that picture for one last shot.
I don’t want to overpost the work of Ferank Manseed, which I just covered yesterday, palm tattoos no less, but I just had to include this screaming hand tattoo because it’s got to be about the most perfect idea for a palm tattoo ever. For those that don’t recognize it, the “Screaming Hand” logo was designed in 1973 by Jim Phillips for the Santa Cruz Skateboards team, and is widely used as a symbol of skateboarding in general. I’ve seen the logo tattooed quite a few times, but this is even better — actually becoming the logo. Now to tattoo his hand all blue…
Sometimes it seems like you have to travel to the boundaries of the map, the sort of “here be monsters” zone where you’re likely to sail off the edge of the world, to find somewhere truly epic to suspension. That’s probably just a bit of “the grass is always greener” thinking, but when I look at this picture of Jussi Paradise (photo by Wormz) suspending in Iceland, I feel like it might as well be swapped in for the opening shots of Prometheus or something. “Suspension is not a crime”, September 17, 2012.
It’s possible that you’ve already seen this remarkable tattoo by Portland, Maine’s Chris Dingwell (chrisdingwell.com) because it’s been doing the viral rounds, and deservedly so. This is one of the most powerful uses of solid color that I’ve seen in a tattoo, and is graphically as strong as anything one could do. I also think that unlike many tattoos that rely on color as a design element, this piece should stand the test of time, because the colors are strong and solid rather than complex fades that don’t always stand up. This really is a brilliantly unique tattoo, one of those pieces that you have to look twice at to realize that it even is a tattoo, not body paint or a design printed on fabric. The wearer is very lucky.
One of the risks of eyeball tattooing that I’ve been really averse to talking about — almost refusing to believe it in fact — is that in perhaps 10% of people the procedure results in a permanent black eye [EDIT: I am hearing from some practitioners that they believe the risk is MUCH higher than 10%, perhaps high enough to even be a majority of people — either way, take this seriously]. Or whatever color eye that matches the tattoo of course. I wish I could tell you exactly why this happens. No one has been able to come up with a satisfactory explanation. Is the ink somehow pulling into the tear or lymphomatic ducts? Being pulled into the tissue through some sort of capillary action? Is it happening because of over-injection? Is it happening because of too much ink being sprayed over the eye that’s not being injected? We’re just not sure yet — and that’s what’s so troubling about this risk. We have no idea how to definitively mitigate it.
Most people with this that I’ve seen have just some small lines of discoloration, but the results can be quite extreme, as you see here on the left eye of Mechanical Demon (tattoo artist at Harness in Helsinki, Finland). His theory on why he got so much discoloration under the eye was that there was some ink on top of the left eyeball after the operation that they couldn’t remove. He figures that while he was dreaming that night, that the combination of the eye’s natural movement and normal self-cleaning mechanisms could have moved the ink down under the lower lid at which point it penetrated the tissue rather than being excreted. He also adds that the discoloration is not close to the surface as with a normal tattoo — it’s much deeper, as if the subcutaneous tissue is black. He’s tried lightening the black patch by tattooing over it with skin tone tattoo ink, with some positive results but not completely covering it. He also wore makeup over it for the first year, but has learned to enjoy it.
It’s important for people to understand that even though eyeball tattooing is now five years old, it is not completely understood. It is likely that this risk can be greatly reduced by minimizing the amount of ink used, and by cleaning any residual ink of the eye — but I can’t promise that. You can see one possible result — I believe on the extreme end — in this photo by Matti Keski-Kohtamäki.
Here’s a great — and fun — picture of Cesar and Alba, who just got themselves a set of matching tongue splits done by Hugo of Biotek in Toulouse, France. I love the fact that a significant portion of their mods mirror beautifully, to say nothing of their matching blue hair! I know they’ll be happy with the results of this procedure, because in fifteen years of people getting tongues split, I don’t think I have ever heard a single regret.
You don’t see lobe projects much, mostly because placement on a lobe is generally done to allow stretching… But when the client is sure they’re not going to stretch, you can have fun and do some pretty placements like this one that Courtney Jane Maxell of TRX in St. Louis did. All three piercings were done with 2mm bezel set emerald green CZ’s from Neometal, and the client has a matching 4mm one in her helix as well. I know, you’re surprised that I’d post a nothing-gauge lobe to ModBlog, but still, this is something you don’t see every day.
