Ear Pointing and Ultrablack Eyes

Posted on January 22, 2013 by Shannon Larratt

In my recent post about Samppa’s ear pointing technique, I commented that his style is nice because it’s so stable — the ear isn’t healing under pressure or tension, so the healed result pretty much looks like the ear fresh in terms of shape. The more traditional method, at least in cases where more radical results are desired, changes a great deal during its healing period. However, these changes — the way it stretches the tissue into a new shape — allow for results that are unique to that procedure, so I don’t see the technique being superseded any time soon. These examples on a customer of Moscow based Pavel Chernishov (vk.com/pavel_keek, ANGEL studio) show just how much things can adapt in the healing process.

Speaking of Pavel’s work, this picture of a customer whose tongue he split and eyes tattooed has to be one of the blackest-of-black eye tattoos I’ve ever seen done. I actually lightened up the picture like crazy to see if it had been photoshopped, but no, it’s really this wild looking.

Sophie’s ear notching (and unalome scar)

Posted on October 29, 2012 by Shannon Larratt

Speaking of unusual ears, Sophie Lacroix just had this beautiful unalome cut on her cheek by Efix Roy (efixroy.com), but while the skin removal scar is very nice, what really caught my eye was the wonderful notch she has cut into the rim of her helix. This was also done by Efix, first four years ago and then again last winter to fine-tune the shape, using a scalpel cut-and-suture technique, with the sutures being removed a week later and the healing going quickly after that. Only the one ear was done, with the main reason being a love for unique aesthetics and unusual procedures. Most people she knows aren’t that into it, or assume it’s an injury or the result of an infection from a piercing gone wrong, but it’s for her not for them. She says, “all my modifications make me feel better, and I’m not a crazy girl who doesn’t like herself — I just love the way modifications make you different and beautiful. People don’t like what they can’t understand and I deal with that. My ear was pretty normal, then I cut it, and I love it — it’s that simple.”

Click to zoom in for a closer look.

Pointing versus Shaping

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Shannon Larratt

I wanted to highlight and contrast two very different procedure styles of getting “elf ears” from two talented artists. In the ear on the left, done by Brian Decker (purebodyarts.com) you’ll see a traditional ear pointing procedure pushed to it’s max, giving quite a radical point — very long and pronounced. The end result is quite alien and very striking — if you want to see a well-healed result, look at Tye’s ears which are featured in the last Modified World video I posted. The other ear was done by Samppa Von Cyborg (voncyb.org) — you saw the customer’s other ear last week — and involves a complete top to bottom reshape of the ear. The lobe is removed, the contour is reshaped, and a more subtle point is formed. This also results in a slightly smaller ear because of the tissue removed — I’ve tried to put the two ears roughly to scale.

I don’t have particularly strong feelings as to which one of these ear styles I prefer — I like each for different reasons. The one produces a far more extreme appearance, and the other is more “natural” looking for lack of a better term… I think there’s space for each of them and I don’t one procedure replacing the other — it simply broadens the palette available. After the break you can see a larger photo of the ear by Samppa as well as both of the ears of Brian’s customer.

Full Ear Reshaping by Samppa

Posted on October 4, 2012 by Shannon Larratt

Samppa Von Cyborg (voncyb.org) just posted this remarkable ear reshaping. When Steve Haworth first pointed Katzen’s ear in the mid 1990s, the procedure was just a small snip and fold at the top of the ear, and by and large, the procedure hasn’t really changed a whole lot until recently, and Samppa is arguably at the forefront of showing that you don’t have to just point the top corner to one degree or another — you can actually reshape the entire contour and form of the ear from top to bottom. If I didn’t know and trust Samppa implicitly, I don’t think I’d even believe it was the same ear!

While I’m mentioning Samppa, let me also post an update of the skull chest implant that I posted fresh a while back. The incision is still settling, but the implant itself is full healed and looks great. As far as I know more skulls are being added at the other points of the cross.

Ear Reshaping Fun

Posted on September 26, 2012 by Shannon Larratt

Ok, one last bit of ear-chomp-chomp. Italian bodmod enthusiast Paolo Cambiaghi decided he wanted a new ear profile, and went to Bruno BMA (brunobma.com) to have it reshaped — you can see it nicely healed in these images. I always find these types of ear reshaping fascinating — The Enigma has a similar piece that I’ve featured on ModBlog, as does my friend James Keen, and this client of Muffe’s. The way the majority of the lip of the helix has been removed on Paolo’s gives it a very unique and unusual appearance.

paolo-ear

I should mention that this picture first came to my attention because Morgan Dubois, who recently experienced his tattoo being copied by a Polish fan and was worried it might be happening again. Morgan got his tattoo in 2009 by Igor of Tattoo Station in Lyon, France, inspired (for very personal reasons, which is why it bothered him when it was copied exactly) by the music of Autechre — check out the video of Dropp to understand it a bit better. Paolo’s tattoo on the other hand is a case of completely different motivations and interests bringing one to a similar end design, and was done by Spider Tattoo in Italy. He tells me it is inspired by the art of Wassily Kandinsky, specifically the work he did in the later portion of his career after teaching at The Bauhaus.