OK, I’ll admit, I’m not very clever when it comes to titles but this facial scarification on mutant-X-tatique is definitely interesting. I like the way it flows with the structure of his face.
He also submitted several photos to the Ritual section; be sure to check those out!
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.
Iestyn Flye, normally of London’s Divine Canvas (divine-canvas.com), has recently been in Italy doing a guest spot at MaxArt in Rome. While there he did this amazing scalp cutting and skin peel, originally designed by Paul Kennerley as a full star (ie. this is only half of the original design), with the small cuts that radiate out from the centre aiming to give it the illusion of 3D form. Over the years Iestyn has built up an incredible portfolio (oft-featured here), so I have no doubt that this piece will look amazing healed. Click to see it even bigger.
I don’t want to call these “scarred mokos”, because that would be culturally insensitive, inaccurate, and crass, but when I see these wonderful bold yet feminine facial skin peels done by Iestyn Flye of London’s Divine Canvas (divine-canvas.com), I can’t help but be reminded of women’s facial tattooing among the Maori. There is a long multicultural tradition of tattooing and scarification around the chins and mouths of women being seen as extremely beautiful — the Ainu and the Inuit immediately sprint to mind as well. This reminds me, somewhat unrelated, there is a wonderful APTN/CBC documentary that you can watch online titled “In pursuit of the lost tradition of Inuit Tattooing“.
Speaking of Iestyn’s work, I’ve mentioned his “scaled” designs before, but he recently did a set that have a double-lined border that I was particularly enamored with. I’m very excited about seeing how these turn out. It’s quite fine cutting, so the scarring will be minimal, but I’m sure they’ll still have a great tactile nature.
Cale Belford (piercer at True Blue Tattoo) just met up with Brian Decker (purebodyarts.com) and had this beautiful scarification done on her cheeks. The first photo shows it completely fresh, and the second was taken right after Cale cleaned it in the shower for the first time.
If you look carefully at the first photo you’ll notice that it’s half cut and half electrocautery branded. I wondered why that was so before posting I asked Brian whether this was just for fun, or if it had something to do with the way the different techniques behave on skin — for example, strike branding can cause the surrounding skin to contract and distort significantly. He replied,
Some of the reason was variety and fun, for sure. The “branding” was done with an electrosurgical cutting unit, which actually does little to no cellular damage outside what it touches, so the results are very much like scalpel cutting. The main reason I implemented the device is the ease of it. Scalpel cutting lines on faces is generally an annoying mess. The skin doesn’t open well and bleeds like hell. With the ESU I can pretty much shovel the skin off at whatever depth and width I want with no bleeding.
As if you need another reason to choose Brian Decker for your scarification work, but I hope this illustrates the value in going to a scarification artist with mountains of experience. Just because it doesn’t require a lot of skill to give yourself a glorious papercut, it doesn’t follow that it’s also childsplay to create a beautiful and balanced piece of scar art. I will of course post in the future on the healing of this piece.
I wanted to share this great skin peel scarification by Howie (LunaCobra.net) — I just love the magical design, an absolutely beautiful aesthetic that I can’t wait to see healed. This my favorite facial scar in quite some time — and I see a lot of great work so that’s saying something big! I keep looking back at the picture as I write this, I’m completely sold on it.
Now I also wanted to do some teasing and say that Howie may be in Toronto at the end of this month (October). It’s not confirmed yet, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed. If you’d like procedures by him — be it scarification like you see here, ear pointing, implants, and much more, contact him via the normal channels. I’ll also say that I really think that if you’re considering eye tattoos, my strong advice is that if Howie is available to you, that’s who you go to. He’s been doing eye tattoos longer than anyone else out there and has more experience with this still highly experimental and arguably risky procedure. To be honest, it’s a little worrying how quickly this still experimental procedure has burst out onto the public — in some ways it would have been better if only Howie had done the procedure until it was “stable” and well understood. But we don’t live in a perfect world, and the more you tell someone to be patient, the more they want something.
Anyway, Howie is currently touring, and like I said, I’m hoping we’ll see him here in Toronto soon, so get in touch via the web at Lunacobra.net, facebook at facebook.com/luna.cobra, or email [email protected]. Or get your procedures done by your prison cellmate. They’re your eyeballs to gamble after all!
Two examples of tattoos and scarification dancing on a face in one day!!! You may recall this facial scarification by Iestyn Flye because I included it in the images in the entry about his recent scarification seminar. Since then, Damien Voodoo, also of London’s Divine Canvas (divine-canvas.com), has added a series of chin tattoo lines that echo the scars higher up on the face. I especially enjoy how the tattoo extends up onto the lower lip. I think if it was me, I would have drawn the lines right over the tattoos already on the neck, but that’s a highly personal decision where I think it’s quite fair for ones history to outweigh graphic design. Speaking of graphic design, looking at this tattoo from multiple angles shows how incredibly challenging it is to create parallel geometric work on a surface as topographically complex as a face!!! Either way, I think the two of them have fused their work successfully to create a striking and unique facial project.
So… How about some nice thing implanted forehead ridges for the trifecta?
Click to zoom in a bit of course.
I hope no one is upset with me for being a bit of a Samppa Von Cyborg (voncyb.org) fanboy and posting a good percentage of his creations, but I really do believe he’s one of the most important body modification artists working today, and everyone ought to have their eye on him. Here’s a freehand scarification, designed by Kali and cut by Samppa — forehead work always looks great, and I particularly like this piece because of the way it dances with the scalp tattoo that it echoes. I will have to keep an eye on this and make sure it’s eventually the subject of a “Friday Followup” on ModBlog.
As you know, I’m a fan of body modification master Thorsten Sekira at Silver Studio (silverstudio.at) in Vienna, Austria and I recently posted a couple of his large-scale scarifications. Today I wanted to feature some of his smaller scale work that he’s done on Pauli’s face. The FTW forehead — I’m consistently surprised at how subtle forehead scarification often is — was done almost two years ago (January 2011), so it’s well healed in the pictures that show the fresh skin peeling on the nose. Given the fine structure of the nose and its zero margin for error and the fact that it’s slightly different from the normal body surface skin that artists are more familiar with, this is definitely the sort of scarification best reserved for artists with Thorsten’s level of experience.
The first picture can be zoomed in.
As an aside I gotta say I’m really loving the “13″ eyelid tattoo! And it’s always a great pleasure not just watching scars heal, but watching body modification collections on major enthusiasts like Pauli grow. It’s a real treat. Some day I’d love to see someone put together a comprehensive book that tracks a multitude of heavily modded people over a ten-or-more-year window, perhaps with a big coffee-table page-spread dedicated to each person with photos showing how their aesthetic evolved over time. If I had more time on this planet I’d sign myself up to tackle such a project, but since I don’t, I hope someone will steal the idea (or has already had it independently).
My old friend, world famous artist, musician, performer, and tattooist Katzen just had her whiskers cut by scarmaster Pineapple at Shaman (shamanmodificationsatx.com) in Austin, Texas where they both live. I wanted to mention the term I’m using here for scarification artist, “scarmaster”. I’ve seen “scartist” used before, but that’s sort of a joking word that was invented in Internet days, but “scarmaster” is an indigenous term (translated into English of course) that, if memory serves, I picked up from Lars Krutak who has been traveling around the world documenting scarification and other body modifications — I hope to review his book Spiritual Skin: Magical Tattoos and Scarification soon.
Edit/Update: Here’s a nice close-up as well!
