When I first saw some of Sven’s tattoos posted on Facebook with the title “Scratcher’s Paradise” I asked myself what kind of ignorant art-unaware fool would think this was bad tattooing? It took me a minute before I realized that’s actually the humorous name of this German tattoo studio which you can find online at scratchers-paradise.de. All of the photos in this entry are by Sven, but the other artist at the shop, Marco, is also very talented. But I like Sven’s work because it’s a brilliant fusion of modern fine art and “trash” tattooing and urban street art, but at the same time seamlessly fusing it with traditional tattoo influences in a way that is very rare in modern tattooing. Sven’s work really stands out from the increasingly large crowd of tattoo artists exploring new flavors of the tattoo artform. His shop is based in Berlin, but Sven tours and guests regularly — for example he’s at Xoil’s Needles Slide in France in October — so you can get in touch with him at [email protected] to make an appointment.

Click to zoom in to see the pictures larger, and visit them on Facebook or on the web for more.

PS. It was mentioned to me that there are a number of German artist are working in this general style — I was thinking that one of the reasons that we see such art-conscious work coming out of Germany, France, and Belgium for example is that these are cultures that are deeply aware of fine art history and traditional fine art skills, but are also very forward facing cultures. If I was an anthropologist or sociologist or art historian or something I think it would be a fascinating thing to write a book exploring how national cultures express themselves in the body art world. Anyway, if you like what you see in this entry, you should also check out the work of Peter Aurisch.

This portrait of George Karakioulafis about to slash the viewer with a piece of broken glass belies his gentle nature that should be obvious from what I believe is probably the largest swastika tattoo of anyone out there. I actually just got a great package from George and the others at Dildo Studio (dildostudio.gr) with some awesome shirts and stickers that I’ve been forbidden from wearing around pretty much any family member. But I will sneak out wearing it late at night. Oh, and if you want to learn more about the rebirth of the post-Nazi swastika, do follow svasticross.blogspot.ca who recently picked up the animated swastika tattoo we posted a few days ago. Well, I have an early morning doctor’s appointment, so I will leave tomorrow morning to Rob, and be back with more in the afternoon. Thanks everyone for the warm welcome. Later days.

I saw this nipple tattoo (the one on the left) posted on a friend’s tumblr blog, and not long after it was posted it was followed up by an angry accusation of being copied from the smaller image on the right (which the sharp-eyed may notice is on a friend who I’ve posted a few times). I’m not sure who the accusation came from as I’m not a tumblr user, and if it’s from the wearer, I want to be clear that I don’t think less of them for their moment of upset — it’s natural to feel this way at first. However, I think that it’s important to realize that now that the entire f-ing world is tattooed, it is unavoidable that people will have similar tattoos.

I have seen floral nipple tattoos and other decorated nipples since the very beginning of BME. They are an obvious idea that lots of people have had, because they’re a great thing to do. And one of the most obvious nipple transformations is into a flower. As flowers go, these are far from a line-for-line copy. I can’t tell you if the one was inspired by the other, or if they were both inspired by an even earlier similar tattoo. But I can tell you that there are hundreds if not thousands of almost identical tattoos to this that were done long before both of them. If we are going to accuse the one tattoo in this entry of having stolen from the other, then I think we can easily call both of them thieves many times over — and we can start saying that about the vast majority of tattoos.

One of the unfortunate things about the very wonderful reality that the tattoo community has grown massive is that if you want to work with traditional motifs — be it oldschool sailor tattoos, or be it “tribal” designs, or be it flowers — that you are going to from time to time end up with almost identical tattoos to someone else through complete coincidence (or ethically valid inspiration). When you get a small tattoo like this, you should expect that it’s going to have some overlap with other people’s tattoos — this is an unavoidable truth. Sometimes it happens because of shared inspiration, sometimes it happens because they were inspired by you or vice-versa, and sometimes it’s going to be pure “great minds think alike”. I can’t emphasize this enough — when you work with traditional motifs, it is unavoidable that you will eventually see someone who at first glance appears to have “stolen” your tattoo. It’s not the end of the world though — your tattoo is just as wonderful as it was before you saw its doppelganger.

Certainly you have the right to get upset if someone copies your large original custom tattoo line for life. But if someone just does something similar — for example, an anchor on a neck, or a flower on a nipple, or a blackwork arm — you don’t have the right to be upset or to accuse them of wrongdoing. I think if you let yourself find fault and trauma and upset in such casual similarities, you are asking for misery. It is not worth it — better to celebrate the other message this sends: that we are on the same team, and have an aesthetic agreement about what is beautiful.

(Click through to view the image.)

Edit: I wanted to also mentioned this nipple tattoo, which is more likely a copy, rather than just being similar. I think in this one’s case, one of the two was almost certainly inspired by the other. However, because this type of flower is common on flash sheets and is a traditional design, it is impossible to tell for certain unless someone admits it.

I became enamored today with the work of Paul Clavé, who you can find at Timeless Tattoo in Glasgow, online at timelesstattoos.co.uk or on FB at facebook.com/paul.clave. His portfolio is much broader than just this of course, but what caught my eye is a series of blackwork tattoos that he calls “apocalyptical works”. As you can see, they draw heavily from the paranoid era of religious paranoia and death-obsession in the Dark Ages brought on by terrors like the Black Plague, as well as the type of linework that was used in woodcuts of the time. This imagery translates just perfectly into tattoo form I think.

Lexci Million took the suggestive photo when she was out for a night of Karaoke lately… I know how hard it is having a tattoo that you have to worry is going to upset people. Anyway, if you really must see the uncensored version, you can click the image. But be warned, it is not even remotely what I would call NSFW. Oh, does this count as a “Guess What?”

Oh man, this is triggering for anyone who’s had way too many people in their life do this to themselves literally… I’m reminded of our friend Cory in highschool who was having trouble at home and was going to move in with us to get some distance from his abusive father. About a week before that happened, he got home and walked in on his father banging his (as in Cory’s) girlfriend in the middle of the living room floor. They both just looked at him and laughed and kept going at it… Already in bad shape, Cory walks into his room in a daze, puts a twelve gauge shotgun to his skull and pulls the trigger. The so-called “punch line” to the story is that his family was mad at him, so to punish his friends they had an open casket funeral even though there was no possible way for any reconstruction to be done on what was essentially a headless corpse. Ah, growing up in a small town.

Anyway, this morbid masterpiece that’s already winning awards was done by Robbie Coventry at b>Inky G’s on piercer Mac “Doctor-Evil” Mccarthy of Punctured.