Category: Features

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Get the tattooed look – fake it

Want to get the tattooed look without going under the needle?
Now you can with a wide range of fake tattoo options…

Want sleeves but don’t want the hours of pain? Easy, just wear fake tattoo sleeves, made from skin-coloured light sheer material covered in stereoypical tattoo designs. These are a cheap alternative too, selling at practically the price of five minutes of tattooing. Highstreet store River Island stocks them for ‘the man about town’.

 

Transfer Tattoos are no longer a confined to the bottom of sweet boxes and freebies you found in cereal but are a fashion trend. American website Tattly sells designs ranging from pretty flowers to inspirational quotes.

 

For ladies who don’t want to commit to leg tattoos there are a wide range of tattoo tights to be found. Perfect for those too indecisive to get tattoos, when you are bored with your look you can simply peel off your tights and be bared legged once again.

Tights pictured from Asos

 

Henna is for those looking for a more long lasting tattoo design but without the permenance of real ink. Henna is a natural dye prepared from a plant, the longer you leave it on, the darker the stain. Allowing the user to decide how noticeable they want the tattoo to be.

Image from @Anoushka_irukandji

You can even accessorize your cuts and grazes with tattoo inspired plasters.

Image from Culture-Vulture

For those with more serious injuries you can even purchase fake tattoos for your cast. Website Casttoo offers a wide range of designs for all the family!

 

 

 

 

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Chapman Brothers’ Tattoo Parlour

“There will be pain. Pain and blood.”

Jake and Dinos Chapman hope to raise £25,000 through Art Fund and their crowd-funding website Art Happens to open a tattoo art project at the Jerwood Gallery.

Those who donate can help bring the brothers back to their home town of Hastings, where their new art exhibition will be on display. Not only will the brother’s be painting over old junk shop finds, but they are encouraging the public to bring in art from their homes for the brothers to update with paint.

Jake and Dinos are also opening a pop-up tattoo parlour in the gallery, in which they will reward those who donated with specially-designed tattoos turning them into walking one-off pieces of art.

The original idea was to have Dinos tattooing in a wooden box, the victim – or lucky customer – would stick their arm through a hole in the box where it would be strapped down, totally hidden from site. Dinos would tattoo a design of his choosing onto their arm and on removal from the hole the recipient would see their new tattoo. Fortunately this idea was dismissed on health and safety grounds by Frieze Art Fair.

Chapman brothers tattoo design

 

Neither one of the brothers has any formal training and Jake’s forearm is covered with blue scribbles done by Dinos.

He isn’t very good, and he really dug in with the needle – it was very painful.

Will you be donating? Would you let someone tattoo a mystery design on your skin?

 

 

 

Chapman Brothers quoted from The Guardian
Images from The Guardian and www.blouinartinfo.com

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Zombie Boy

You’ve all seen Rick Genest (Rico Zombie/Zombie Boy) with his face infamously tattooed to look like a skull, but have you seen him without his tattoos?
Cosmetics company Dermablend Professional created the video below in which they cover every inch of Rico’s tattoos, in order to ask the question;  ‘how do you judge a book?’

 

BBC Radio 4 have been airing a series called Tattoo Tales in which they question why people get tattoos, in this  mini interview,  ‘Zombie Boy’ explains why he got his first tattoo. Like many of us he went along with someone else, and decided to have one at the same time.

I got it at the age of 16, my little sister – she got a tattoo first, and I went out and got one right after her.

Image and quote from www.bbc.co.uk

 

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Tabloids, Tattoos and Tinfoil Hats: Hannah Mosley at TEDxManchester

Tabloids, Tattoos and Tinfoil Hats: Hannah Mosley at TEDxManchester

 

Our columnist, tattoo artist Hannah Mosley, recently did a talk at TEDxManchester, and for someone who claims to have taken up illustration because they’re “not good with words” it is an eloquent, incredibly interesting and well-paced talk on tattoo culture and media misrepresentation. 

If you missed it, don’t worry, it was caught on film, check it out below.

 

 

We asked her some questions about the talk and how she feels now…

> How did you feel when you were asked to do a TEDxManchester talk?
Pretty damn good! Some of the organisers had seen me speak before so it was a great vote of confidence that they wanted to include me in the program for TEDxManchester. I was a little awestruck by some of the other speakers.
> How did you decide what to talk about?
I knew I wanted to talk about something that the whole audience could relate to. This led to the main focus of my talk being more about how discerning we are about the media we consume, using my experience as a tattooist to illustrate how even fairly innocuous seeming articles can really be pushing an agenda, rather than talking exclusively about tattooing. I figured if you’re at a TED talk you’re certainly going to be affected in some way, shape or form by media, even if you aren’t into tattoos at all. Hopefully tackling the topic this way also gave people who aren’t into tattoos an interesting insight into our industry without making them feel totally alienated.
> Were you nervous? What did you focus on?
I was climbing the walls a little beforehand, but a fellow speaker, author Anthony Lishak really talked me down so I went out on stage really excited. The audience were very keen, and I had a couple of very close friends in the crowd too, so I felt pretty relaxed once I got going.

> How did you feel after? Also how do you feel about watching the recording?
Aside from kicking myself for going over time by about four minutes, I felt pretty good. It’s useful to see the recording – hindsight is always 20/20 and it’s allowed me to refine my views and delivery a bit more. For instance, I felt a point that didn’t really get across in the talk was that I don’t believe the shaming of tattoos, even when they *are* celebrity-inspired, is helping anyone either. It could be seen in the video that I’m making the case that all tattooed people are getting work done for academic or deeply personal reasons, and that the nasty media keeps saying we just like celebs. That’s patently not true, lots of clients are heavily influenced by the portrayal of tattooed celebrities. Regardless, I still don’t think these clients personal decisions about their bodies should be fodder for shock-docs and patronising lifestyle articles.

Artwork by Hannah
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The Blackwork King

We are in awe of the dedication and time spent to create this piece. This blackwork project on tattoo artist Punctum Kay, Austria was created by Gerhard Wiesbeck.

Tattoo artist Punctum Kay designed all of the main black work himself.  Gerhard Wiesbeck tattooed the whole body, but he only designed the psychedelic dot work chest portion of the suit.

What do you think of black work? Incredibly powerful or wasting valuable tattoo space?

Image from news.bme.com