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Interview with tattoo artist Suro

Suro tattoos out of Gold Leaf Ink, San Francisco where she creates incredible (mostly) black and grey realism mixed with illustrative style tattoos. In this interview Suro tells us about her path into tattooing and what she’s learnt along the way…

I was actually born in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. I spent my entire childhood there all the way up until 12th grade. I wanted to experience college in the states, especially art schools in New York, even though there are a ton of great art colleges in Dubai. I mostly wanted an escape. I come from a traditional Sri Lankan family and they wanted me to pursue a career as a doctor or lawyer. I knew that to be true to myself and find my creative rhythm I had to move.

The idea of tattooing was so far-fetched at that point because of my strict family and tattooing is taboo in the middle east, meaning haram (forbiddened) in the Islamic religion. I would get super intrigued by tattoos as I watched TV and saw tattoos on tourists that would come into town.

I kept saying that I would get a tattoo when I move to The States. Little did I know I would be pursuing a career in it. 

I’ve been creative since I was a baby, drawing on the walls and doors. I knew it was either art or nothing! I Loved to paint and I’ve painted with acrylics since I can remember. The only reason I even passed some subjects was because my diagrams were so realistic! So I knew I had to pursue a career in the arts.

I ended up at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY where I pursued Interior Design. I was super excited as I was going to an actual art school with other creatives, painters, sculptors, photographers, etc. It was during my time at Pratt that I found my way into the tattoo industry and I’ve never looked back. 

Starting out in a diverse city like NYC I was grateful to have come to work with some real cool people in the industry. I worked at about three shops mostly – the first Big Bang Ink in Brooklyn where I apprenticed at, and then Village Tattoo located in St.Marks which was my first shop as a tattooer and finally Red Baron Ink in the Lower East Side. Each studio had tattooers from different ethnicities and had different tattooing skills so it was cool getting to learn something new from them. I never once felt disrespected by any of them, so I know I was super lucky because tattooers, especially females have been treated unfairly.

I had quite a start, pretty rough cause I was super broke right after college. I was in between bartending and trying to keep my apprenticeship at Big Bang. Unfortunately I allowed nightlife to consume me which became my downfall and had to put a pause in my apprenticeship. I try to live with no regrets since I did bounce back a year later, but I do agree that was time wasted.

I have a better understanding of the industry especially to my clients. I’ve learnt to develop a language to communicate my art and tattoo what I like to tattoo.

This industry is forever changing, and has been since I started about nine years ago. From the techniques and styles to even the public being more accepting of them. So this alone has opened up many doors for tattooers. From tattooing celebrities to people in blue collar, tattooers are now finding more and more creative ways to tattoo. Example, wireless tattooing is now a common thing which was a spoken myth back in the day.

When I started, most of the equipment I used was heavy and bulky whereas now I can literally fit my entire set up in a Fanny pack (CRAZY!) So having a wider range of clientele nowadays has evolutionised the art of tattooing. There are more styles too, like minimalism, dotwork, blackwork, micro realism etc. I can’t say the days of the Sailor Jerry flash are dead because hell that will be the day the industry dies, but it’s amazing to see how the newer generation of tattooers are changing the game. 

My style of tattooing is a mix between illustrative and realism. I love playing with light and shadows, so the contrast level will differ from piece to piece. I also love playing with lineweight, so having both bold and fine linework. My inspiration comes from art all over. Abstract to renaissance paintings I love to pull inspiration from fine art mostly. 

Even though I paint with color I enjoy a monochromatic palette more. Using a pen, pencil or even charcoal is my favorite and has always been. I enjoy smooth shading and love when I can bring some realism with just one color. So my preference is mostly black and grey. I love to shade anything, from portraits to inanimate objects, to florals, etc. I really enjoy tattooing details so the more details the more fun the piece gets! 

I see myself opening a private studio sometime in the future. I want to create a space that will pull in artists of different backgrounds and styles so that we can learn from each other. The same experience I had when I started nine years ago. The beautiful thing about this career is that there’s always room to grow and learn. So I can’t speak on it much now but I’m excited to see what the next nine years will bring. 

So for those looking to start, understand it is a commitment and an investment. Don’t start if your mind is not in the right space whether it be financially or even emotionally. Your relationship with whomever will be affected but know no matter what that it’s so worth it in the end.

An apprenticeship could take anywhere from a year to two, but what determines that is your drive. Find a solid mentor who also is in a good mental space cause you will take on from what you see, and trust me you don’t want one who parties! So have a good support system, surround yourself with those who make you better cause you’re going to need every bit as you start this journey. 

Make sure to follow Suro on Instagram for more amazing tattoos.

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Interview with Ciara Havishya

Ciara Havishya is a self-taught tattoo artist based in Calgary, Canada. Ciara creates intricate decorative art style tattoos, using both blackwork and colour to produce stunning pieces that are deeply inspired by Indian art and Indian art history. We caught up with Ciara to explore their inspirations, their mehndi style tattoos and what tattooing means to them…

How long have you been tattooing and what led to you becoming a tattoo artist? I’ve been tattooing just over five years now, it’s been the longest five years of my life. I have wanted to be a tattoo artist ever since I was a young teenager when I discovered mehndi at a wedding party I attended. I started practising more and more and developed a love of working with people and on skin. I wanted to take it further ever since then and I’m lucky to have the opportunity to make it a career today. 

Where do you get your inspiration from/what influences you? I’m most inspired by Gupta period indian art, like the murals from the Ajanta caves and the sculptures from Ellora. The Gupta period in Indian art refers to art made in the northern region of what we now call India in the years 300-480 CE. It’s a really unique sliver of time and space and the Buddhist art from that period has a lot of influence from Chinese and West Asian contact, you can see it in the way the figures are drawn and the compositions of wall panels etc.

I love the way women are represented in this period as well, every bump and roll of skin is accentuated and their bodies are just dripping in jewellery without covering anything except for the pubic region. There’s a lusciousness and a freedom and a deep acceptance of nature in the art that speaks to me all the time.

Unfortunately there are precious few remaining art pieces from this period. In order to get closer to this period in art I’ve gone on to study Japanese art and Tibetan Buddhist art from later periods that have stylistic similarities, in the hopes that I can one day get closer to this Gupta period aesthetic that has moved me so much.

It makes me snicker a little to think that it took Europeans another 1200 years to learn what a woman’s body is supposed to look like and another 100-200 years after that to learn perspective, but that’s just me!

How would you describe your tattooing style? My style is an application of decorative arts from a few different sources to the body. I look at textile patterns, embroidery, architecture and historical documents of tattoos from times and people past to create new patterns that reflect my focus on timelessness, elegance, and love of the human body in all it’s manifestations. 

Tell us about your own tattoos, do you have a personal favourite tattoo or a memorable tattoo experience you would like to share with us? I’m honestly mostly covered in terrible, awful, ugly tattoos that need to be lasered or covered up because I let a lot of my friends tattoo me as they were learning, so maybe I’m not one to be asked!

But I do have a truly stunning piece by @BooneNaka . It’s inspired by the Trajva traditions of Gujurat and he did the most beautiful job of creating his own composition, adding his own elements and making one of very few tattoos I have that I’m truly proud of. He’s also a gentle, thoughtful and wicked talented artist and he made the entire experience really lovely and I’m so grateful for that. 

What does tattooing mean to you? Tattooing is a strange thing, it means everything to me and nothing to some people and too much to others.

For me it’s probably the closest thing I have to a spiritual practice, it’s a daily practice of being present, of seeing another person in their entirety and of trying to create an experience that affirms dignity, agency and power.

I have a few daily rituals with my practice, I listen to music by indigenous Canadian artists each day before I start to listen and recognise the people who lived here longer than any of us settlers. I pray before I start with incense to breathe in focus and good intention and to send my exhalations to God or Spirit or whoever’s listening. It’s all meaningful and meaningless in the end but that’s the beauty of doing it anyway. The artists I listen to, in case anyone is interested, are Tsimka, to remember my West Coast family and Tribe Called Red and TchuTchu to get grounded for the prairies I inhabit today.

We think your mehndi style tattoos are beautiful, could you tell us more about your decision to practice this style? I was doing henna before I was drawing which is how I got started with the style. It took me a long time to get to the point where I felt comfortable tattooing in this style. I don’t think it was entirely conscious, but as a teenager I did receive some critiques from people around me that my mehndi wasn’t “real art” because it was just copying the same pattern over and over again according to these others. I didn’t really ever stop doing mehndi-style drawings entirely but I did shift to doing a lot of ink drawings of people and animals and that was actually the style I primarily worked in for most of my tattoo career.

I did a lot of engraving style botanical tattoos and blackwork illustrative animals before I slowly started to make the switch to doing almost entirely decorative patternwork inspired by mehndi. It took a while to technically get comfortable with this style as a tattoo artist, it’s actually quite challenging to do well even though it can look simple. It also took me a while to feel comfortable with creating cultural art within a consumer culture and I’m still finding ways of identifying areas of discomfort and recentre my needs in the interaction.

As a mixed race Indian person with limited ties to my family it’s also taken me a while to feel as though I have the right to be doing this work, in many ways there are tattooers with closer and more direct ties to our culture than I do.

But, part of the reason why I’m a little more distant from my origins is colonial history and inter-generational violence. My grandparents were the children of indentured labourers who were brought to Mauritius 150 years ago to work sugar cane plantations. Their families adapted and assimilated and gave up certain traditions and beliefs to gain greater access to the world. I’m blessed to be doing this work of learning and finding my roots in a way that’s opened so many doors for me that were shut to my grandparents. 

What would you like to tattoo more of? More flowing freehand mehndi pieces without symmetry! Symmetry is so overrated even though it’s pretty. I also really love exploring Kolam traditions in tattooing. But I’m extremely careful about how I design them and without ready access to information on exactly what certain pieces of pattern mean or how they’re supposed to be, I’m limited in what I can do. 

We understand that mehndi is often culturally appropriated. Do you feel that it is inappropriate for certain people to get mehndi style tattoos? No. I don’t think it’s innappropriate for certain people to get mehndi style tattoos IF they’re getting them from someone who should be doing the tattoos. Big if.

As an Indian tattoo artist I’ve had to recognise that I can’t control who does or who doesn’t get my tattoos. Some of my absolute worst clients were Indian people and some of my best clients were white and both ways I don’t screen my clients for race when they ask me for mehndi tattoos. When people talk about mehndi style tattooing though, they often conflate actual mehndi inspired tattooing and the entire emerging genre of blackwork tattooing of Indian/Asian patterns and deities. There needs to be some distinctions between the two.

Mehndi as it’s done in India for weddings and celebrations is truly decorative, there are nuances to the patterns that indicate the wearer’s regional background, or religious affiliation, but for the most part the henna designs aren’t sacred. However, when we get into non-Indian, non-Hindu tattooers who are making a living from doing tattoos of deities on other white people who aren’t believers I think it starts to feel like Orientalism.

Unfortunately there is a culture of white tattooers who tattoo Indian imagery with religious and spiritual significance indiscriminately and they have a clientele that’s happy to buy it up. It feels very hollow to see from the outside.

I feel like I can tell when an artist has a true investment in learning about the culture and history and faith, but when they don’t it’s obvious. I also see a lot of disparity between how these artists are somehow almost elevated for doing something “different” while Indian tattooers are so few and far in between and many are almost anonymous. I don’t see these white tattooers sharing resources with others, I don’t see them apprenticing Indian artists, I don’t see them even tattooing many Brown folks, all I see is a culture of Indian art production that is made entirely by and for white people and it’s not right. Until it’s a more level playing field for POC and BIPOC tattoo artists exploring their heritage and tattoo ritual, I can’t support the work and ethos of white tattooers doing Indian tattoos. 

Do you have any upcoming projects you would like to share with us? I had so many before Covid. I was trying to arrange an artist’s residency in India to learn Pata Chitra which is a line based art form representing deities in traditional styles. I was even teaching myself hindi to prepare, but sadly the world had other plans.

For now I’m engaging in a new mentorship opportunity where I’ll be learning from Doug Fink at Bushido about refining my work and pushing myself into new styles of working. He’s a traditional Japanese tattooer with a few decades of experience and I’m really looking forward to the next year and a bit of study and improvement.

Words: Lucy Edwards, 21-year-old tattooed freelance writer, cat mum and trying-new-things enthusiast. You’ll most likely find Lucy posting about mental health awareness and self-acceptance on her Instagram.

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Interview with Kelly Needles

Kelly creates beautifully nature-inspired handpoke tattoos at Easy Tiger Tattoo in Leeds. We chatted to the artist about handpoke tattoos, planting trees and love of tattooing ears…

My experience as a handpoke artist was a bit tough at first but I could not be happier with where I am now. Handpoke tattooing had a bit of a bad reputation (and sometimes still does) with people buying easily accessible handpoke kits and doing it at home.

When looking for a studio to work from, I found that even though I learnt in a professional environment, handpoking still had a stigma attached to it.  Now though I have the pleasure of working alongside awesome and inspiring artists (machine and handpoke), and it’s more widely known and accepted professionally.

 I was drawn to handpoke tattooing mainly because it’s a lot gentler than the machine and I find it very therapeutic. Most of my clients agree with me on this. 

I have been handpoked by quite a few different artists and found they each have different techniques and ways of setting up. I tend to research the artist first, I’m quite fussy when it comes to getting tattooed. It has to be the right style for me, and I’d want the artist to be into my idea.

When it comes to my own tattooing process I always book in plenty of time for each client so we can go over the design, size and placement together. Whether it be a flash design, a custom piece or something I’ve drawn onto the skin, we have to make sure it’s perfect – I don’t like to rush! My set-up and supplies used are fully vegan and where possible, biodegradable. I also plant six trees for every appointment made to help fight climate change. 

I usually book at least one hour for a tattoo, even if it’s three finger dots! I like to have the time to get settled and for my client to feel settled with me, and with the design. Most of my tattoos like the small leaves, words, animals, ears, and single flowers take between one to two hours.

Most of my inspiration comes from nature; leaves, flowers, animals. I have a silly amount of photographs of plants on my phone that I’ll draw from. I also have a nice collection of reference books that include botanics, patterns and floral art. Sometimes inspiration comes from a leaf on the floor, art exhibitions, or the pattern on an old lady’s skirt!

I love tattooing anything that I would design myself – so any flowers or leaves, yes please. Animals I love too. Handwriting I could happily do everyday. Basically as long as I can have a bit of freedom with the design and it’s my usual style, then I’m a very happy bunny.

I’d love to tattoo more ears and fingers. Every ear is a different shape and size so it’s fun to see what design works best. I usually freehand the design on these places but elsewhere on the body, if we’re doing a flower or leaves, it’s always super enjoyable to draw straight on the skin , especially if it’s an area that’s not flat or easy to put a stencil on to. Also – I’m always, always up for black leaves.

I can’t see myself going back to machine tattooing. I love everything about handpoke, it suits me perfectly. How it’s gentler and calmer. When it comes to tattooing what I do (ears, fingers, tiny animals etc.) I personally can’t imagine doing these with a machine – handpoke makes sense for me.

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Be kind & be wild: Lola Blackheart

East-London based illustrator and artist Lola Blackheart chats tattoos, her journey to self acceptance and the inspiration behind her body positive art…

I grew up with an adoration for very old-school, traditional tattoo work, classic pin-up imagery of the 1940s and 50s, and in my teens I discovered the world of burlesque. The confidence and energy of these professional female performers of all different sizes and shapes, plus the empowerment they bring to their audiences, really resonated with me.

It was the first step in what I guess you would call my ‘journey’ of self-acceptance. I also discovered how using these women as inspiration in my artwork felt like a small way to not only feel part of this movement of strong, confident females, but also could work to bring others in to that world. 

I went to the Brit School of Performing Arts, and (not many people know this) actually started out as a dancer. After a severe ankle injury as I was going into my third year there, I realised that my passion for the art department had also began to naturally outgrow that of dance, and I spent my final two years studying art & design. I suddenly felt like I actually belonged somewhere. The dance world can be quite cruel and demanding, especially when it comes to appearance.

I went on to study Visual Communications at Leeds College of Art, where I did my own thing and specialised in casting and sculpture, with some illustration too. I was making installations made up of things, such as big hand-painted skulls for high-end store’s windows by my final year, and had my own studio.

Moving back to London made this a lot more expensive and illustration became more practical (and a lot less physically challenging!) It allowed me to turn my ideas into a reality much quicker. Instagram definitely changed my life, and being able to share my work so easily and to such a broad audience really pushed me to keep going and to keep engaging. 

I was first tattooed at 16, and kept going from there! There was nothing quite like the excitement of going for my next tattoo, especially in my late teens and early twenties. I had friends that were starting out as tattoo artists, so I have quite a few that I don’t reveal as much as others, but they all hold funny or interesting memories.

Some of my all-time favourites are my coffin on my arm by Matty Darienzo, my panther on my hand and ‘Lola’ cat girl on my upper arm by Dani Quepo, and my hand-poked bible with upside-down cross and saw on my forearm by Kirk Budden.

The meaning and purpose of my work and brand has definitely continued to evolve over time, and I’m at a point now where I really want to push these messages of self-love and self-acceptance. I wish this had existed at the level it does now when I was growing up and that I had been given access to beautiful imagery of women that didn’t all look a certain way (tall, thin, whit etc.)

I ensure that everything I see on my Instagram is either educational, inspiring or body positive, and I hope that the work I’m putting out there and the content I share falls under these categories in some way or another. I also love that the basic aesthetic of the 50s pinups is still so embedded in my work, as it brings that element of classic glamour, and the celebration of the female body – although we should all support vintage aesthetic over vintage values!

I’ll continue to create work that explores the beauty of bodies and how different we all are. I have some exciting hand-painted projects coming up, as well as expanding on what I offer in terms of products on my Etsy store. My prints will always be central, but releasing small runs of organic, vegan, high quality products is something I’m going to be pushing. It’s amazing to see the interest and reaction from people when I do release something like a limited edition t-shirt. I also continue to work a lot with brands, so as soon as I’m given the go-ahead to share this work I will!

I’m open to all kinds of commissions, both for individuals and brands, but my most popular is the ones where I draw customers as one of my pin up girls! You can read more about this, purchase and get added to my waiting list here.

Be sure to follow Lola on Instagram for more tattoo and pin up inspired art.

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Interview with tattoo artist Filip Fabian

A tattooist for 12 years, Filip Fabian creates beautiful watercolour tattoos at Black & Blue Tattoo in San Francisco. We chatted to Filip about the inspiration behind his abstract pieces...

I grew up inspired by artists such as Rothko or Pollock. I studied art and drawing but I also got inspired by all of the great people I’ve met along the way. I also find a lot of inspiration in nature, every walk through the Golden Gate Park brings me a ton of inspiration. I often come home with ideas for new designs of the birds or flowers that grow there.

I love to tattoo nature and animals. My clients inspire me the most. I love to use geometry, brushes and textures in my work. And of course a wild palette of colours.

My cousin had his own tattoo studio in my hometown. I saw him working, and got immediately attracted to the whole process. Tattooing seemed magical to me. Then I ordered my first machine for $20 from eBay, did my first piece on my own knee, and never put the tattoo machine away since (I now have different ones, the eBay one actually fell apart when I was doing that first piece!)

I sometimes freehand my pieces, but I mostly spend a lot of time with each design prior to the tattoo day. After I meet a client for a consultation I take all of the references I have, all the thoughts and memories they express. These inspire me, and I combine that with my own touch.

I always try to include the personality of the person who I am tattooing into the piece, and the mood the piece is supposed to have. That’s why I don’t like realism that much. I find abstract designs more capable of expressing the mood and the fluctuate nature of life.

I hope that I get to see my tattoos and art on all of my clients’ bodies all over the world. That is my favourite gallery. You do not need an entrance, you just see it it while you casually go through your day.

Be sure to follow Filip on Instagram for more nature inspired tattoos.