Embracing female tattoo culture
Russian Lisa Smirnova creates beautiful hand embroidered pieces inspired by nature, tattoos and inspirational artists, including Frida Kahlo. Her embroideries look like they have been sketched rather than stitched and the muted and pastel tones add a dream like quality to her work.
Follow Lisa on Instagram for more art
Amy Rose is a 29-year-old artist from the Cotswold, who creates soft pencilled botanical art in muted tones. We chat to Amy about what inspires her and her tattoos, and she created the piece Winter’s Hand just for us…
Winter’s Hand
Do you have a background in art? The only art course I have done is a Btec national diploma in Fine art when I was 16 and I had no idea what I wanted from it. I have been drawing from a very young age and haven’t stopped ever since.
What inspires you? Mostly I am inspired by botany and the natural world. I am also a trained in florist, so my flower knowledge helps me when I am looking for botanical inspiration. I also get inspired by objects that I collect which can be anything from antique books, framed moths and bugs, bones and other curiosities like that.
What do you like to draw? Anything botanical, animals, insects and oddities. I usually spend hours reading up on certain plants, flowers or animals and finding out about natural habits and behaviours before I start a piece. I have a big collection of natural history books and botanical books that I have collected and inherited from my grandad that keep me inspired.
What medium do you use? I use coloured pencil on coloured paper, normally soft prismacolor. I also like to use black ink but find that with botanical work it looses certain elements when you don’t use colour.
Where can people buy your art? I have a shop on Etsy.
Do you have any tattoos? What do you think of tattoos in general? I only have five tattoos so would love to add to them in the future. I love tattoos, I love how diverse tattoo culture is and how it keeps evolving, there is so many different styles my favourite being botanical black work.
Our guest blogger is 34-year-old Southsea creative Alanna Lauren, founder of RubyxRedxHeart, attended ‘quiet little voices’- an exhibition by street artist My Dog Sighs in November last year…
My Dog Sighs outside the shop by the mural he painted for the show
It was 7am on Friday the 13th of November and already people were queuing outside Play Dead tattoo studio to get a tattoo by Samo White, fine artist turned tattoo artist, making Samo the perfect person to take My Dog Sighs limited (one time only) tattoo designs and paint them into skin.
After having a manic year with collaborative exhibitions not just in the UK, but internationally My Dog Sighs had a very short period of down time where friends graphic artist Lex Luthor and tattoo artist Samo White opened up a tattoo studio and street art gallery, just around the corner from his own studio. This was the perfect opportunity to go into the studio, relax with friends in a creative hub and come up with some ideas for a solo exhibition of his work, the first solo exhibition of his in the UK for two years.
Samo and My Dog Sighs
Sat in a tattoo studio/ art gallery called Play Dead, opposite a graveyard and planning for the exhibition to be on Friday the 13th My Dog Sighs started to explore in his sketch book a darker side of work which he hasn’t done before, something different from the norm and from these elements rose his exhibition ‘Quiet Little Voices’.
As well as working on art for this show My Dog Sighs was also working on larger scale pieces for group shows in LA (Nov 2015) and Miami (December 2015) and after Christmas break working towards a show in New York in May 2016.
Follow My Dog Sighs on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook for more artwork and news of future events.
Tom Bagshaw is a digital painter from Bath, UK who creates fantastical works that explore themes of beauty, darkness and femininity. His art lies in the realm of realism yet alludes to spaces of mystery and intrigue…
Accismus
Below the Surface
Pandora
Chasca
Follow Tom on Instagram for more art
Alessandra Criseo, better known as Mais2 on Instagram, is an illustrator and crafter from Italy who has lived in London for the past five years. Inspired by Things&Ink Alessandra created this tattoo inspired girl for us…
How would you describe your style? Sometimes it’s hard for me to see- I love trying a lot of different things and techniques so sometimes I feel inconsistent, but apparently other people can see my identity better than I can. People that know often talk about my style mentioning the fact that it has humour and makes them laugh, and that it has something creepy about it as well. Both compliments.
What inspires you? From my side I get inspired by things happening to me and sentences that I form in my head in specific situations, things connected to my childhood and people and things I love. Externally I get my inspirations mostly from fashion, food, objects, strange combinations of items together. I realised that I get inspired more by photographic stuff than illustration, I guess because it is a different media.
I do of course follow a lot of amazing artists, but often when I see a drawing I really love and I think that is perfect, I don’t feel like I need to repeat what they already did.
Do you have a background in art? I do, instead of high school I went to art school in my city, but it was quite crap at the time. It was the only art school in town and It wasn’t very good. In my third year I have chosen to specialise in fashion, where I met two of my favourite teachers though, so no regrets. I also did a two year course in a school of comics that allowed me to meet some of my artist friends and professionals and start my career.
What medium do you use? I tend to draw and ink traditionally (with any pencil and graphic liners) because it relaxes me much more than digital. I colour digitally in Photoshop, or if I go for a more traditional technique I use markers.
What do you like to draw? I definitely love to draw silly people,oh and food- if together even better. I love spooky and dark subjects too, drawing street fashion and animals.
Can people buy your illustrations? I have a bigcartel shop where people can buy everything I put on sale. At the moment you can find a few things in there and between those there is my first self published book Memento Bento that is an illustrated diary of my first trip to Japan- I’m very proud of it!
Do you have any tattoos? What do you think about tattoos? I love tattoos, I adored them from far away for ages before getting mine.
It’s always hard for an artist to decide what to get as a first tattoo because we change our mind easily and in my case my only certainty was that I didn’t want to design it myself- but I couldn’t stop picturing the composition in my head!
Tattoos are a big influence on my style, a lot of people get my illustrations as tattoos as well. Becoming a tattoo artist and tattooing my pieces myself is a dream of mine, I seriously have thought about that but I haven’t been brave enough to just do it yet. I wish some of my friends were tattoo artists to teach me and help me get started! Maybe one day, hopefully soon!
I got my first tattoos two years ago, on both of my calves.They are subtle references to two video games that really influenced my taste during my childhood and I’m sure I will love forever: Monkey Island and Prince of Persia. I also have a moon on my right wrist and I love it.
Are there any artists that you admire? One of my biggest weakness is making lists of things I love or hate, seriously, that’s so hard for me! I don’t even know what my favourite food or song or colour are! Generally speaking I love a lot of Japanese illustrators, ancient and modern. I love their humour, I feel like they get me. I love a lot of graphic illustrations- I enjoy the process of limiting yourself with the amount of colour and detail. It makes the result so elegant and timeless, and I find it calming as well when I do it myself.
As I have already mentioned, tattoo art is a huge inspiration as well. I love symbolism and really appreciate the composition that a good tattoo artist is capable of creating. I love how a well done design can stand alone perfectly without even any need for a context. I also follow a lot of illustrators that don’t fit in any of these categories, especially on Instagram and Tumblr- I kinda like everything.