Daldam is a 29-year-old tattooer who draws inspiration from Chinese art, Japanese mythology, and Korean culture. She travels back in time to the period of porcelain vases and goblin legends to delicately tattoo these themes on her clients’ bodies. Peonies, massive waves, and tigers all have significant meaning in the East, which she is aware […]
Category: Animals
Tattooing Beloved Pets: An Interview with Kimria
The South Korean film industry, like the tattoo industry, is thriving. South Korea is a fine-line micro tattooing powerhouse because the quality and skill are exceptional, as demonstrated by Kimria, a Seoul-based artist specializing in pet portraits on skin. Kimria, who works in black-and-grey and color, discusses her passion for assisting clients in reconnecting with […]
Shiran: Finding Freedom Though Traveling and Tattooing
Giving beautiful tributes to Etta James, Nina Simone and Sam Cooke — Shiran could have easily become a professional illustrator, but somehow ended up in the tattoo field. Shiran is engaged to tattooer Artem Koro, who has been her rock through thick and thin, such as a long recovery after her leg and hand were smashed […]
Frederico Rabelo’s Majestic Tattoos Inspired by Art History
“Contemporary tattooing is one of the most important visual languages of our generation,” states Frederico Rabelo, a Brazilian tattooist inspired by art history and giving his intellectual and cultural take on it through skin art. Rabelo studied fine arts in Brazil and Portugal, explored graffiti with his crew in the mid 2000s, and now dedicates […]
Haunted by Animals: Cryptic Visions by Jenna Barton
Twilight fields and haunted pool sheds set the stage for illustrator/designer Jenna Barton’s cryptic visions. Combining watercolor with digital processing, Barton populates her mysterious world with unusual anthropomorphic beasts—a horned saint, a smoke bear, and a shadow dog that revisits the viewer like an unsettling dream. With minimalist yet symbol-filled compositions, Barton invites the viewer […]
Spectral Beasts in the Shadowy Fantasy Realms of Jade Mere
Jade Mere is a writer and illustrator with a passion for fantasy, science fiction, and the paranormal. Humans and animals are her favorite subjects, and this post features a selection of the latter. Just like the moonlit waters of Mere’s Pacific-Northwest home, the animals are filled with phosphorescence, light leaking from their eyes, mouths, and […]
Colorful, Grotesque Creature Mash-Ups by Tom Strom
Tom Strom is an artist based in Edinburgh, Scotland, who paints and tattoos colorful “creature mash-ups.” Among his inspirations are anime and Disney movies—the former for monster design, the latter for colorful backgrounds. He began tattooing over twenty years ago, during which time he experimented with different techniques and developed his style, which is an […]
Dark Dream Characters in the Paintings of Bill Mayer
Bill Mayer is a well-known artist currently based in Decatur, Georgia, whose curious creatures have been widely featured on magazines, ads, stamps, posters, and more. Since an early age, Mayer has been attracted to things that are strange; this leaning towards oddity is evident in the selection of gouache paintings shown here, which include anthropomorphic […]
Mortality and Sacred Snakes in the Dark Tattoo Art of Joao Bosco
Joao Bosco is a tattoo artist currently dividing his time between Los Angeles and London. He is recognized for his dark fantasy imagery influenced by both Japanese and American tattoo traditions. Featured here is a selection of his incredible snake tattoos, which are fuelled by his connection to the animal’s sacred symbolism. He is also […]
Shape-Shifters and Borderlands: Sculptures by Leah Brown
Leah Brown is a Fort Lauderdale-based artist creating sculptures and installations based on her lucid dreams, which she has journaled about since childhood. “I create work about the borderland between what is considered real and what is not,” she writes in her bio. “These works begin as illustrations, but become artifacts of invocation, and I […]