“The mood of my art changes with the seasons,” Crimean tattooer Pis Saro describes to me. “I grow flowers and watch them attentively, looking at each fractal detail in petals and leaves. They’re not as simple as they seem! I like to study plants, animals and birds of different countries, too, always searching for new […]
Tag: European
Mattia Mambo’s Deconstructed Tattoos Look Too Perfect to Be Done by Hand
Milano-based tattoo artist Mattia Mambo creates small, colorful tattoos that look computer generated. The clean, crisp lines and bold shapes resemble a composition created in Adobe Illustrator rather than drawn onto skin. His precision fools us however, and everything is done analog using see-through vellum paper and markers. Deconstruction is a theme that weaves its […]
Simple, Ingenious, and Amusing: Blackwork Tattoos by Ilya Brezinski
Tattoo artist Ilya Brezinski creates polished blackwork drawings that just happen to be on the skin. The tightly-rendered pictures—often single subject—interact with the body in a playful way: a collar bone becomes a guide for a tightrope while half of a bicycle wheel is made wholly complete because it’s placed on a rounded pectoral muscle. […]
Abstract Tattoos by Szymon Gdowicz are Homage to the Paintbrush
Working under the moniker Pain Ting, Szymon Gdowicz brings a painterly touch to his tattoos. The colorful works of body art feature bold pigment that mimics the carefree fluidity of watercolor, with giant brushstrokes and drips across skin. They are punctuated by finer details that look like markers rather than the etching of a needle. […]
Beardin-Lazursky’s Alluring Images of Martyrs and Clairvoyants
Collaborating with photographer Dmitry Nedikhalow and makeup artist Tatyana Chekmezova, Alexander Beardin-Lazursky creates the Latin titled project “Obelisk of Ignorabimus,” which inspires and fuses images of futurism with traditional Russian art. Taking this aesthetic even further in his next series, “Three of Swords,” Beardin-Lazursky influences again from Eastern Orthodox Icons—positioning isolated figures center of framing […]
Shape-Shifting Blackwork Tattoos by Matteo Nangeroni
Matteo Nangeroni combines portraiture with a surreal compositional elements to produce tattoos that are simultaneously elegant and strange. The blackwork body art—with influences of cubism, comics, and geometry—features shape-shifting, two-faced characters and creatures that raise more questions than they answer. As two seemingly disparate parts connect to each other, we’re left wondering what their relation […]
Placide Avantia Tattoos the Dark Aesthetics of Nature and Geometry
Placide Avantia is a tattoo artist based in Aix-en-Provence, France. Combining animal imagery with geometric shapes and esoteric symbols, she etches (using vegan ink) the darkest aspects of nature, illuminating the symmetry, spiritualism, and cycles of life and death that permeate the natural world. She works from her private studio Fuscare, which she designed with […]
GIF Artist A. L. Crego Makes Graffiti Pieces Come to Life
In collaboration with design studio Mutante Creativo, videographer A. L. Crego created a promotional trailer for the annual outdoor art festival Rexenera in Spain. Footage included the making of massive murals by international graffiti stars Dulk, Pixel Pancho, Aryz, Bordalo II and Nómada. Not being content with just a video, Crego (also a GIF maker) […]
Ten Exciting Movies from The 66th Berlin International Film Festival
The 66th Berlin International Film Festival recently premiered the latest works in world cinema. With a whopping 310,000 tickets sold, Berlinale is one of the biggest public-focused film festivals in the world. The programme was incredibly varied and while Berlinale does not match the grandiosity and blockbuster bling status of Cannes, its commitment to embracing […]
Foreboding Creature Tattoos are Modern Brothers Grimm
Tortoises, hares, skulls, and crows—these are all characters featured in Parvick Faramarz’s blackwork tattoos. The Moscow-based artist combines intricate dot and bold lines, creating a subtle texture and sense of motion in every tattoo. At times, they appear as if they’re crawling over the skin. Together, they conjure vintage illustrations of folklore; not the type […]