In my search for a new tattoo, I've come across some amazing art that I'd love to share. First off is an artist named Alayna Magnan who specializes in modern pinup drawings. Some of the figures she draws are pierced and tattooed, but all of them have distinct characters that come through in the detail of Alayna's work.
Also of particular interest to me was the art of Luke Chueh. Shannon Larratt from BMEzine.com recently posted a picture of a tattoo depicting Chueh's art, showing that his pieces work well when transformed into trippy tattoos. His art is great because it combines such intangible concepts as enlightenment and despair with cute, furry, bloody animals to create a humorous yet meaningful style.
Finally I'd like to mention the ever-psychadelic art of Thomas Han. Han has worked with Luke Chueh on a few pieces (one of which is shown below) to create some incredibly fun-to-look-at work. Upon first seeing Han's work, I fell in love with the color scheme he uses. I think many of his pieces, adapted to tattoo form, would be quite the eye-catchers.
These artists are young and revolutionary. I can only hope artists like these become immortalized through tattoos of their work. After all, there are so many Tazmanian Devil tattoos out there, it makes my head spin. Let's get original.
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2 comments:
Concerning the question of originality in tattooing:
I'm speaking here first of all as a guy who has long held that if he ever got a full back-piece, it'd probably be a set of wings. I thought of the idea years ago, before I familiarized myself with mod culture at all, and was slightly shocked (though in retrospect I shouldn't have been) that other people had (shockandawe) thought of this, and that it was even common to the point of being overdone.
Nonetheless, I *feel* original, because I chose the imagery because of its relevance and resonance with me. Still, I'm conflicted because I know that the mod-folks of the world could easily find themselves inclined to look down their noses at my common tattoo choice. For an outsider subculture with a fairly inclusive and open-minded identity, there is a shade of elitism to this.
Anyway, that's not what I'm headed towards. What I'm really interested in is the problem of the Taz tattoo: the problem of how much originality and artistic merit is to be considered when thinking about mod art. What if Taz has greater relevance to the person than, say, the art of Luke Chueh (who, after Shannon mentioned it, I kinda fell in love with)? What sort of criticism can we really offer up?
In short, if the person is happy with their not-so-innovative tattoo, what can we say?
I totally agree...and I find absolutely nothing wrong with the more "common" tattoos, but it's just so much more interesting to see something you've never encountered before. And by the way, I love wings tattoos and I honestly think they'll never get old or stop being improved upon. I would get wings if they had a special significance to me, but they would probably be wings with knife blade feathers or something weird, heh :o)
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