A tattooed person suspends from hooks, laying flat, one leg higher than the other. Their head is back, and they seem to be smiling, dark hair dangling like an anime character.

Tag: Paintings

  • Laugh it Up, Fuzzball


    So, you want a tattoo celebrating one of your favorite movies, but one that alludes to other artists as well? What to do?

    I really wanted a Star Wars tribute tattoo, and my artist really wanted to do one. I didn’t want anything overused or anything, like the insignia or a lightsaber, and I didn’t want a huge scene with ships and everything, so we decided to kind of create something. I liked the shape of the AT-AT walkers, but they were kind of beefy. I was thinking I wanted something more slender, like a Dali elephant, and here it is! I’m so happy with how it turned out, and I’m really glad to have something completely original on my body.

    (Star Wars/Salvador Dali mash-up tattoo by Paul at Old School Tattoo in Bellingham, Washington.)

    See more in Sci-Fi Tattoos (Tattoos)

  • All Around the Circle


    It can be a crap-shoot when adapting a painting into a tattoo, trying to balance which elements can be translated effectively and which will require certain modifications. Consider what Wil from Randy Adams Tattoo in Ft. Worth, Texas, did to interpret Dali’s The Ship here. Everything seems a little more “solid” in the tattoo than in the original (Ed. note: I am not a student of visual art and there is not even a slight chance that I’ll use the proper terminology here), and that it was consciously “tattooified” (Ed. note: This, however, is a perfectly cromulent art term) rather than the artist making an effort to create a carbon-copy of the source material. In this case, this seems like an appropriate course to take. What do you all think? About this interpretation, about adapting paintings into tattoos in general, about the world … let’s chat, ModBlog.

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