BME: Body Modification Ezine

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Celebrating body modification culture since 1994.

Tag: Scarification

  • Speaking of Iestyn

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    Gosh, I’d forgotten both how fun and how difficult posting here is for me. I’m simultaneously excited and nauseous! But before I call it a night, I wanted to share a few more pieces by Iestyn Flye that he’s posted while I’ve been largely offline. I should also mention, if you didn’t catch it earlier today, that he’s now online at the-absolute.co.uk. Anyway, I will try and post a bit more this weekend but I can’t promise a lot.

    This first piece is really interesting and not something you see every day (for all of these I suggest zooming in for a closer look of course). It begins life (the left and middle image) as a skin-removal scar, which is then accentuated once it’s well healed using red dotwork tattooing.

    Next, a gorgeous example of facial scarification, with an organic free-flowing piece on one side that has a sort of early Celtic/Viking feel to it, balanced and contrasted on the other side of the face with a series of geometric crosses that instead of being free-flowing, integrate tightly and precisely into the tattoo work done earlier. A stunning and world-class creation.

    Finally, the some mind-blowing geometric scarification that would be impressive if done as a tattoo, and unbelievable when done as a scar.

  • A few great self-mods

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    Speaking of Yann Brënyàk of Body Temple (londonbodytemple.com), another in his growing arsenal of modifications is this scar on his leg, totally self performed, which is always very impressive to me even though there’s no shortage of self-blading in this world. The core swastika heart design is great, and I like the way that he’s mixed heavy bands of skin peeling with find detail scarwork with the swastika geometry background pattern. Another nice touch is the random slashing around the border, which if you know Yann’s facial tattooing, is a motif that is echoed across his identity.

    Those with long memories may recall way, way, way back in 2007 Hugh Mattay, now modifying people at 119 Tattoo (oneonenine.com.au) in Sydney, had his batwing eyebrow tattoos posted here. Since then he’s had a lot of tattooing added to his forehead, with the stripes exploding out over his temples being perhaps my favorite of the bunch. But he’s also been piercing himself this week, adding first the medusa piercing, and now a pair of cheek piercings. I’m always impressed when people do their own labrets or medusas because it’s so hard to judge one’s own facial symmetry, and it only takes being off my a millimeter to look wrong.

  • When life gives you keloids, make eyeballs

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    I think that’s how the old expression goes, right?

    Ighlif Rendina, owner and piercer at H.F. Body Art in Turin, Italy, had a customer who’d previously gotten a transdermal implant. The transdermal itself did alright, but in time, a large unsightly scar built up over the insertion incision. The microdermal was removed, and the scar reworked using a combination of cutting and cautery branding. The insertion scar became the pupil of the eye, and the scar that formed in the transdermal scar was covered up by the bottom line of the eye. In the picture where you can see the entire eye, it’s quite fresh, about two months after being done, and the picture where it’s partially covered by clothing is current, showing the piece at almost two years old.

  • The Friday Follow-up

    Written by

    Rob

    I posted this fresh scar about 2 weeks ago, and Morbid from Street Tattoo in Warsaw was quick to send in a follow-up.  I’m not 100% sure of the time between each photo, but it looks to be a more then two weeks, although not much more.  In any case, it’s always nice to see how scars can change over the course of healing.  Hopefully he’ll send in some more photos further down the line.

  • No need to be redundant

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    I like this simple cutting by Alicia in Milan because it keeps things simple. No one — at least no one that can read — has to ask you the old stand-by question that we all get asked over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over, “didn’t that hurt?”

    pain-cutting

  • Floral Heart

    Written by

    Rob

    Morbid from Street Tattoo & Piercing in Warsaw has really outdone himself with this scar.  The lines are nice, clean, and even, which should hopefully result in a beautiful scar.  Hopefully we’ll get an update from him for a future follow-up.

  • A Good Afternoon via Implants and Scars

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    Two days ago I posted a neat set of star-shaped horns (placed impressively precisely underneath preexisting tattoos), but I wanted to follow up with another star implant, this one by Matias at Rata Body Art in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It’s fresh in the photo — as you already know if you noticed the incision tucked away at the hairline. As great as this looks, I don’t think I would personally want a temple implant — even lightly resting my finger on my temples makes me feel like I’ve got a killer headache coming on. I’d hate to find that I’d implanted something on top of a pressure spot that slowly drives me insane! Oh wait, I started that way. No worries then, I shall do it.

    m-matiastemple

    Speaking of Matias, I’ve also been meaning to show you this nice oldschool sailor-art Gypsy girl portrait that he cut over top of a black field of ink. I think it will work especially well due to the stars that sit in the negative space surrounding the canvas of the scarification.

    m-ratascar

    And while I’m on the subject of scarification, I wanted to also show you this superb collar-piece “art scar” that Azl Kelly of Mtl Tattoo created as part of a “aesthetic beheading performance”. There’s a lot to be said for really pure designs. There’s a school of thought among many writers that the less words you can use to completely and effectively describe something, the better. Now, I’ve never been particularly good at that — I’m so redundantly wordy and repetitive that you could Swiss-cheese a print out of my essays with a machinegun and effectively understand what I was saying from the tatters that are left. Azl on the other hand has figured out how to speak volumes with a single incision.

    m-azlscar1t m-azlscar2t m-azlscar3t

    And, well, since I’m doing the “this things reminds me of this thing” game with this long entry, let me add two more implants, both swastika implants under a black tattoo, which visually makes them “pop” even more because of the way the light hits it. The one on the left, in the forearm, is the work of Samppa Von Cyborg, who you know well of course. The one on the right, the implant on the top of a hand, is by an artist you may not know quite as well, Hugo Ferreira of Biotek Toulouse in France. The arm is fresh in the photo, and the hand is about a month old.

    m-swasimp1t m-swasimp2t

    PS. I apologize for the crap image quality in this entry — I accidentally overcompressed. I’m really having “one of those days” as the old saying goes.

  • Working Together

    Written by

    Rob

    We’ve seen quite a few collaborative scarification pieces on ModBlog in the past.  In fact we see quite a large number of collaborations when you take into account tattoos, and body piercing.  However, what we often neglect to focus on is the collaboration between the artist and the client.  With the exception of DIY modifications, pretty much everything we do is a collaboration of some kind.  Be it something as simple as discussing the subject matter of a tattoo, or something as complex as rigging up an elaborate multi-person suspension with a team, it all requires cooperation.

    It’s part of what makes our community so close, as well as unique.  We share our stories with others, and when it comes time to change ourselves we put trust in another individual to have our visions come to fruition.  Take this scarification by Misty Forsberg from Southtown Tattoo and Body Piercing in Fort Smith, AR.  Now Misty was the person who did the cutting, but it was Justin (from Rise or Die Tattoo in Fayetteville, Arkansas) who designed the image, making this piece a collaboration between the two artists.

    So remember, it’s the trust between the artist and the client that bonds this community together, and makes each and every piece a collaboration of some form or another.

  • Fascinatingly Odd Implant/Scar Combo

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    My friend Baz Black sent me something I’d not have thought I’d ever see — an implant done underneath scarification, and done in the same session as well. My gut response was that this would be dangerous due to the risk of the cutting compromising the pocket that the implant is placed in, but it seems to have been quite trouble free.

    Baz started by doing the scarification, making sure to keep the depth consistent (which I’m sure he’d do anyway!). Then the implant was done, taking care not to disrupt the fresh cutting. Her skin was “like butter” and the procedure went quickly. You can sort of get the idea from the side view, but the pictures don’t do it justice, with the implant rising quite prominently (it’s a 1/2″ rise), pulling the spiral contours up toward the middle like a UFO caught in a tornado. Healing to date has been trouble free and the client has asked Baz to do a second one on the other wrist.

    bazblack1

    And while I’m mentioning Baz’s work, let me quickly post two other recent scars that he’s done, one a “traditional” cutting of flowers and a butterfly using nice clean silouette outlines and subtle details, and the other a cartoon scar over blackwork. (Zoom in if you’d like a closer view).

    bazblack2

  • Tattoo Removal Failure Reclamation

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    A client of Azl Kelly’s (Mtl Tattoo in Montreal) came to him looking for help in dealing with a big blog of scar tissue that she’d been left with after a laser tattoo removal. The laser had successfully obliterated the tattoo, but it did so much damage in the process that something had to be done about it — no matter how bad the tattoo may have been, this can’t have seemed like an improvement. Since the scar was now there for good, Azl worked with it, and added some definition, converting it from a random blob into a lotus flower.

    azl-scar-restore

    Speaking of Azl I wanted to show another piece of tattoo/scar combination work he did (you may recall when I featured some of his a while back). In this large scale piece, the outline of the tree is healed scarification by Azl, and the tattooing was done by his Mtl coworker Travis Driscoll. As I’ve said before, tattooing is a wonderful way to breathe new (and long-term) life into an aging scar that has lost it’s visual impact. It’s hard to pick a favorite from Azl’s top-notch combination pieces, but this one has to be high on the list.

    azl-combo-scar

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