SKIN DEEP MAGAZINE • 45amazing –the evolution of dark style tattooing. Justin
Hoffman is also a really good artist—his big concepts on
bodies are cool.”
The question was originally prompted by studying Ju-
lian’s work and finding stories in there—his work con-
tains stories, or at least that’s what I get out of it and that’s
something you don’t see too often in the real world... so
how about the oriental styles?
“Ah... when it comes to Japanese and Asian styles you
can learn a lot about big concept tattooing.
“I love Shige—he and Filip Leu are friends and masters
of modern Japanese body styles. I learned a lot from them
not just about body flow but also colour placement. On a
Japanese sleeve you may have a green dragon and pink
cherry blossom and the Western approach would have
been to use lots of greens for the dragon and just on the
dragon and then pinks for the cherry blossom and just
for the blossom. But Asian styles teach you to mix the
colours—not too heavy cold and not too heavy warm. I
use this approach to my tattoos. Not the exact style but I
certainly incorporate what I have learned.
“It’s sad that we are living more and more in a Photoshop
world. A lot of people have lost the understanding of body
flow. There is too much use of Photoshop tattooing in my
opinion. We have moved away from designing for the body.
This is like a step back with technology at the helm. We are
losing the art of drawing on the body for the body.
“I mix my tattoos like I do because I just couldn’t
copy a picture. There is no inspiration there for me. No
creativity. When you adopt that approach the very best
outcome you can hope for is that it looks like the photo!
That’s not inspirational—where is the creativity in that?
Only pressure! I like realism, but it has to come with cre-
ative interpretation.”
I’ll never get over how people are happy to view work
like Siebert’s on a six inch phone screen—all these years
on and I still think it’s like watching a pirated movie from
the nineties... essentially some cheap third hand substi-
tute for a real experience. Up close, the detailing he works
in, is out of this world. I suspect he’s one of those peo-
ple who are forever seeing all the things he could have/
should have done better... never happy and always push-
ing for a better way—though to be honest, it’s hard to see
how he could get much better at all...After 14 years of not liking to draw snakes, I committed
to evolving my style so I could really capture them...