SKIN DEEP MAGAZINE • 61I did it for free. I did 2 in fact. Without charging a single
cent. And I did a few more back pieces in Singapore and in
Zürich for little or no money. Because there was no mon-
ey involved, I managed to finished them real quick. That
kind of started it all. I didn’t have to support a family back
then, so money was never really an issue for me.
What reactions did you get?
Well, nothing drastic really. It took a few months for peo-
ple to notice because I wasn’t active on social media at
that time. I didn’t really care what peo-
ple think nor did I care if they liked it. I
did it because I wanted to learn how to
construct bigger tattoos : It was the next
step I had to take. Anyways, after finish-
ing a few large pieces, I set up an amateur
website, had some photos printed and gave out as many
business cards as I could. It caught the attention of a few
and eventually I got requests to start more back pieces.
It was a little different back then. I didn’t have a smart
phone to shoot and upload pictures right away. There
weren’t any social media ‘likes’ or ‘followers’. I relied
mostly on word of mouth.
You were talking about a decent collection of body-
suits, what would it look like?
I’d say about 20 would be a good collection. I have more
than 30 back pieces but only a few body-suits which are
still in progress. A full body-suit is so fucking difficult to
achieve. Because it takes ages and some clients need a
break after 2 or 3 years of constant tattooing.
How many hours does it represent to get one from you?
50 to 60 hours for a back piece and maybe 200 hours for
a body suit? Depends on the size of your body. A majority
of clients start with a back piece which progresses into a
bodysuit. And some do the sleeves first and move on to
the back. They rarely come in and decide on a body suit
right away, but there’s a small number, maybe 3 or 4 guys
who came to me with no tattoos and wanting a body suit.
That’s amazing.There’s still so much I need to learn
and it’s always fun to see amazing
stuff popping up all over the world