Quotes About Tattooing

Tattooing is definitely an art form," Kenzo said. "I do agree with you about that, and I've recently learned to appreciate the beauty of the art tattoo. But tell me, speaking not as a collector but strictly as a physician and a rational man, don't you think it's stupid to undergo so much pain and expend so much energy on self-mutilation? I mean, surely no one with an iota of common sense would ever do such a thing.

I'm very superstitious, and I think it's bad luck. You don't have to show your love by tattooing it.

Surely the mask and tattooing have a surprising element in common: they both seek to bring about a transformation by obliterating the real skin. But of course, there were points of difference too. Fundamentally the mask was something removable, but tattooing was assimilated and incorporated into the skin. The mask, moreover, furnished an evasion of reality, but tattooing, of course, was an effort to make oneself obvious and showy.

There are always a lot of jokes and good vibes floating through the studio so tattooing all day doesn't feel like a job. It's rewarding to see my clients as excited as I am.

Not one great country can be named, from the polar regions in the north to New Zealand in the south, in which the aborigines do not tattoo themselves.

What was Latin and the chance of tattooing compared to this?

I only thought I'd get one arm done at first. One arm turned into the other arm. Then I started tattooing my lower arms. I remember saying, 'Mom, don't worry, I'm never going to do anything on my neck.' Then I went to my neck and my chest and my legs, and I kept on progressing from there.

Tattooing is my social life, too, so most of my time is taken up with that. People like Henry Lewis, Mike Davis at Everlasting Tattoo.

Tattooing was unto itself its very own art form, old as the hills and stranger than time. Whether in rich, far-flung resorts or condemned cottages, glamorous prestige or ragged poverty, human hearts and souls were variable and would always require painting.

Music has influenced everything from my tattooing to how I talk to how I walk, I guess. I was classically trained in piano since I was 6. Then in my teens, my older sister introduced me to Metallica. It was all over. I had a mohawk soon after that.

A clever tattooist produces artistic work, creativity in living with knowledge and insight to his craft.

Comparatively, tattooing is not the hideous custom which it is called. It is not barbarous merely because the printing is skin-deep and unalterable.

It's not always the style of tattooing but the rather the subject matter that drives me. I love tattooing anything from mythology to comic book superheroes.

more likely that tattooing the name is a substitute for solicitude rather than evidence of it.

The first purpose of clothes... was not warmth or decency, but ornament.... Among wild people, we find tattooing and painting even prior to clothes. The first spiritual want of a barbarous man is decoration; as indeed we still see among the barbarous classes in civilized countries.

the Maori people of New Zealand have long practiced a type of tattooing known as ta moko, which is traditionally done with chisels.

He was as tempestuous of exterior, as hearty of manner and as stormy of voice as ever, — and just as good a man as exists anywhere. His legs, and arms, and back, and breast, were just as splendid as ever with grand red and blue anchors, and ships and flags, and goddesses of liberty, done in the perfection of the tattooing art.

All sorts of men in one kind of world, you see. Dodge again! here comes Queequeg — all tattooing — looks like the signs of the Zodiac himself.

There's no crying in tattooing.

The act of tattooing one's skin was a tranformative declaration of power, an announcment to the world: I am in control of my own flesh.

The goal of tattooing was never beauty. The goal was change. From the scarified Nubian priests of 2000 B.C., to the tattooed acolytes of the Cybele cult of ancient Rome, to the moko scars of the modern Maori, humans have tattooed themselves as a way of offering up their bodies in partial sacrifice, enduring the physical pain of embellishment and emerging changed beings.

Evidently, Austronesian settlers in the New Guinea region got the idea of "tattooing" their pots, perhaps inspired by geometric designs that they had already been using on their bark cloth and body tattoos. This style is termed Lapita pottery, after an archaeological site named Lapita, where it was described.

When I came into the game, my influence was so heavy in the States and overseas people was painting murals of me, people tattooing me on them.

I don't have one specific tattooing specialty. I enjoy doing full-color new school, portraits, neo-traditional, realistic, black and gray, ultra detailed art, etc... but always custom.