Stories we wear on our skin
Russian artist Ivan Alifan uses oil to paint works that explore sexuality, desire and intimate gazes. His art seeks to illuminate the latent sexuality that is always present in images. He hopes to break down barriers and de-construct how the body can be seen in art, he wants to viewer to decide for themselves whether they feel sexual attraction or curiosity.
Lady Bonsai is a 27-year-old Italian apprentice working in Naples, we love her dark, simple and often naughty tattoos. We chatted to her about her classic style and what inspires her…
When did you start tattooing? I started tattooing in 2015 and I am apprenticing at the moment at Napoli Ink in Naples. I sent my portfolio to lots of different studios and the guys at Napoli Ink asked me to work with them.
What did you do before you were a tattooist? Before I started to tattoo I used to work as a manager in a street wear clothes store. I have always been fascinated by art. I changed my whole working life to follow my dream to become a tattoo artist.
What inspires you? I’m inspired by Art Nouveau, 1920s actresses, porn and bsdm (bondage, submission, dominance, sadomasochism) subjects.
What kind of things do you like to tattoo? I love to tattoo women’s silhouettes in a romantic yet sexy way.
How would you describe your style? I would describe my style as a graphic and passionate blackwork.
We have recently released The Horror Issue, what is your favourite horror film? My favourite horror movie is Freaks (Tod Browning, 1932). A black and white movie, it is really amazing and a great inspiration to me.
Can you tell us about your own tattoos? My own tattoos are a mix of various styles, I really love tattoos to suit my body and it’s different parts. I have a lot of different subjects from various artists including a moth by Alessandro Florio on my leg.
We caught up with Shaun Milton from Landscapes ahead of their set at Hevy Festial this summer to talk about their album plans, tattoo influence and horror.
You’re in the middle of a European tour with Endless Heights and Break Even, how is it going?
It has been quite a chaotic tour, it’s three bands in two vans so we are pretty crammed in. The guys we are on tour with a fucking awesome people, they are honestly some of the greatest people we have ever toured with. The guys in Endless Heights are such a tight unit of friends and you don’t normal see that in bands. You usually see good fiends but you don’t normally see them like that. They are absolutely loving every second of being in the UK, this is their first time out in Europe. And Break Even are just really lovely and humble people as well so we are just having the best time.
Do you think you will put an album out this year?
We are really hoping to get something released this year. Last year we recorded our forthcoming album which we’ve titled Modern Earth. Its aesthetic is the idea of looking at society and world of today and taking a step back. It is trying to figure out what people are doing with themselves and understanding each others problems, not in such a policital way but saying it in our own personal way.
So yeah, we recorded it last September out in California at Panda Studios but we weren’t overly happy with the end result. We felt there was a little more to do on it and we are all about quality control .People can wait and moan as long as they want but at the end of the day if we are not happy with it we are the ones who have to live with it. So we took it back The Ranch Production House in Southampton and that’s all together now so then we took a stepback on how we were going to approach out artwork.
We didn’t want to deal with photoshop as such so I began building a set and we’ve just had the first set of images back. Hopefully we should see the album out in the next few months fingers crossed.
Did you take time out to write the album or did you do it whilst touring?
We were bouncing ideas around on tours but we just found that we didn’t get the peace and quiet we needed. Sometimes it works better with just two or three of you and sometimes it works better as a whole band. We tend to find that the phrase is right and that too many cooks spoil the broth. This isn’t to say that we are not all involved in the writing but just that we need to break away from everything else with a focus on what we want to do.
For us it isn’t just about what is right for the sound everyone else is expecting, it is about what we feel comfortable with. It has got to be about what we are vibing and we all have such different influences. Tom is a big Morrisey fan, I’m a big everything fan, Kai is a big pissed jeans fan, Martin is well into Man Overboard. We’re all into different shit. Jordan for fuck sake is into Grime. So you look at all of us and you wouldn’t put us together but when we put our creative inputs together it works so well.
Where do you want to tour next?
We’re in the middle of a European tour at the moment but we’ve never been to Australia. We were supposed to go at the end of last year and sadly we had to pull out, but we are hoping that sometime next year we can get out there along with America. We are signed to Pure Noise Records so we want to create a foundation for ourselves. Everything is based around our releases so with our release taking a year longer than what it should have done it has put us back a bit.
Yanbo’s done by Petra Brkić
How do you feel about your work inspiring tattoos?
We are always completely overwhelmed, I remember the first person to get one, they were from Brazil of all places. He had ‘ I drain out every moment until its gone’ which is a really old lyric and we were all just astounded about how our music got that far.
So we made a policy that the moment that so many different people started getting these amazing tattoos that we were going show some sort of appreciation. I save all of the photos we’ve been tagged into and I try and post as many as I can. But we also made this deal that if we have control of the show we’ll stick you on the guest list.
So yeah we are completely touched, you think to yourself what is it that people are getting from that particular song and our whole aesthetic but at the same time their own decision. Tattoos are a really personal thing, id be a fucking liar if I didn’t turn around and say that I didn’t ever get a tattoo because it looked cool but at the same time it still means something to me, it marks a stage in your life.
It is a real privilege and an honour for us that people are getting tattoos that are anything to do with us. But at the same time it is a step in whatever path they have taken or are about to take and i’m fully supportive of it. I know that we had some people that were not even following us on our Facebook that were specifically coming to our page to call people out for getting tattooed. If you don’t want to get tattooed don’t tell someone how to live their life, so yeah we are completely supportive of it and we think its great.
Ben Abraham’s done by Lukasz Christopher at Oddfellows Tattoo Collective in Leeds
In line with the release of The Horror issue, what is your favourite horror film?
I could say a whole bunch but if it is just one, I want to say Alien. And I will tell you the reason why or else people might not think it is a horror and just a sci-fi.
It is a horror and the reason it is a such a horror is that Ripley is essentially one of the first female heroes to come forward and the horrifying aspect is the rape that is sat between the lines of that film is incredible. It is not gendered, it is the horrifying thought that this face hugger that resembles a vagina basically forces a phallic tube down your throat and impregnantes you and then it bursts out of you in the most terrifying, painful way possible. To me that is so fucking scary, it has got all the fright element to it and I am all about space and shit so I love it.
Jessica Sharville is a 30-year-old freelance illustrator who also manages Tattoo Workshop in Brighton. Jess uses a pastel palette to transform what she sees around her into eye catching illustrations and tattoo covered characters. Inspired by The Horror Issue she has created two drawings, titled ‘Maneater’ and ‘The Pact’ especially for Things&Ink. We chatted to Jess to find out more about her tattoo inspired drawings and her ever expanding tattoo collection…
How would you describe your style? I think its realistic with a kind of exaggerated stylized feel, it has moments of fashion illustration and traditional tattoo art but with stories behind the illustrations. Romantic and sometimes quite sad.
What inspires you? I get told that people see me in a lot in my illustrations so I think I am inspired by people or events in my life possibly more than I realised! But apart from things in my life I would say that what inspires me the most is just people and moments I see in day to day life, perhaps a couple walking down the street laughing or someone crying on the phone and me wondering if they are going to be ok. (I am a bit of a people watcher). I work five days a week at Tattoo Workshop, and when I’m there I’m surrounded by so many incredible artists who all happen to be bloody ruddy good eggs too.
Maneater
What medium do you use? I use heavy weight paper as I draw very heavy handed, and I only use Pentel 0.9mm mechanical pencils. I then scan my work and sit on photoshop using my Wacom bamboo graphic pad and do a bit of colouring in! It allows me to keep my original illustration and work with colours and effects and not spoil the drawing.
What do you like to draw? It’s probably obvious I love drawing people and tattooed people but I also love drawing patterns and text too. I have painted a few murals and large pieces in the last few years and found a new love for that. I think I just love little details and it has been great doing large scale things to push myself. But if I sat down with a blank piece of paper, I am nearly always going to draw a couple in bed.
The Pact
Do you have a background in art? I have a degree in Illustration from Plymouth University and a family full of illustrators and graphic designers. I have worked lots of different jobs to support my illustrations throughout the years and luckily most of them have been creative which has helped push me with my art.
Are there any artists you admire? I am a huge Norman Rockwell fan and Charles Keeping who are my two favourite artists when it comes to capturing moments between people and creating illustrations which just silently tell stories. I also admire so many different tattoo artists and the amazing creative bubble inspires me, just being around these amazing artists (who all work substantially quicker than me!)
Can you tell us about your tattoos? If you don’t have any are you planning to? What do you think of them? I have possibly too many to explain but I have a few favourites, I have a couple of Kate Mackay Gill pieces, my feet are my favourites which are a mouse on a powder puff on my left foot and a perfume bottle on my right. Then I have a Kola Hari (from The Circle) Buddhist temple on my leg, a very new Peony on my knee by Jack Thomas Newton at Into You Brighton, lots of music related ones such as ‘Well I Wonder’ my favourite Smiths song, a few sneaky Arctic Monkeys related ones and many more.
I love my tattoos but I actually can be quite private about them. I enjoy having the choice of having them on show or not and sometimes people might not even realise I am tattooed at first. I also just love wearing black and layers!
Wolves in my Bed
Our guest blogger is Natalie McCreesh aka Pearl, a fashion lecturer, freelance writer and creator of Fashion Pearls of Wisdom. In this post she talks about the reactions she received from people while sunning herself on a beach…
This was to be my first beach holiday in years, I’d packed some vintage style bikinis and not much else envisioning long days spent in the sunshine. What I hadn’t foreseen was that with the bikinis would come the stares. I’m used to getting funny looks back home for my tattoos but I guess this was a lot closer to naked than I was used to being in public. I live in Sheffield which I’d say is a fairly tattooed city, seeing tattooed people isn’t all that unusual. On this two mile stretch of Spanish beach not so much. Sure there was the odd little tattoo but in the five days we spent there I only spotted two other heavily tattooed people. In a sea of exposed flesh mine stood out, together with my boyfriend we stood out even more.
It really made me stop and think, just seeing all that ink free skin how few of us actually choose to be tattooed. When you have tattooed friends, follow tattoo related Instagram accounts and so on it becomes the norm, you get used to seeing tattooed people. The beach line up was a bit of a reality check I guess. The stark realisation at how different you have decided to become. There is sexism in the stigma too, I could watch my boyfriend walk around with the odd glance but nothing compared to the reaction I got. Is it more acceptable, more normal to see tattooed men?
One day after some holiday cocktails we found a stack of business cards for a local artist and took them to hand out to the gawkers – what can I say we find ourselves hilarious after a few piña coladas. A bonus is that parents with screaming kids would take one look at us, decide we were likely criminals and move further down the beach, win! Away from the beach at a restaurant (not wearing the bikini just to clarify) we were asked to move to a table furthest away from the crowd, the waiters plea that it was reserved didn’t wash as we promptly left for the place opposite and watched said table sit empty for over an hour. I caused quite a stir at the hotel for breakfast too in a backless dress- tattoos not ok, stealing the entire platter of chocolate croissants totally acceptable apparently.
All I can summarise is that the behaviour of people is strange, Things&Ink’s Rosie wrote about her tattooed holiday experience in Vietnam and had various reactions. In some cultures staring isn’t considered rude and I don’t mind at all people looking at my tattoos, I just wish they could give a little smile to show its in a friendly way every now and again. That said it won’t stop me wearing a bikini on the beach!