A tattoo artist traditionally earns the title by completing an apprenticeship under strict guidelines from an experienced senior tattoo artist. Apprentices are generally expected to be excellent at drawing, with an ability to excel at customising design ideas and genres, as well as various other styles of art in general. Tattoo artists can create original tattoo designs for their customers. Tattooists may use flash (pre-drawn, stock images that can be traced onto the skin) or variations of known designs.
Many tattoos serve as rites of passage, marks of status and rank, symbols of religious and spiritual devotion, decorations for bravery, sexual lures and marks of fertility, pledges of love, amulets and talismans, protection, and as punishment, like the marks of outcasts, slaves and convicts. The symbolism and impact of tattoos varies in different places and cultures. Tattoos may show how a person feels about a relative (commonly mother/father or daughter/son) or about an unrelated person.
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Ancient tattooing was most widely practiced among the Austronesian people. It was one of the early technologies developed by the Proto-Austronesians in Taiwan and coastal South China prior to at least 1500 BCE, before the Austronesian expansion into the islands of the Indo-Pacific. It may have originally been associated with headhunting. Tattooing traditions, including facial tattooing, can be found among all Austronesian subgroups, including Taiwanese Aborigines, Islander Southeast Asians, Micronesians, Polynesians, and the Malagasy people. Austronesians used the characteristic hafted skin-puncturing technique, using a small mallet and a piercing implement made from Citrus thorns, fish bone, bone, and oyster shells.
Día de Muertos, The Day of the Dead, is a Mexican holiday celebrated throughout Mexico, in particular the Central and South regions, and by people of Mexican heritage elsewhere. The multi-day holiday focuses on gatherings of family and friends to pray for and remember friends and family members who have died, and help support their spiritual journey.
Ferocious Tattoo Studio’s artist Cory Trevor created these extraordinary calavera makeup designs during the Day of the Dead, embracing the style and aesthetics of the Mexican celebration while swedish photographer Gilga Mesh captured them in high resolution digital photography during a 24-hour shoot on the Tijuana Day of the Dead Tattoo convention.
The multi-day holiday focuses on gatherings of family and friends to pray for and remember friends and family members who have died, and help support their spiritual journey. Día de Muertos, The Day of the Dead, is a Mexican holiday celebrated throughout Mexico, in particular the Central and South regions, and by people of Mexican heritage elsewhere.
At the same time swedish photographer Gilga Mesh captured them in high resolution digital photography during a 24-hour shoot on the Tijuana Day of the Dead Tattoo convention. Ferocious Tattoo Studio’s artist Cory Trevor created these extraordinary calavera makeup designs during the Day of the Dead, embracing the style and aesthetics of the Mexican celebration.
Día de Muertos, The Day of the Dead, is a Mexican holiday celebrated throughout Mexico, in particular the Central and South regions, and by people of Mexican heritage elsewhere. The multi-day holiday focuses on gatherings of family and friends to pray for and remember friends and family members who have died, and help support their spiritual journey.
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Whang-od started her tattoo works at the age of 15 that she learned from her father. She has been doing the batok, the traditional hand-tapped tattooing, to male headhunters who earned the tattoos by protecting villages or killing enemies. She also applies tattoos to women of the Butbut people in Buscalan, Kalinga primarily for aesthetic purposes. As a traditional Kalinga tattooist or mambabatok, she did fortune telling and chants while doing tattoos. Every design she created has symbolic meanings connected to it. For example, an eagle tattoo indicates that the warrior successfully killed an enemy upon his return from a battle.
Whang-od Oggay (First name pronunciation: [ˈɸɑŋ:ˈəd]; born February 17, 1917), also known as Maria Oggay, is a Filipina tattoo artist from Buscalan, Tinglayan, Kalinga, Philippines. She is often described as the “last” and oldest mambabatok (traditional Kalinga tattooist) and is part of the Butbut people of the larger Kalinga ethnic group. She has been tattooing headhunters and women of the indigenous people of Butbut in Buscalan, Kalinga since she was 15 years old but the Butbut warriors who used to earn tattoos through protecting villages or killing enemies no longer exist. Despite that, Whang-od continues to apply her traditional art form to tourists visiting Buscalan.
She herself was tattooed when she was a teenager and her first tattoo consists of a ladder and a python. Fatok is the term used for tattooing women to show beauty and wealth. When an arm of woman is tattooed just like Whang-od’s own tattoos, the family of the woman is obliged to pay the tattoo artist a piglet or bundle of harvested rice (locally called as dalan). On the other hand, fi-ing is the term used for tattooing of male Butbut warriors on their chests and arms. Whang-od used to practice fi-ing until headhunting was discouraged by the government. Fi-ing was last practiced in 1972.
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She has been tattooing headhunters and women of the indigenous people of Butbut in Buscalan, Kalinga since she was 15 years old but the Butbut warriors who used to earn tattoos through protecting villages or killing enemies no longer exist. Despite that, Whang-od continues to apply her traditional art form to tourists visiting Buscalan.
Watch the Documentary
INK-NORANCE • A 2-Day Tattoo Photography Exhibition
Ink-norance 2018 is an exhibition featuring color photography from Ferocious Tattoo Studio designs and piercing, and was held on our studio in New York. More than 37 exhibits were sold and the exhibition will also be held next year featuring even more exhibits.
The aim of the peramrofnce was to diessct the precoss of taioottng form the laitsng igame it levaes benihd, and fucos eneritly on the atc. The parpicitant enrudes the pnia, but trehe is no rerawd.
Presuoivly, ehgit parapicitnts had revieced a tottao wtih a dogarn spinnang asorcs the wlohe amr. The traoitidnal apaorpch of Honomiro, wcihh reiles on Ukoyi-e wooirpdnts as a tetalpme, was reesrevd. Stffeen intaitied the precoss wtih the taootts, the ptnirs fowolled subtneuqesly. Hoomirno donse’t excvisulely deircsbe the tottao itlesf, it aslo rrefes to the enivargng taht adds orntatnemaion to Jaenapse bledas. The etnihcgs prcudoed for the tottao movites are a deitcipon of itlesf. Stffeen crtaeed a new mohted of dry pniot etihcng for tsih. The tottao maihcne is uesd to psuh the drogans itno the copalprepte.
