Ink
A gallery of my tattoos
I’ve been getting tattoos for a long time now, starting in 2004 when I was 19, just out of school.
Most of them are really good work by amazing artist and even the ones that are flawed still belong to the story they all tell about me and my life.
I’m at 19 in total now. Here they are in (mostly) reverse chronological order.
Done by the incredible Adam Theosone. His work will show up a few time here. He specializes in lettering tattoos.
The phrase is part of a poem from the novel The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin:
Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death, lying
together like lovers in kemmer,
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way.
It’s a book that has grabbed me immediately as I read it and this poem in particular has stuck with me.
Adam did a fantastic job with the negative space rendering there, really capturing the duality theme of it.
The next two are convention tattoos. I love tattoo conventions and just picking something right there on the spot without much planning.
These were both done at (th)ink about that tattoo convention in 2024, an antifascist convention in Berlin.
I long wanted a knife tattoo and was never quite happy with the designs I saw at conventions, until this one. Studio: Rostige Nadel.
This one was a spontaneous addition during that convention. I was browsing designs and this snail just immediately clicked. It’s slightly noticeable in the photo: the snail covers up a large scar I have from a surgery long ago.
Also done at (th)ink about that tattoo convention, the year before (2023).
The best Pokemon.
Playing the original Pokemon Blue is one of the few fun memories I have of my childhood and I love Bulbasaur’s whole vibe: angry, energetic, dangerously poisonous, but also healing.
Two pieces by the same artist: Michael Dee. He’s very good with fine lines and also just really nice to work with which is always important.
A take on the Four of Swords Tarot card, one that means a lot to me.
It is often depicted with three swords hanging on a wall or stored in some way, and one sword ready to use, symbolizing a peaceful period, but one that still requires vigilance.
The four swords in this tattoo are from various periods in European history: a roman gladius, a viking sword, a medieval longsword, and a renaissance era rapier as the one that is kept ready.
This has to be one of the most wide-spread illustrations ever: The Survivorship Bias Airplane
The story goes that during World War Two, research into better armor for military airplanes was conducted and intuitively, people suggested to add more armor in the places where returning aircraft had the most bullet holes.
The error there is that it ignores all the planes that didn’t return, meaning the ones that did were able to survive the hits they got while planes that were hit elsewhere went down. Therefore, more armor should be added everywhere else that where the bullet holes on returning planes were.
So far, I’ve always made it back, despite everything.
Another convention tattoo, at the Berlin Queer Tattoo Convention 2023, and my first encounter with Rostige Nadel
These were both done at the very large Berlin Tattoo Convention in 2022.
I had been looking for a good eight-pointed star for a long time and never found one. Most star are either five-pointed and the eight-pointed ones are usually more like compass designs, not the chaos star I was going for.
At this convention I got into a conversation with an artist who took the time and designed this one with me.
Another spontaneous find. I never liked the “beautiful butterfly” symbolism around gender transition, but a big chunky moth I can very much get onboard with.
A walk-in I got done at Adam’s studio, but by one of the guest artists there. They had a selection of abstract glyphs for that day and this one really spoke to me. I always see it as three candles with their flames merging into one.
My first one from Michael Dee:
If I had to pick one favorite movie, it would be Arrival. Every time I watch it now, it touches me deeply, but it didn’t always. The first time I saw it was still pre-transition and I didn’t really get it back then.
But when seeing it again after I had been on HRT for a while, it hit me like a truck. It has become a symbol for how I finally got in touch with my feelings through transitioning, and the “human” glyph is a reminder that I even though I often feel disconnected and separate, I am in fact also a human being.
I got this one together with my partner James and he got the “life” glyph.
Kleinhutt’s incredible work and a really long project. It’s one of my favorites.
I love red pandas, they’re adorable and when they’re scared they make themselves as tall as possible in order to intimidate the threat away. But they’re also very easily scared to they often try to do this with something like a rock. Very relatable.
Two pieces from my first time at Berlin Tattoo Convention:
I like spiders a lot and had been thinking about a spider tattoo for a while but never got one because I was worried how people might react to it as some people had told me that they thought it inconsiderate towards people with arachnophobia to have a visible spider tattoo.
Eventually I got over that and realized that no, people don’t get to tell me what to do or not to do with my body. If someone has an issue with my spider tattoo, that’s unfortunate but also not my problem, and they can act accordingly.
Getting this one was an important step for me in not making all of my decisions dependent on what other people think.
The octopus was one I just fell in love with when I passed by Leevke’s stand at the convention.
This one I got at my very first convention while visiting friends in Toronto in 2017. I got introduced to a friend of a friend and he mentioned this convention to me so we just went there the next day and I got my first spontaneous tattoo from the lovely Asia.
The first two pieces I got from Adam, back when he didn’t have his own studio yet around 2016.
This was my first “joke” tattoo. Just a silly thing about writing way too much JavaScript code at the time.
Obligatory Hitchhiker’s Guide reference and always a good reminder for me.
This was my first big project, taking multiple sessions. I did the design myself and worked with a tattoo artist at Für Immer Tattoo but I think he’s not there anymore and I don’t remember his name. This was quite long ago.
It was a mixed bag honestly. He was very old-school and his technique very painful. And doing a large back piece certainly didn’t make it easier.
I still like it and Saturn means a lot to me. But I think the execution wasn’t great. It’s fine but I’ve worked with artists since then who just have better technique.
These days I also wouldn’t do the entire design myself but either let the artist to it all or collaborate on it. But I wasn’t ready to give up control like that back then.
My very first one. And oh dear, it is not done well. It’s gotten quite blurry over time and still even 20 years later feels bumpy, a sign that it was done with too much pressure, piercing the skin too deeply.
It’s another design I did myself, of course, as the insecure teenager that I was. I don’t really talk much about what it means because it’s a little cringe and also very personal, but nothing bad, don’t worry. I might tell people who I’m close with, but that’s it.