I came across Thomas Hooper's Tattoo work the other day, and I've been completely blown away by it. Hiss work is quite traditional, but he brings something totally new and fresh to it. Clear themes of religion, natural, and paradoxically science run through his work.
Hooper works predominantly in black and white and his style is so ornate and intricate that it verges on the Rococo. When you look at it, they look more like sculptures made from rock, you almost forget that they are purely ink and blood. I've never seen tattoos like it, and it does help that they are photographed beautifully.
Thomas Hooper also does a lot of painting work, which is much much darker - both incolour and subject matter, which I wasn't digging as much - a little surprising really considering I do always prefer the darker stuff. But it's well worth a moment of your time to check out on his site.
I love Thomas hooper work - so in no way I mean to belittle him but there are a few other artists out there who also do phenomenal art much like his : Black and grey traditionalish Tattooos that do not look like traditional Americana- with much the same approach, stippling shading and very similar "religious, natural and paradoxical sience themes". In fact he was not the originator of the style but has improved on it so much that he is one of the 3 main guys who are dominating this ever increasing in popularity style.
ReplyDeleteBlack Works is the name by which this type of style is now widely referred as. Not to be confused with black and grey. Technically Black works are mostly done with lots of saturated blacks, very little color and black and grey shading combined with stipple shading. So black and grey IS utilized in Black Works but are also two very distinctive styles of tattooing. I would suggest you do a google search of black work tattoos and check out all the other artists out there , I would say Jondix is another name to check for -