I began my handpoke tattoo practice during the summer of 2024, shortly after I began medically transitioning. Unhappy in both my own body and the current state of my artistic practice, I found tattooing to be an incredibly grounding, rewarding, and transformative way of creating art. Most of my previous work took numerous days (if not weeks) to create a single piece, whereas a tattoo would be finished over the course of a few hours, often resulting in a new friend as a happy biproduct of the tattoo.
My handpoke tattoo practice is markedly distinct from my other artistic practice, largely due to the limitations of the medium. I found myself unable to create the highly layered, ethereal landscapes which were the centerpiece of my practice, instead leaning into more gestural and figurative elements. As character-driven narration has taken the back burner in my other work, I find tattooing to be my primary outlet for practicing character design (largely through various angels and fruits, as seen above).
Character-focused work has also provided me with a unique outlet to take on fun custom ideas, largely from other pieces of media! While I am selective about what types of customs I will do, I always love having the chance to play around in some of my favorite worlds, bringing my own visual language to characters I love (custom work from Katamari, Adventure Time, and Kaiba pictured above).
As of late, I have been re-examining the intersection between my primary artistic practice and tattooing in order to find new ways to bring more of the soft, layered colors and botanical forms from my drawn and painted work into my more gestural and figurative tattoo practice. I have had the chance to play with botanical forms in a more fluid way than I had previously considered possible with tattooing, using green linework instead of black and incorporating the same shape language I use throughout my landscapes. Above are a few sweet examples of botanical tattoos I gave myself and my mama.
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Come on by my studio and I would love to bring my art to your skin! Feel free to shoot me an email (elysianecstacy@gmail.com) or DM me on my Instagram tattoo page (@armor4angels) in order to book your next tattoo!
View my full flash book here