Talented tattoo artist Tommy is currently based in the West Midlands, The UK. He started tattooing after he was offered an apprenticeship at his local studio where he was being tatttooed at the time after showing interest in how the tattoos were made. He was always fascinated by tattooing and the alternative lifestyle and freedom that tattoo artists seemed to have. He started by making bookings for the other artists answering the phones and cleaning the shop, after a while of doing that he was trusted to start doing small tattoos on friends then eventually walk-in customers. After that he started taking on larger scale projects as time went by. “I only work in black and grey, I do love colour tattoos and have them myself but I was always attracted to black and grey even before I started tattooing.”, he told us in our online interview and continued describing his style as follows; “My personal preference to black and grey is just down to how natural and timeless it looks on the skin. In regards to style that’s a tough one I wouldn’t say my tattoos are realism they are more illustrated although sometimes I try to bring in realistic features in my pieces. I can’t put a finger on why I prefer to do this but I just do tattoos in ways that I would like to have myself, I’m quite lucky as 99% of customers that would like to get tattooed by me ask for things that my style caters for. I’m currently doing a lot of Chicano style tattoos at the moment and I love this style.” We also asked him about his source of inspiration and he told us; “With the current boom in social media and Instagram being the main platform tattoo artists us to exhibit their work Inspiration is so easy to find the list is so long on people work I admire but to narrow it down to a few I would have to say mister cartoon he inspires my in few ways artistically, business and just his longevity in the business is something to admire others to name would be @rubentattooer @ericmarcinizyn @kindamo off the top of my head, the list really goes on I could name so may.” We found his work and designs extremely attractive and would love to share some of our favourites with you. Here you can see Tommy’s best realistic tattoos in black and white.
