Kristin, Micio and a Forever Bond

Sometimes I feel that for the people who are not tattooers it might be hard to understand how much we can connect to certain tattoos, customers, sessions, experiences, etc. Of course, for a lot of us, sometimes we get customers who just come by very certain of what they want and don’t really want to share — or don’t have — a “meaning”, and that’s totally fine, I’ve been there myself many times when it comes to my own tattoos.

But sometimes, it happens that a customer comes in with a certain story that, for the “regular” listener, it would be just one more small design, but for the ones who are really attuned to feelings — others’ and their own — we can read in between the lines and really grasp the true feeling of that tattoo.

In March, I made a few of these sessions and this is one of them.

Backing up a little for context: in 2017 I was already tattooing for three years. I am self-thought and super obsessed with the subjects that I am passionate about, so that usually makes my learning growth super fast.

In that year I decided to quit my side jobs and focus all my income only on tattooing. I had this tattoo project (my first one!) called “Non-Straight Curvesss for Non-Straight People” which consisted in drawing full and traced lines on a person’s body in a way that they would only look “straight” when the person was standing still. When they moved, the line work moved along.

Kristin was the first customer who was one of my friends to ask for this project. And more: she asked that the line went through an entire side of her body. I felt so grateful to the universe (and my own hustle of course) that she reached out to me for such a project.

A couple of sessions later we finished it and Kristin became a recurrent customer for a while, coming back for a medium cover up on the ribs and another small tattoo on the ankle.

Cut to eight years after that, this January I receive a tattoo booking request from no one other than Kristin! (And I still remembered her last name! The mind of a tattooer is something unexplainable…) I was so happy when I read her form entry and instantly wrote her to schedule a consultation. The motif was quite small, but somehow I felt I needed more information to work on the design.

She mentioned in the booking form that this tattoo would be in homage to one of her cats — a best friend — Micio, who had died. With that information I already knew this tattoo would be dealing with something on the emotional realm. But one detail really got me intrigued: she said she didn’t want the design to be “obvious”.

Usually when I do homage tattoos to pets, most of my customers like to keep it super clear, tattooing the pet’s names, illustration versions of favourite photos, or birthdays dates, for example. As Kristin’s request was quite different from what I usually do, I was super excited to hear what she had in mind and which direction this tattoo was going to take.

When she came in for the consultation, we took sometime to catch up given the eight years we didn’t see each other. She told me about her new job, the difficulties and thrills of being almost 40 and not having your entire wardrobe matching “your age” — to which I relate more that you would imagine — and some other trivial topics. These moments are one of the things I enjoy most in being a tattooer for more than a decade: being able to meet people again and again, witnessing changes in their lives and being the one to mark stories and moments on their bodies over time. Skin changes a lot and so do people and this is so amazing!

But going back to the consultation…

After catching up, we entered the tattoo topic with Kristin telling me that Micio was a best friend to her — this kinds of connections only a person with a pet best friend would understand — and Micio’s passing was obviously super sad. During grief process, she decided to delete all the photos of Micio from her phone and to keep only a printed version of them in a physical photo-album — something that, as a photographer in the past, I loved hearing. My minimalistic self sometimes misses the physicality of photo albums…

Then she said she kept one photo of Micio on her phone to send me, because she wanted this tattoo to be based on it. I looked at it and first thing I thought was “oh, cute pose. I can totally work with this”, but as the size of the tattoo was small (4-5cm max), I was ready to tell Kristin that we would have to take down some details on Micio’s beautiful fur, so that the tattoo could age better.

It was at that moment Kristin told me the exact words I secretly wanted to hear: “But I don’t really want a portrait of Micio. I wanted something more abstract, something that it’s only between us… something more personal, more… abstract”. Lava-hearts exploding out of my volcano head. “YES!!!!” — I said practically screaming — “like a secret!”. Yes. Like a secret, she agreed.

And like as if it was magic — if you know me, you know how much I relate tattooing to magic — I instantly looked at a beautiful detail coming out of Micio’s right eye. A subtle poetic black stain that looked like a giant tear with two dots in the end coming down the little snout. I was about to — practically screaming again — suggest that we tattoo that detail, when she said: “I was wondering if you could do something with this little mark Micio had on the right eye, that I really loved and it was something that I saw everytime”.

… I paused for one second, putting myself together to actually not scream in happiness — I’m braSilian so… yeah… apparently we “scream” a lot? — and let out an intense “YES. This is EXACTLY the spot I was looking at when you mention abstract!”.

If it was an anime, we would’ve hugged in a spiral movement, taken flight and ascended to the skies with little pink butterflies and golden glitter swirling around us.

But being on Earth, we just looked at each other, smiled, and from that moment we knew this tattoo had more to it than “just” an homage to Micio’s life. It was pure magic.

(checkout the drawing pages below)

Black abstract drawing and tattooing, no matter the size, is something I am studying a lot lately. When I get obsessed with something, it’s hard to let it go and “see it from the outside” as we should do at some point, when we work with art (otherwise the process becomes endless). So it took me a while to draw this one. But I did it and when I sent it, the response was nothing else than: “(…) it’s so Micio-esk, I love it!”.

I can’t tell how happy I was that my drawings resonated to Kristin. In the process of creating a custom tattoo, I find it really important to train our ability to think with the other person’s mind and feel with the other person’s heart. Of course we are different people, so the results will never be the same, but in observing and feeling these, we can start getting a grasp on what the person wants for their bodies and then we are more able to create the vision and the tattoo for that.

During my drawing process, I worked with a black brush pen, just looking at Micio’s photo and mimicking the movement of the pattern with my hand on paper. I started just studying the hand movement (images below, page 1, drawings 1-6) and as much as I would look at it, the more I discovered new details and textures so I started adding those to the hand gesture as well (page 1, drawings 7-18).

In those more abstract cases, I also like to work with a technique called “blind contour drawing” which consists in drawing just looking at the subject and not at the paper, following your eye movement and speed with your hands. I find it a bit hard to explain this technique using only text, but it is a great drawing exercise to get your eyes, hands and brain in the same page (pun intended) when drawing from observation (quick ad: when I release my tattoo course, this will be one of the classes). This is also very good for muscle training. Yes, drawing is also about muscle training 🤯.

In the consultation, I told Kristin that I would deliver two options: one with my abstract creations based on the photo (page 1) and the other with a digital drawing traced exactly from the photo, so she could also see a more realistic shape and texture (page 2, drawings 1-4).

But this magical story doesn’t end there…

When Kristin came in for the tattoo session, she said she liked two of them, but specially number 9 (page 1), that a friend of hers said it also resembled a little cat paw, when they stretch it out and you can see all the little beans and in between the toes/claws. That was a huge plus given that Kristin loved this detail as it looked like the cat paw was resting on her arm.

But then she said “I’m just not sure about the placement, because I have some scars there so I don’t know if it would look good. Do you tattoo on scars?”, “Yes, of course”, I said, “as long as they are more than one year old. Actually this is a great design if you want to cover up that scar, because I think the scar tissue will add a nice texture to the tattoo.”

Kristin loved the idea so the last detail was to adjust the shape of the final design to the actual scar shape. And to our “surprise” — or magic (wink, wink) — the design and size Kristin chose, fit PERFECTLY on top of the scar.

Standing in front of the mirror, she looked at the design and then to me in awe. Her next words marked this entire session for me: “Wow… this tattoo just reached a whole new meaning for me and I LOVE it”.

Kristin never mentioned anything related to the scars — something that actually happens often when I do scars coverups, and having scars myself, I know how it goes —, and I was completely fine with it. Some feelings and memories are more for the inside than the outside.

We smiled at each other and started tattooing.

The day after the tattoo session, I woke up with this message by Kristin:

And this is the biggest feeling for me when it comes to custom tattoos: being grateful to the universe for making people cross paths and making me able to materialize Kristin’s memory one more time, throughout the years.

Thank you Kristin for coming back, trusting me to tattoo you once again and for letting me write about your story. I’m forever grateful. And thank you, Micio, for being such a good pet friend.