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Inside her right elbow, Kreayshawn has a hamburger with Mickey Mouse inside. The original illustration is by artist Joshua Agerstrand. She says: “It’s Mickey Mouse in a cheeseburger. I like burgers, I like Disney characters, so why not put ’em together? Would you eat a burger with a rat inside? I wouldn’t, but it looks good.” (more…)
On the outside of Jahan Yousaf’s right forearm is the Vajra Brush, a work of art by Alex Grey. The piece symbolizes the spiritual nature of art. At the center of the drawing is a combination of a paintbrush and the eastern spiritual symbol Vajra. Two winged snakes wrap around it, similar to the Caduceus symbol. Though it is often used as a symbol of medicine, the Caduceus represents occupations associated with the Greek god Hermes.
The artist explains a means that the meaning of the vajra paintbrush is “to awaken people to their own essence through the light of higher vision. The entire history of art is an expression of universal creativity that invisibly surrounds and supports every creative act. The vajra is a spiritual device, a thunderbolt scepter owned by the Hindu god Indra and adopted by the Buddhist sages as a symbol of the diamond-like clarity and brilliance of the mind’s true nature.”
In October 2014, Alexia Rodriguez got a tattoo on her forearm of one of her own drawings. It is a portrait of a woman’s face with skeletal features and stitches around the mouth. Artist Joshua at Crimson Veil Tattoo in El Paso, TX transformed Alexia’s artwork into the permanent inking.
Grimes got this huge brushstroke tattoo on her right forearm in December 2015. Although most of her other tattoos have been done by herself or friends, this one one created by Delphine Noiztoy, an artist who specializes in realism blackwork.
In an instagram post, she explained “Big streaks of paint so I always remember that I’m an artist, Delphine is a master of this style. I hope to add more specks of paint with her later, so that my hands always look as if I’ve just been painting and making a mess.”
The tattoo is a redesign of her existing cross tattoo, which was smaller and more ornate.
Bethany Cosentino has a tattoo on her right upper thigh of an old-fashion style painting in an ornate frame. The elaborate design has a ram’s head and lion’s head in the bottom corners.
Teyana Taylor has a large tattoo on her side of a graffiti design by famous street artist Banksy. It is a girl shooting her head with a gun. Red butterflies are exploding out of her head.
Frances Bean Cobain has a tattoo on her back that says “L’art est la Solution au Chaos,” which is French for “Art is the Solution to Chaos.”
Tove Lo’s third tattoo is this design on her right forearm of a heart with an eye in the middle and flames coming out the top. The image comes from the paintings of artist Mark Ryden. She told Idolator “It’s in a lot of his paintings, but really small. So I wanted to blow it up because I just love the eye so much.” Tove Lo’s tattoo combines details from multiple occurrences of the symbol: the eye in the heart comes from the painting Sophia’s Mercurial Waters while the flames look most like those in Swap Meet Man.
The tattoo was done at Infamous Studio in Stockholm, Sweden. She describes her artist as “a total asshole but very talented.”
Tove Lo has had three tattoos — this flaming heart, a scorpion, and a girl riding a bee — for the entirety of her career, so we’re not sure precisely when she got them. She first showed off this tattoo in a June 2012 instagram photo, though it could possibly be older than that. (more…)
Tove Lo has a large tattoo on her upper left arm of a girl riding a bumblebee from the Mark Ryden painting Clear Hearts, Grey Flowers.
The tattoo reminds her of the times she spent in her first band called Tremblebee. “I used to have black hair and bangs when I was in that band, and since it was my first band that I was part of it meant so much to me. I had my first gigs with that band,” she told Arena. “Then I found this painting of Mark Ryden’s that I really enjoyed, he’s an American painter who’s super talented. I saw this picture and I’m like ah, that just goes straight to my heart, so I decided to put it all over my arm.”
The painting was created to be the cover of alternative rock band Jack Off Jill’s 2000 album Clear Hearts, Grey Flowers. Jack Off Jill’s lead singer Jessicka Addams came up with the concept for the artwork and the based this particular character off of herself. However it seems that Tove Lo didn’t know that the painting was designed for an album cover. In an instagram post, Addams explained that she was flattered by the tattoo, even it is was unintentional. She writes: “[Tove Lo] happens to have (unknowingly) my face on her arm. This image is from a painting by Mark Ryden created to become Jack Off Jill’s “Clear Hearts, Grey Flowers” album cover released on July 18th 2000. It doesn’t upset me that the singer claims to know nothing of this album, but it does exist.”
This was her second tattoo and it’s much larger than her first, which was the scorpion on her chest. “I went from that to this big one, this Mark Ryden painting,” she says in a YouTube vlog. “I remember after I did this one I was kinda like ‘Fuck. What did I just do? It’s over my whole arm.’ But now it’s just part of my body.”
Jacqui Sandell loves classic art and has a large tattoo on her right thigh based on the 1896 lithograph “Zodiac” by Czech Art Nouveau painter Alphonse Mucha. She had the outline of the tattoo done in June 2011 and most of the coloring done in September 2011. While the original work has flat colors, Jacqui’s tattoo has shading to give it a more three-dimensional look. The tattoo was done by Matthew Lukesh of Seppuku Tattoo in Bloomingdale, NJ. (more…)
