A tattooer for over twenty years, specialising in dotwork, a style he pioneered in France, El Patman tells Inkers about his rich experience. From the realisation of his dream of becoming a tattoo artist to the exploration of a style with infinite possibilities, this great talker tells us in this interview about his immense satisfaction in exercising a passionate profession.
Can you tell us a bit about your path to tattooing? It seems to me that you were trained by French tattooer Yann Black. What impact did this encounter have at the time?
I'm 13/14 years old, I'm at school and one day, in the courtyard, there are two guys tattooing themselves with pen ink and a compass. It was magical! It was my first "contact" with tattoos and I was immediately fascinated. A few years later, it must be said that at the beginning of the 1980s it was quite rare to come across tattoo studios and even less to enter them if you were not old enough. The publications, on the other hand, were stored in bookshops between the buttocks and motorbike magazines. So, except for the opportunities to see them in the street or to admire the pictures on the records I listened to, it was a complicated and "closed" culture! I don't have that thing of: "My grandfather, my uncle, my aunt had tattoos, etc.". Nobody in my family did, until I got into it, actually!
How did you get into it?
Ever since those two guys in college, I was like: "What is this stuff? Where does it come from? How does it work? ». Then, a little after my 18th birthday, I arrived in Paris; I loved this city. I immediately picked up a phone book and searched for tattoo studios in the capital, ending up at Bruno's in Pigalle. Here we go, THE thing I had been waiting for since I was 15 years old was happening. Although very disappointed by the session, I had one. The following year, in Toulouse, there was a studio next door to me: "Fantasy Land", run by Raymond and Betty (Raymond is still in business, Betty I don't know!). Inside, the atmosphere was very different: a beer before starting, the Ramones at full blast. I thought, "Hey, I think I'd like to do that". But becoming a tattooer at that time was complicated. I wasn't particularly fond of pirate ships and tiger heads. And I didn't feel I had the necessary level of drawing skills - come to think of it, it wasn't crazy at the time and I could have certainly managed... But anyway.
What styles attracted you?
Ethnic tattoos, graphic stuff, black stuff, the "Modern Primitives", the trend that tattooers like Leo Zuluetta, Curly, Alex Binnie, Xed Le Head have been identified with. Years went by and I was drawing flashes for friends who were then getting them done by tattooers. I was looking for someone to do some blackwork for me in Paris and then, by chance, I came across a guy from Brussels: Yann Black. He was at Tribal Act, the shop opposite my house. Wow, what a slap in the face I got! I realised that YES, you could do this kind of tattoo in black and in a graphic style. Very quickly, I became one of his clients, a friend too. One day I asked myself: "My boy, you are 30 years old, what do you really like? The answer was obvious: "Tattoos, of course! »
Did you offer to work with him?
Yes, and true to form, without even seeing my book, he replied: « Ok!" I then began a "classic" apprenticeship, except that he never wanted me to prepare his station, to do his housework - on the other hand, I can weld needles, hey yeah! -. I spent my days watching him work. If I had any questions, we would talk about them after he had finished. The best way to learn is not to ask 10,000 questions, but to observe and let your eyes and brain do the rest. Almost two years passed and in 2003 I was "ready". I was told: "You have to go". And then I have this feeling of being at the bottom of the mountain, at the beginning of a long climb. That I intended to do at my own pace. I knew I was going to learn, again and again, and that's what I like about tattooing. It's never over! No one knows everything and there will always be someone to show you a different way.
It was the beginning of a long adventure.
And it's still going on today (for those who are good at maths, it will be 20 years this year!!! Sköll!!! ). It's crazy. The first time I held a machine I knew that this was really what I needed. I felt it inside, I don't know how to explain it! I had been interested in it for so many years and now, finally, I was tattooing. After all these years, I feel neither jaded nor tired. There are still many things to discover and try. But you have to stay humble. If you think you know it all and rest on your laurels, you're dead.
The Into You studio in London has also played an important role in your career?
Haaa "Into You »... It's like Tribal Act (in the bmod field, and in the tattoo field with what Yann, then Lionel brought...), these are studios that set the bar very high, that experimented and made things progress. Even before tattooing, I had an eye on what was coming out of them thanks to the few publications I could find. And then there, it was the only address I knew where dotwork was practiced. By Xed le Head and then Tomas Tomas. I was already fond of this technique, its rendering, completely different, the geometrical shapes. And so, one day in 2004, I took the train to London with the idea of going to meet them, with my book of ten photos. I was in my little shoes. I was going to see the Maharajas of tattooing! Alex Binnie wasn't there, but I did meet Duncan X (he's very impressed with my Yann tattoos that he'd heard about) but especially Xed le Head and Tomas. I also wanted to ask them if they didn't mind if I stole their dowry technique and did some in France. This kind of approach, motivated by respect, was still done in the 21st century! I was very well received. I spent the whole day there, chatting, watching them work, drinking tea (normal, not mushroom tea), taking a lot of advice on tattoos ("Make them bigger!").
Do you start as soon as you get back to Paris?
Yes, the very next day! It took a few tries before I understood the subtleties, but as I was doing them on myself it didn't matter. And the most important thing for me was to have, in a way, their "approval" to use this technique. At the beginning of the 2000s, to my knowledge, there were only a few of us offering it in France: Alexis Calvié, Sky (in Brussels) and me. In other words, no one had anything to do with it in the first few years, except for a few adventurous people (yes, gentlemen, women are much more adventurous than you!). So it took a while to get going, but now, 20 years later, it's everywhere. There are some very good and some very bad ones and that's good. It makes the style evolve.
You worked for a long time at the ArtCorpus studio in Paris, you were even the manager. How do you look back on this experience today?
Artcorpus continues to tour with a completely different team, but still with Yannick at the head of the studio. My experience started with a guest position, then as a resident and Roberto (Dardini) took over the studio with Yannick, Roberto's piercer and right-hand man. Honestly, I didn't realise how big a task it was to keep a studio of nine people going. All of them salaried, by the way. It's rare in the tattoo business, but we did it, and it was just as well. I had to manage guests, events, conventions, and my clientele... the life of a studio, in fact! They were excellent years and I don't regret having gone "through the looking glass", to have seen and participated in the evolution of this studio for five years. Today, if I had to do it again, the team would be smaller, but otherwise it was great.
You are now at Les Derniers Trappeurs, a Parisian studio launched after the ArtCorpus adventure by Roberto. You two have been friends for a long time.
Yes, it's been a few years now. It started in 2005, when he asked me to come to the Tattoo Art Fest and to guest at ArtCorpus. Later, after a long convalescence and my return to work, Adrien, Lionel and him - the founders of Les Derniers Trappeurs - offered me a job with them. I couldn't refuse. Roberto has always had this desire to make his own way, punctuated by some pretty crazy ideas: the creation of ArtCorpus, the Last Trappers, the Tattoo Art Fest (which you have to remember because there hasn't been a convention of this scale in Paris since 1999). Projects in which the door has always been open. Roberto goes his own way, but he takes you with him if you feel like it. He is a generous, solid person, on whom you can count, with a strong will. In short, he is a unique person. A very important person for me. Personally but also professionally.
You were a graphic designer before becoming a tattooer. Would you say that dotwork and your graphic universe are a legacy of this chapter of your professional life or are they the result of other influences such as free parties, psychedelic art, optical art...?
My experience as a graphic designer had little influence on the rest of my career. I was doing internal press, packaging or catalogues (do you know how to divert semolina or chocolate powder with photoshop 3.0?). On the other hand, I had long been interested in the optical and kinetic art of the 1960s, in the visuals associated with psychedelia, and much later in Myoshka and the work of Tomas Tomas. It's also true that the emergence of Techno in the early 1990s, of the Raves, visually and musically, had a huge influence on me. I once had the honour of having a book dedicated to my apple thanks to Artitude, which was entitled Mydriasis (I leave it to you to find out what that means).
Your work is based on patterns found in oriental cultures, especially mandalas. Is this ethnic side something you claim?
I like the mandala and the repetitive side because for me it also represents the perpetual movement of Life, of the Universe, of History itself. This ethnic side pays homage to the civilizations where tattooing originated. Obviously, the designs have evolved, they have adapted to time and history, but the base remains ethnic. And it's also because visually, it speaks to me, much more than other things. On the other hand, I am not at all into the "spiritual" dimension of the motifs. I remain attached to the idea that a tattoo should be unique and personal.
The line is a succession of dots, does that mean that you can do everything in dotwork?
YES!!!:) The dotwork brings a different rendering, another way to treat the shadow and the light. And it's an ancestral technique, which can be found on very old illustrations, used in tattooing a long, long time ago. Whether it's for colour, traditional or geometric, it adapts to everything.
Dotwork is precise and meticulous work. Are your eyes okay?
Hahaha, yes almost. Now I take breaks more regularly, just to rest them! It is indeed very meticulous, especially since I really work in "point by point", not in whip. It's as fast as another technique and it's less painful. I work with very quiet direct-drive presses. With the regularity that dotwork imposes, I forget about the rest of the world when I work.
What are the difficulties you face when you like to entangle fine patterns with complex geometry to create large pieces like arms?
The biggest difficulty is the stencil break. You have to make connections that don't show on the same pattern; put one on top of another without overlapping; manage the volume of the body when the patterns are in 2D, etc. I don't use any software (for example, pattern-making software) that allows me to have the right measurements, I stick to my stencils in all directions. For the tattoo itself, I'm pretty fast though.
How long does it take you to prepare a piece like this?
I have a library of patterns that allows me to come up with unique designs dedicated to each project. The rosettes and mandalas for example, I never make the same ones twice. The preparation time is about ten hours. Apart from these few drawings, I never prepare the final project in advance. In 90% of cases, before the meeting, I look at the thing and I say to myself: "No, I don't like it". And I redo everything. So, we meet with the client at the first appointment and we choose the designs and placements. I also give us the freedom to change the project along the way. It's a two-person job, constantly. The tattoo is a lot of exchanges with the person in order to reach a compromise between what you like and what the person wants to wear. I work in all formats.
Can you tell us a bit about how you do it? Do you do everything with a software program before you take out the stencils?
NO! It's a jealously guarded secret! Well, I work a lot with Illustrator and recently with ProCreate (which has opened up new horizons for me). Illustrator (and therefore vector drawing) has the advantage of allowing you to go from a 20cm to a 60cm drawing, without losing definition. It's a software that I've been using since the beginning and that I know very well. In the early years I did everything on paper. Patterns, mandalas, it was a pain. Then one day I switched back to Illustrator! A lot of tattoo artists use Procreate, Geometrica, nowadays, and I admit that it's very practical and fast. You can criticize it but you mustn't forget that the ideas are in your brain, not in your tablet or computer!
You recently talked about getting out of your comfort zone. Today, after a 20-year career, where are these new challenges?
It is necessary. If you don't do it, first of all you'll get bored, and secondly the young tattooists who come along with a crazy level will make you disappear. You can feel lost with all that's going on (the explosion of private studios, the purchase of equipment on Mamazone, those who start without training), but it's up to everyone to be interested, to exchange, to always have an eye on what's coming.
Do you have other means of artistic expression? It seems to me that you have worked with clothing brands and you recently collaborated with the Inkers app?
The collaboration with Inkers was really great. Even though I didn't have all the technical knowledge behind it, I learned, and I'm very happy with what came out of it! I hope it will be liked as well of course and that it can help. I also worked with a small clothing brand, Black Hurricane, more metal oriented, on illustrations that have nothing to do with what I do. I'd like to develop another collaboration like this, but it's taking longer to set up, so for the moment I won't say more! I also have a real passion for music since I was a kid. I don't compose anymore but I always liked to mix. I still have my good old MKII. Some people play guitar, dismantle engines, I have my turntables. So I have a few mixtapes online that I would like to distribute. So here's to you! Finally, I'm working on serigraphy, linocut, pyrography, etc... it's all new and it's progressing! + IG : @elpatman.ttt Les Derniers Trappeurs 6 passage de Ménilmontant, 75 011 Paris
