Using a tattoo machine as an etching tool ? It needed the boiling imagination of a punk-rocker to come out with such a crazy idea. Something that french tattooer Dr Lulu from Valence doesn’t miss, as of the practical mind necessary for its application.
The technique that you use to make these etchings is not very conventional, can you explain it to us ?
I start from an existing drawing, done by hand on paper, or on Photoshop, and that I print, like for a tattoo. Once the drawing cleaned, I put on a slab of transparent Plexiglas which will be used as a mould. Then, I take my tattoo machine, usually a rotative – but a coil is fine too for filling-, and I trace the design. Like for a tattoo, I take thin needles, more or less according to the tracing that I want. I don’t like to throw things, so I use first and foremost the needles which expired, needles still wrapped but with an expired best-before date.
Does this technique which consists to carve Plexiglas with a tattoo machine has a name ?
Weeeeeeeeeell, no. Spontaneously, I don’t find anything that fits. But I don’t know anybody doing this either. That doesn’t mean he/she doesn’t exist. Everything is possible.
Etching with a tattoo machine has an unpredictable parameter, how do you apprehend it ?
What I’m interested in, in etching, is the surprise ; when I put ink on the slab and I pull off the paper from the slab to see the result… It’s a little bit like developing photos. I have several degrees of satisfaction with this process : having succeeded in the making the mould ; the inking and in the end the printing. Each one of these stages is a little pleasure and altogether it provides some sort of artistic and hand-crafted fullness.
The short-lived character of the slabs, is it a problem for you?
No, if I really wanted an infinite replicable artwork, I would not do etching. What I’m interested in is the collector aspect of it, unique. Because, even if I do a series of the same motif, the result of the printing will never be the same ; because there are some asperities, different pressures, etc. Roughly on a slab, I do 25 prints ; but it’s very rare that I can go that far in general. Each passage of the press reduces the precision of the line, the slab having already endured the pressure of the testing process.
Mastering the whole process, from carving to printing, how important is that for you ?
It’s fundamental. If you don’t master the printing process, the result will be crap. I like contrast. A good tattoo is a contrasted tattoo – I mean in the black& white field. And in etching you can get very deep, dense and voluptuous black. I was looking for sensations of material and also to give these prints an old style feeling to them. If the technique is new, I wanted an authentic finish and the people to ask themselves if it was old or new. It sticks with the images I develop, which are referenced and early 20th century oriented. I always loved the style of etching. I see more etching like an exercise for its own sake.
Instagram : @d_o_c_t_e_u_r__l_u_l_u
