Hi, my name is Anrijs and this is Killer Ink's Halloween special!
First tattoo I ever did was actually on myself when I just first got tattoo machine.
I tattooed a small kind of candy with a wrapping paper and with crazy colours
and I just grabbed the tattoo machine and I tried it straight on my leg
without even stencil, I think, back then.
So yeah, that was the first thing I did.
I love tattooing horror because I just really love horror as an art.
I love that I can get a little bit more freedom when I tattoo horror designs
because it allows me to do extra like textures and cracks and blood and stuff like that
what wouldn't allow in any other styles.
I would like to tattoo more horror things that I am already doing anyway
and I just really love this what I do and there is like a list of things what I would love to tattoo
but most of the time I don't really like offering that to my clients
because I believe they need to know what they want to get before getting it
so I don't really try to push my kind of things what I want to do on others
and I'm just trying to wait for the perfect moment
I'm a huge fan of horror movies and I'm a huge fan of thrillers and and vampire movies and everything like that
and my personal favourite horror movie is It Follows, and I just really love horror art
and I'm really inspired by the movies as well and I put a lot of that emotion in some of my art as well.
So yeah, it just keeps me inspired.
The first horror movie I ever saw was The Fly.
Of course I was really young - I think I was about five or six years old
I didn't understand what was going on or the movie or anything
I just thought people are randomly turning into flies and it was scary.
And a few months later, I remember I smashed my finger in a car door and a little later my nail came off
and I was really scared and I was paranoid that I'm turning into a fly myself
because again I didn't know what's happening and I thought people are just randomly turning into flies.
I remember I was hiding that from my mom as well because I didn't want her to find out that I'm turning into a fly.
The first horror movie I really saw was Nightmare on Elm Street.
It wasn't like I watched the whole movie from start to end
I just watched probably maybe 10 minutes of the movie while my mum was watching, I kind of a little bit looked at it.
We had bunk beds and I was sleeping on the top one and I was convinced every night that when I fall asleep
Freddy would drag me down or cut me in pieces and stuff, so it was quite terrifying to go to sleep.
And that was enough for me to be afraid of Freddy Krueger for years after that.
And pretty much from that time, even though how scared I was
I was still really attracted to the horror and horror art and horror movies and everything around it
and all the dark stuff.
Growing up in Latvia, we didn't have many kinds of horror things on the TV or books or anything like that
and one time at the school library, me and my friend we borrowed a book
and it was quite a small book - it was full of horror short stories.
We kind of started to write our own stories
because of course we wanted to kind of recreate some of those things there
and some of the things that we'd seen in the movies as well.
So we filled up many notebooks full of the stories.
We also started drawing kind of designs for each story, you know
so we started drawing those creatures and like vampires and zombies, whatever the story was
and for the full effect, I even cut my finger and dripped some blood on the page
just so it kind of gives that creepy feel and kind of a real vampire vibe to it.
So yeah, and pretty much after that I never stopped really drawing
like skulls and horror things, and always at school as well, I was drawing in my notebooks when we had to
learn something in lessons, I was kind of sketching horror creepy things on the corner of the notebooks.
A few years later, once I grew a little bit older, I had a huge obsession with VHS.
Me and my friend, we were always going out to rent some videotapes
and I was really inspired by the artwork that I saw in those VHS.
And we pretty much watched everything, from like Chucky, Hellraiser, and Nightmare on Elm Street
all the series... and Friday the 13th and Halloween and all the horror classics we pretty much watched all those.
And all those movies kind of inspired me to write more stories and draw more horror art.
I'm quite happy that we were growing up back then
and at that time, we couldn't just, you know, download something and just print out and put the poster on a wall
because if I wanted a poster on the wall of something creepy, I had to draw it myself because there was no other way to get it.
and I think because of that, I'm still doing it right now.
And I'm really glad I grew up in those times because that really inspired me to be the artist who I am today
and also it was just fun to draw all those pieces.
Later on I got into skateboarding and started listening to more alternative and metal music
and of course most of the musicians were covered in tattoos and I started to think that I would really love to get tattoos myself.
My first tattoo was Independent logo tattoo on my shoulder and I was around 14 back then.
And because I needed to draw that first sketch of the design myself on the sketchbook
other of my friends saw that I'm drawing tattoo designs
so they kind of started asking me can I draw something for them as well
so I started drawing like tribal designs and some skulls and stuff
just so other people can get tattooed as well
and that was kind of my first step into the tattoo world
where actually people started asking for me to design something that they can get tattooed.
Of course it was a few more years till I actually started tattooing
till I got machine and everything, but all those years I was always kind of dreaming about that one day I will tattoo
so I was starting to kind of prepare what designs I would want to get tattooed on myself
and what designs I can offer other people to get as well.
So most of my sketchbooks from back then started to look more like individual designs what would be good for tattoo work.
And so when I started tattooing at first, it was more inspired by all the drawing
and I always was drawing more colours, so it was more inspired by new school designs of tattooing, as well.
So it was like new school colourful zombies and some dolls and some creepy things like that.
So in the beginning all my work was really colourful, but then slowly over the years
I got more into black and grey and black and grey realism
and I started mixing some of those horror elements into my black and grey work
and that's kind of slowly, over the years, how my style developed.
My favourite thing about Halloween is just the spooky vibe.
So when I was growing up, we didn't have Halloween in my country
so I never really knew what Halloween even is.
I only found out about Halloween from some of the horror movies or some of the cartoons that I used to watch
so for me it was always something really far, far away
but now growing up older, I'm really into Halloween myself and what's not to like?
There's the candies, you can dress up with whatever you want, you can watch horror movies all night
and you can do all those things any day but Halloween kind of makes it more special.
Now we celebrate Halloween at the house all the time.
My daughter is really into horror and creepy things as well so that kind of helps
and she really loves Halloween, it's her favourite holiday as well.
And because we live in the city centre, we don't really have the option to go around knocking on doors and stuff
so what we do, we usually decorate the hallway inside our flat
and we put some like creepy music on and we decorate all the walls and stuff and we dress up as well
and then we each, my wife and me, we hide in different rooms
and so my daughter walks around the hallway and knocks on the doors for trick-or-treats
and so we open the doors then and kind of give out some candies and it's always kind of a fun night.
In my opinion, the scariest horror creature still now is Freddy Krueger.
I think it just traumatised me when I was a kid and I still think it's quite creepy that
wherever you fall asleep, he can just come and get you, you know?
And no matter what you're gonna do, you eventually will fall asleep.
In the future, I would love to tattoo more horror stuff inspired by movies and kind of make them even more creepier
because I think that would be pretty fun to do.
I really love when people are getting inspired by my style because back in the day, I was inspired by so many different styles
and so many different creatures, so that's what made me who I am today.
So I really love that I can give something back to the world
and so now when I inspire others, that's pretty cool
and the more good horror art out there, the better!
Thanks a lot for watching this video. This was Killer Ink's Halloween special
and I wish you all Happy Halloween!