My name's Ryan Smith. I'm also known as 'The Scientist'
and I work at No Regrets in Exeter.
I've just been guesting for a couple days in the Design 4 Life studio in Liverpool.
I've been tattooing for nearly four years now. I was a music producer and a DJ before this but
tattooing's what I always wanted to do. Used to work away with the music and eventually
got given an opportunity to learn how to tattoo and took it with both hands and ran with it.
I've always been interested in art ever since I was a little boy and my
dad often tells me stories of me drawing Mr. Tickle from the Mr. Men on the walls
at the age of three, much to his displeasure. But for as long as I can
remember I've been into my artwork. At school, at college and everything.
Inspiration-wise, I literally get my inspiration from everywhere.
Movies, films, comics, but generally also just life. Just walking around living life you can see
there's so much to be gained from what you can see in your surroundings.
You know, symmetry, formations, anything really. It's all about looking outside of
not just tattoos but just looking at, you know, nature and life. So much to see.
There's many artists that inspire me really through my career. Probably too many to name.
Some of the top American guys I really enjoy watching their art work and
like to look at is Phil Garcia, Roman Abrego, Rich Pineda...
but also there's so many European guys as well.
I mean, there's just so much talent around nowadays.
In Europe as well, for me, I find the styles can be a little bit more innovative.
As such, I think sometimes some of the other markets are a little bit closed, but in Europe we seem to be a
little bit more out there, I think, perhaps, in our style and the way you innovate and do things.
But yeah, there's just too many artists, I think, to name as my favourite.
I like all sorts of art work really. I like sculptures. I'm really into
oil painting, especially the sort of Renaissance period stuff, but I'm also a
big fan of the avant-garde and abstract styles as well. I think the last museum I visited
was van Gogh's museum in Arles, in France, which was last summer. I went
there, that was a really big eye-opener that one. There's some really good galleries,
some interesting stuff going on there.
I think the best way to describe my style is probably ornamental.
I have a lot of very tight, ornate, detailed pattern work
and line work within my style. I just try to innovate all the time - just try and
create something new, something fresh for people.
I think certainly in the last year my top highlights have to be winning 'Best of Show' in Milan doing a
collaboration with my good friend Jay Freestyle. A couple of weekends ago I won
the 'Best of Show' at the London Tattoo Collective and winning an award at the
London Tattoo Convention in September was pretty big as well. I never stop working really,
just focus and work hard.
I think for new trends and styles within the scene, we're going to see a lot of stuff coming up over the next few
years. I think collaborations are going to be a big part of our scene and something
I will certainly get heavily involved in. I'm setting up a big collaboration project
later on this year called the Kaos Theory. It's a collaboration project which
brings together six artists over one week and every artist is going to be a different
style to one another, and they're going to be collaborating with each other and just
creating some real new innovative fresh artwork for people. I've got many things
coming up at the studio I'm working with, No Regrets. We're opening a new studio
in London, so it's a really interesting time for us.
Advice I'd give to anyone new coming into the tattoo scene... let your mind take you somewhere,
it's all about being creative. You've got to be prepared if you want to do really
well, you're going to have to make some sacrifices in your life to be able to
get forwards, to be able to learn to get better. But I would just say every
opportunity you get to learn, do it.
Coming up with my style was a development process, really.
I was doing a lot of dot work at the time. Lot of smaller pieces
like gap filling on people and started looking at layering the dot work up,
trying to make things look a bit more 3D, like things were staggered and on top of each other.
That's kind of the development process for it, how I came about with the style.
I really like my tattoos to adhere to the body's own natural flow and shape.
When I'm composing my pieces, I really like the designs to actually sit on the body well
so they shape with the muscles own tones and the body's own natural flow lines.
I think the minute you start worrying about this in a design, instead
of just doing the design and sticking it on someone's body... as soon as you start
worrying about how it actually sits on the body, I think it's the minute you
turn a good tattoo into an amazing tattoo.