Tattooed Ladies

I did a project about women in the western world that chose to get tattooed pursue a career within the tattoo industry around the 1800s to the 1960s. These women got tattooed and many started working in circus' as 'tattooed ladies.' A lot of them went on to learn how to tattoo an opened up their own shops and made a lot of money. This allowed them to be more independent than most women at this time. I found the stories about the women very inspiring. I thought that maybe if more people were aware of the history behind these tattooed ladies then perhaps they might respect the art form a little more. I have created a little package in which there are eight A6 printed illustrations of these women with some information about them written on the back. These packs are available to buy from the shop section of this website. For the illustrations I painted the ladies using acrylic paints. I then drew out tattoo designs for them using Photoshop. I also created Screenprints out of these illustrations which I then scanned back into photoshop and edited. I also used some one of the acrylic paintings as a template for a tattoo flash for some of my Ebru tattoo designs.