Tattoos are more popular than ever, and, whatever your opinion of that, you have to admit it’s brought about some amazing art. Thanks to technological advances, artists can do more with tattooing than ever before, using more vibrant colors and branching into a variety of styles and aesthetics. And of course those advances also makes tattoos safer and more hygienic.
Sasha Unisex, a St. Petersburg-based tattoo artist, has a truly unique style. Her brightly-colored pieces look like watercolors and depict images of animals and flowers with abstracted, geometrical forms. The subtle color gradation and lack of sharp outlines makes them look like watercolors, and there’s good reason: before tattooing a client, Unisex creates the image as a watercolor painting, and then uses that painting as a guide for the tattoo. Amazingly, they look just as vibrant on the skin as they do on paper, and the designs are charming and sweet.
Stylistically, her work marks a departure from the traditional tattoo style, the kind illustrated by the “Sailor Jerry”-style tattoos, which feature strong outlines and limited, flat coloring. This unique approach to the tattoo, which combines the general structure and clarity of the traditional tattoo with the fluid color of painting shows how far the art of tattooing has come. You can find more of Sasha Unisex’s work on her Instagram page, where she also uploads images of her paintings.
