![]() ![]() This past summer, sh e was invited backstage to tattoo her favourite band, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, at Wayhome Music Festival. ![]() She now gets contacted by bands through her Instagram to do tattoos for them when they come to town. Word of mouth and social media is how stick ‘n’ pokes became more mainstream and how Liu has built her business. I think everyone gained more knowledge of what it is because all their friends have one now.” “I would say right before summer ended my Ryerson friends realized it can be easily done. “I think in a really short period of time their popularity rose,” she said. On her sadstab account she gained followers fairly quickly, she now has over 1,500 after seven months. Liu’s trajectory from casual stick ‘n’ poker to a stick ‘n’ poke artist coincided with the rise in popularity of this kind of tattoo. Later she learned that the needle should never be put down while tattooing from Homepoke, a well-known anonymous stick ‘n’ poke artist in Toronto. The artist taught her how to stencil tattoos, how deep to poke the skin and how to sanitize the wound afterwards. ![]() Liu really got into tattooing after a stick ‘n’ poke artist saw her artwork on her other Instagram page, altpaca, and wanted her to turn some of her drawings into tattoos at the Time Festival at Fort York in 2015. “For me, just knowing the brushstrokes and line work are important, you need to know line work and pointillism to be able to tattoo,” she said. She attributes this to her years of experience drawing and painting. Stick ‘n’ poke tattoos tend to be imperfect or wonky, but Liu’s are very precise. She now uses actual tatt oo ink and sanitized tattoo needl es as opposed to the India ink and sewing needles she would get at craft stores.Ī photo posted by sadstab on at 10:35am PDT Since then she’s done 185 tattoos out of her home studio and charges anywhere between $40 and $200 for her work. She launched the Instagram account sadstab in April of this year to promote her work after friends told her they were willing to pay. Now, Liu has turned stick ‘n’ poke tattooing into a side business. But there’s been a shift recently and this sort of tattooing has become a much more safe and widespread trend. Her date asked her to poke a Chinese character on him and he supplied her with sewing needles, a vodka cap bottle and India ink.įor decades this has been how most stick ‘n’ poke tattoos occur: in the spur of the moment, at parties and not necessarily in the most sanitary conditions. (Kelsey Adams)įourth-year new media student Fion Liu gave her first stick ‘n’ poke tattoo in 2014 on a Tinder date. Stick ‘n’ poke artist Fion Liu works on a tattoo for a client in her home studio. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |