Nick Bertioli is a tattoo artist.  He works out of Timeless Tattoo in Los Angeles, as well as Art Corpus and Eurotribal in Paris.  What’s interesting about Nick is that he never had an apprenticeship, and has never taken any art classes.  He was just a lover of Renaissance art and one day picked up a tattoo machine.  That was 4 years ago.  Since then Nick has been seen on ModBlog, and has been tattooing all over the world. One of his more recent pieces is this memorial portrait that he did while working at Art Corpus.

Recently Nick has branched out into painting, and sent in a photo of his very first oil painting.

For someone with no formal training, I’d say Nick is doing pretty fantastic just off his natural ability, and I can’t wait to see what he sends in next.

For those of you not familiar with the term “leaf rubbing”, it’s when you take a leaf from a tree (or other plant) and place it underneath piece of paper, then gently rub a crayon or charcoal across the paper, creating the impression of the leaf.  For Christiano Aielli, he does things a little differently.

To start, he cuts out the shape of the leaf, then he follows that by rubbing ink into the wound.  The result is a little different than the traditional method, as you can see below.

Then again, this may be one rose you might not want to smell.

Anji sent in this photo along with a number of her other works, so expect to see some more from this talented IAM member.

When it comes to suspension photos, especially ones from the #Leeds Suspension Team, the main focus is on the person suspending.  Now I mention the #Leeds team not only because this photo is from one of their suspensions, but because their team is mostly performance based, with their suspensions being part of either a live show or a photoshoot.  Of course, without the team behind the suspensions, we wouldn’t get such amazing photos from them, like these two photos from back in March.  So here’s a shot of Arseniy looking on backstage while the subject of the shoot hangs above in the invisible chair suspension.

I normally don’t post pieces that aren’t complete, but IAM:Geffraust’s chestpiece is looking pretty cool even though it isn’t finished.  From what I can tell, Groseb from Bodyfikation in Bordeaux, France is giving Geff a steampunk-esque chest in sections, building him up part by part.  His upper left shoulder, which could be taken as a piece on it’s own, stands out as one of the more complete sections.

Taking a look at the right side of his chest you can see just how the artist is piecing it together.

Hopefully Geff keeps us up to date as this progresses as I’m really curious as to what it will look like when finished.

What better way to close out this beautiful Memorial Day than with a beautiful BME Girl.

Yep, it’s cropped.  Keep reading to see the rest of it.

Read more…

BME member eLHATABorov just had his 21st birthday and to celebrate his dad’s girlfriend baked him a BME cake!  It’s always nice to see parents embracing their child’s culture, as opposed to shunning it.

No word on what kind of cake it was.

As Jen pointed out last week, I may be considered something of a nerd.  Well it turns out I must not be much of one as I had no clue what this tattoo was of until I did a search for the word “Modron“.  I’m sure there are a couple of Dungeons and Dragons players out there that could explain these things in greater detail, and I’d imagine kmg454 would be one of them, seeing as how this is his tattoo.

This is based off a drawing by Christian Spalthoff and can be found in the Fantasy Tattoo gallery.

Arad Bert from Kipod Tattoo in Tel Aviv made me grin from ear to ear when I saw this tattoo.  Probably because I just watched the Panda Cheese commercials last week.  Regardless, this is a great tattoo from one of the many talented artists at Kipod Tattoo.

It seems that I only have time to post on Modblog when I have to be the bearer of bad news. Ran Maclurkin was riding his motorcycle on the way home from work Tuesday night when he was hit by a 4×4. The impact was so severe that it broke his T11 vertebrae as well as his C7. The doctors will be performing surgery on him this coming Friday to fuse the bones. After that he will need to wear a Halo brace for 3 months.

As I’m sure you can guess, he won’t be able to work during that time. As he doesn’t have insurance, this is going to hurt him financially. There is no telling when he will be able to tattoo again. Peter Sheringham, owner of The Piercing Urge where Ran works, is raising funds to help Ran during this horrendous time. If you have a couple bucks to spare, please send it via Paypal to petersheringham@yahoo.com.au. Anything will help. If you’ve got a couple dollars, please send it as every penny counts!

Some of you may remember Ran from the “One Hour Tattoo” that I posted of a tattoo that he did on me during the 2010 BME World Tour. Not only does Ran specialize in Abstract Noir but the rest of his work is amazing. His work in realism and color is top notch. Please donate what you can as well as keeping Ran in your thoughts. Contact Peter if you need any more information on donations or Ran’s condition. We were do our best to keep you updated.

You can also check out The Piercing Urge’s website for more information.