Berlin-based tattoo artist Daisy Watson is known for her black pen illustration style, creating minimal art pieces that are adorned on the skin. Inspired by modern artists like Picasso, Matisse, and Jean Cocteau, her illustrations are part real, part surreal. “I taught myself how to draw and I feel that content is reflected in the different and more varied style of tattoos I produce,” she explained in an interview with All Day’s blog.
“I mainly draw my inspiration from my own experiences, beliefs, and development throughout my career,” she adds. “The objects I chose to draw are everyday objects but with a slight stylistic or simplistic differences, making them eternal in a way as they never really go ‘out of fashion’ or become unpopular.”
Indeed, her work makes for an interesting fashion statement, drawing quite a massive fanbase (on Instagram alone she has amassed more than 210k followers). But when it comes to her career path, her road was a meandering one – having first gained attention on Tumblr, where she would post photos of her illustrations and tattoos.
“From the positive feedback it got from everyone I started taking appointments and working from my home and studio spaces,” she recalled. “There’s a certain normalized order within the tattoo industry where you gotta first do an apprenticeship, learn all the different styles and then you get the chair and get to develop your own individual style. But this was different to me as I didn’t do an apprenticeship so my style simply developed from the beginning through my own inspiration, meaning rather than everyone walking around with the same designs, people get new and interesting designs, rather than just going to a standard studio, picking a design from the portfolio and ending up leaving with the ‘H & M of tattoos.’”
Check out some of her original designs in the gallery below:
