Daisy Watson’s tattoos are very much inspired by modern art. When scrolling through her Instagram page Picasso comes to mind, but so does Matisse and Jean Cocteau. Using thin but confident black lines, she composes surreal illustrations that are striking in their simplicity.
“I would call my style essentially single black pen illustrations,” she said in an interview with All Day’s blog. “I taught myself how to draw and I feel that content is reflected in the different and more varied style of tattoos I produce.”
Her career spiraled thanks to 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.'”
Rather than the bland “H&M tattoos”, Watson offers a unique take on the traditional art of tattooing, adding her own twist to it. And people seem to enjoy her work just the same, with more than 220k followers on Instagram alone. “I mainly draw my inspiration from my own experiences, beliefs, and development throughout my career,” she says. “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.”
Take a look for yourself.
