11 Best Tattoo Artists In Singapore To Get First-Rate Ink (2023)

@khai_the_tattooer

Right after finishing my military service, I asked my tattoo artist Deon Thomas from The Daily Dozen Tattoo Collective if he could teach me the craft. I did an apprenticeship with him for a year and a half and started full-time in October 2011. I opened Iron Fist Tattoo in 2015 and now have seven artists working out of this studio.

@fleecircus

I started tattooing full-timefour years ago. I had always liked the art of tattooing, albeit from a distance, until my current mentor and boss Lionel Ng offered me an apprenticeship. I discovered his work on Instagram and admired how he updated tribal styles with superbly clean lines. So I took a leap of faith and left the creative and advertising field that I had been in for 15 years.

Tattoo styles have been very line-work driven in recent years, it's interesting because a strong sense of personal style comes attached with this trend. My style is predominantly line-work and revolves mostly around black and grey nature themes such as animals and botanicals.

@n.eatoburrito

When I was in primary school, I used to watch MTV every day and the people in music videos were always covered in tattoos. I also watched a lot of Miami Ink on Discovery Channel.

@louislovesicktattoo

I've always been interested in body art from a young age. As a kid, I remember looking at people with tattoos and noticing how tattoos made each individual unique.

@jenxtattoos

I was helping out at an animal clicnic andperforming surgery on animals. I love animals but I wanted to pursue art to express myself. In 2011, my friend Joey Ong, who is also a tattoo artist at Visual Orgasm, introduced me to Joseph Siow. I did an apprenticeship with him. I started having my own clients(a couple of)years ago, but I’m still learning new things from seeing Joseph tattoo.

I do a lot of handwritten scriptsand that’s what I’m known forright now. When I was still anapprentice, Joseph asked me towrite a few words for a walk-in customer, who didn’t like any Photoshop font. I wrote it, she liked it and Joseph tattooed it. He posted it online and people started coming in because they like the simple handwriting that almost looks like a signature. I can change my handwriting depending on what the client wants – sometimes thicker, more illegible or more carelessly written.

I also do line and dot work.I love doing watercolour, but I try not to promote it. Watercolour tends to dull over time, especially on Asian skin because of the yellow undertone, and sometimes people cannot accept that. It works best on very fair or Caucasian skin. I would love to delve more into black and grey realism in future.

If I’m doing handwrittenscripts, I’ll just write two or threeoptions on the spot and theclients will pick from there. Mywaiting list is about a month.

I completed a full back piece recently and it’s the first large-scale black and grey realism I’ve done – it means a lot to me. It started off as a tiny tattoo at the side of his shoulder but it expanded into a full back because he trusted me.

@bradleytattoo I started out by chance. When I was 15, my friends and I had the brilliant idea to go to a tattoo shop to buy equipment. The guy at the shop (which isn’t around anymore) looked at my sketchbook of drawings and offered me an apprenticeship instead.

I did it for two to three years.And I’ve been in this fascinatingindustry that I’m very passionateabout for 13 years now.

I do strictly black and greyrealism with barely any colour.Clients come to me with anythingfrom portraits and photographsto skulls and animals. Owls andwolves are popular. Strangely,I also get lots of requests forclocks and timepieces – I’m notsure why.

I design every client’s tattoo unless it’s something straightforward like his or her grandmother’s portrait, for example. While I don’t have to redesign that, I’ll still redraw it in preparation leading up to the session itself.

I usually work on one piecea day and one client takes upabout 6 to 7 hours, includingstencilling it on their body and theactual session. I only take five or six clients a week, and there’s a waiting list of roughly seven to eight months.

My pieces these days takequite a while to prepare, andcan range from 6 hours to a fewdays for a full back or full sleeve.I occasionally get enquiries forsmaller pieces but I dedicate moretime to the bigger pieces.

I was painting a mural on someone’s wall, back in 2008 when I was in the UK, and he thought that I should tattoo him. He insisted that tattooing was the same as painting. Turns out it wasn’t! It’s completely different. After I came back, in 2010, I decided to give tattooing a try and did an apprenticeship here at Vagabond Ink with Valerie Yang.

There isn’t a proper term to describe my style. I would say that my tattoos are sketch-like with an unfinished look – that’s my most honest description. Most of my pieces look like sketches that you can’t put into a frame and actually call it art. It used to be a flaw but it’s what I’ve been doing, and now I see it as my style. I work with both black ink and colours.

I don’t get booked out inadvance. On a good day, thewaiting list is around two weeks.If it’s a big piece that requires along session, I just do one a day.If the pieces are smaller, I can dotwo or three a day.

Vagabond Ink, #01-19, 333 Kreta Ayer Rd.

@jared_asalli

I was drawing a lot when I was in National Service, and a friend suggested I try out tattooing. In 2011, I bought some cheap equipment, watched a lot of YouTube videos and did my first tattoo on a friend. That’s how I found out that I really wanted to be a tattoo artist. I did an apprenticeship at Vagabond Ink under Valerie Yang before setting up my own studio in 2014.

Every new tattoo I do is my new favourite. But if I have to choose, it would be the four I’ve done for my wife. The most recent beach-and-mountain one is a combination of etching and dots. She waited four months for her turn so I had a lot of time to think about it, and I definitely put in extra effort for this piece.

Jared Asalli, #04-03 Bugis Cube, 470 North Bridge Rd.

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