His name is Lesha Lauz, he is from Russia and he is well known as Alexey. His tattoo studio is located in Moscow and besides of being a great tattooist, he is an amazing painter. Actually, when you ask him when he started to tattoo, he says “it was back in 2008 when some of his friends persuaded me to do it”, knowing that he is a good artist.
And having that in mind, I think he must have being grateful with those friends, because now he has become one of the best tattoo artists in the world and also because he got to create his own style: glitch tattoos.
But how does he do to create these tattoos, which are a mix of watercolor and new traditional tattoos? Well, this is what he told me: “First I ask the client in detail, about what he wants, then I draw the design using markers and then I follow the standard procedure: prepare machines, make stencil, and so on”. But when he says “I draw the design with markers” is where we have to pay attention.
Here is an example of how he has created a glitch horse as he explained in the Copic Web site (the brand of the markers he uses) and which I summarize here.
- First, I found a suitable horse photo; clear and in nice lighting. Based on the photo I made a pencil sketch adding the necessary decorative touches (such as pixels, etc.)
- After I was finished with the pencil work, I began to paint a picture starting with the darkest places, then blending smoothly.
- Then I gradually made a gradient from blue-green to beige.
- Then used a cool gray to add volume to the head of the horse. I almost always use gray in my works. It is very useful for muting any color that is too bright, or to apply shading.
- Next I started to use green in my earlier highlighted areas.
- Then I started to finalize the ear and upper neck, and started on the «glitchy» portions using purple and blue. In this step it is very important to keep the color within the lines.
- Now the most important step, the pixels! Again, be very careful to keep the color within the lines; move the marker quickly to avoid blotching. Pay special attention to the corners (junctions between the pixels). I always use Copic Sketch markers for this type of work, as they have a very convenient nib for it. For the pixels I relied on my imagination and sense of color, using the same basic colors I drew in the previous steps. One blue pixel seemed too bright, so I muted it with gray. I finished the rest of the decorative details using light shades of gray.
- In the final step I have to add shading and contrast around the edges of the horse’s neck. I also used the Colorless Blender to soften some of the colors in the mane and background.
And of course, the most difficult part of his tattoos is when the time of adding the glitches had arrived. As he explained, he has to observe their geometry, and be able to properly combine them with the anatomy of each person, since the glitches should always be parallel to the floor.
Another thing it can be seen very easily is that most of his work is related with animals and nature. And the main reason for Alexei to do it is that nature is an infinite source of forms as he explained. And also, cause “I love animals and who does not? Hahaha”, says him.
PD: Happy Birthday to him