Simple, Yet Impactful: Japanese Tattooing by Shane Tan
Shane talks style, process, and his come-up in tattooing in this exclusive interview with Tattoodo.
Born and based in Singapore, Shane Tan is one of the finest contemporary Japanese-style tattoo artists in the world. Tan grew up in a family of tattooed people, which exposed him to the subculture at an early age. He began his journey as an artist when his father bought him a coil machine for his 16th birthday. In the 22 years since those early days, marked by trial and error, Tan has honed his craft to create a bold, unique style, minimalist in its use of a predominantly red and black color palette. While he’s very much indebted to the old masters of Japanese tattooing, he has managed to create an aesthetic of this traditional style that’s all his own. Here he answers a few questions for Tattoodo about his roots, his process, and his plans for the future.
Do you remember the first moment you were drawn to art? Are there any important memories that hint at the artist you would become?
My mum told me that when I was a kid, I would hide in my room and draw all day. My entire family would go on outings and when they returned in the evening, I’d still be sitting at the same spot drawing and wouldn’t even realize they left. I think I started drawing even before I could write. My mum would bring home stacks of printer paper from her workplace and I’d fill them up with images of Ninjas in battle, superheroes taking down villains and random free form shapes and patterns that were in my head.
Did you begin with a formal apprenticeship? If not, how did you get started in the field?
Unfortunately I never had the opportunity to start my career with an apprenticeship. All my requests were declined because I was just too young when I wanted to pick up tattooing. My parents were acquainted with tattooers so I was exposed to the world of tattooing at a very young age. I think my interest really started when my parents took me along to visit their friend who was tattooing from his flat. I still remember everything so vividly even though I was only 7 or 8 at that time. I recall it was a very rundown apartment that smelled of Dettol and cigarette smoke. There were a bunch of heavily tattooed guys sitting around, smoking, drinking and getting tattooed. It was extremely intimidating yet weirdly intriguing to be in that room. I sat quietly in a corner, too afraid to utter a word but my mind was filled with so many questions. I managed to catch a glimpse of what was being tattooed on a guy’s back. It was a wolf and a moon. That left a huge impact. I wasn’t expecting to see something so intricate being drawn on a person’s skin. A few years later, I tried asking a few of my family’s friends if they would teach me tattooing and none of them agreed. So on my 16th birthday, I asked my dad to buy me a Spaulding and Rogers starter kit from an ad in a tattoo magazine and I immediately started tattooing kids in the neighborhood. It was chaotic and reckless, I was clueless and went through a lot of difficulties trying to figure stuff out on my own without the help of a mentor, YouTube tutorials, online forums, social media and all that stuff that exists on the internet today but I guess it all worked out alright in the end.