MOSCOW:
Like a piano participant shifting up a scale, Igor Mikhaylov runs his gloved arms alongside his consumer’s upturned arm, feeling out exactly the place he ought to place his stencil.
The 38-year-old tattoo artist, who’s legally blind, is in excessive demand.
“This is one thing that impresses and thrills you,” stated a lady who gave her identify solely as Alexandra. She had simply obtained a tattoo saying “Love” in Braille from Mikhaylov at a tattoo studio off Moscow’s fashionable Novy Arbat Avenue final month.
Mikhaylov started to lose his eyesight on the age of eight, the results of a genetic sickness. He can understand gradations in gentle and may make out the contours of objects. He nonetheless remembers what the world round him appears to be like like.
His prospects discover his tattoos thrilling as a result of they demand an imaginative leap of religion.
“The visible photos that I’ve as we speak are in actual fact being accomplished with the assistance of my creativeness and my reminiscence. In different phrases, what I think about is far sharper than what I can see now,” Mikhaylov defined.
A educated classical guitarist and graduate of a high Moscow music school, Mikhaylov approaches the artwork of tattooing with nimble fingers and an open thoughts. There is no instruction guide for how you can tattoo blind.
Mikhaylov’s prospects select a phrase or phrase, which he interprets into Braille. He then tattoos the picture onto the pores and skin utilizing a single needle dipped into ink, what is named a stick-and-poke tattoo.
“Learn how to take a needle to this or that nook, how you can discover this center line, which approach to make use of to maneuver a needle in corners – all of it jogged my memory of working with a (guitar) string the place these small points and peculiarities matter,” Mikhaylov stated. “I needed to develop my very own method.”
In between tattooing gigs and music performances, Mikhaylov finds time to win event trophies as a member of Russia’s nationwide desk tennis workforce for the visually impaired.
A neon signal hanging on the wall by his work station within the Moscow tattoo parlour may function Mikhaylov’s private mantra: “Your Consolation Zone Will Kill You”.
