since it's the summer break anyway, i stay up late watching tv. i discovered two amazing shows.
the first one is miami ink. it's about these guys who have a tattoo shop and the show is about who they're tattooing and with what. there's also this other one which is tattoo wars. this one is about great tattoo artists who go through a tattoo competition of some sort. they're given a time limit and members of the audience decide on the winner. these two shows are on the discovery travel and living channel.
i am not into tattoos or tattooing but watching these shows made me see tattooing as an art and the tattoo artists to a new level. watching the tattoo artists etch on the skin of their clients made me realize that this is really a true form of art with the human body serving as the canvass. in miami ink particularly, they do not only show the process of tattooing itself but the people and their stories behind the tattoos. most of them get tattoos to commemorate special people in their lives, dead or alive, or to show how they feel or who they really are. some even get tattoos to represent their triumph in conquering something like a disease or alcoholism.
what is amazing is that the tattoo artists are really great! the tattoos look like they're real. i am not really good in arts but you can see the depth and texture of the 'drawing'. this is especially true with the portraits. after the sessions, the tattoos look so much like the photos of the people. and i realized that their work is doubly hard because they can't make mistakes. they can't erase these, they will be forever etched on the skin.
many of us, including me before, see people with tattoos as gangsters of some sort. in the past, only people who were in prison had tattoos. but things have changed. i see in these two shows that these people, tattoo artists and the people who have their bodies tattooed, are like us. they are people with feelings and emotions. they're not gangsters who do not have anything good to do. in fact many of those i've seen in these shows cried, including men and big men, when they narrated their reasons for getting tattoos.
i am still not into tattoos and i don't plan on getting one myself but, as i've said above, i now look at tattooing as a real form of art and the tattoo artists as maestros in their own right. i see them at a new level of respect and appreciation.
i could have just written this post with the tv series addict blog, but i chose not to because i just want one separate blog as a tribute to these two persons. i've just proven that people who have met through the internet or phone and haven't met even once in person can be friends, really good friends. some time ago, i joined this investigative/guessing thingy sponsored by the philippine daily inquirer on the net. they had this situation where members guess what's going to happen next or who is the person involved and kinda solve it. they even had chatrooms for members. from this room, i met two persons, nath who is from davao and ??? (god, i can't remember his name. i remember he works at the ateneo de manila university). we exchanged cellphone numbers in the chatroom and there started our friendship. i lost communication with the one whose name i can't remember but nath and i never lost communication, either through text messages or friendster messages. there is ...
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