Specs
- Sleeve
- 3 Days
- @Modern Electric
DO YOU LIKE THE LOOK OF THIS PROJECT OR THE APPROACH TO THE DESIGN?
JUST TELL ME THAT WHEN YOU FILL IN MY TATTOO FORM
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.
Mike walked into the studio and dropped three words on me: Pale Blue Dot. I had no idea who Carl Sagan was. Didn’t matter. Names don’t make the art.
The concept? A photograph taken from six billion kilometers away. Earth, just a speck in the sunbeam. Fragile. Tiny. Alone. The kind of image that makes you feel small if you let it. Sagan’s words turn it into a warning, a plea for responsibility, a cosmic lecture about our fragile little planet.
But in my studio, I don’t lecture. I build. I carve form out of skin.
Mike gave me nothing beyond: Do what you do. And I took that freedom, rolled it into ink, and let it speak. The sleeve began as nothing but lines, shapes, shadows—a universe slowly taking form under the needle.
Space? Sure, but not really. Conservation? Not on the checklist. This was about making something that would look good, something that would hold its own energy whether anyone understood the metaphor or not.
There’s tension in that process. Between what people think a tattoo should mean and what it actually is. Between the weight of a name like Carl Sagan and the quiet rebellion of just making it look fucking beautiful. Between Earth as a distant speck and the life that hums in your studio while you work.
Mike got it. He trusted the chaos. And when the sleeve was finished, it wasn’t a lecture. It was a universe on his arm, alive, balanced, undeniable. A reminder that in tattooing, art comes first. Everything else follows.
