Tag Archives: woman tattoo artist

Painting Daria, while I can.

Portrait of Daria first sitting Suzanne Forbes March 19 2019Daria, who has been the heart and the jumpstart of my life in Berlin, is moving to Hamburg.

They warn you when you come to live here, it’s a transient city, you make friends and then they move away. We haven’t seen that much, luckily, because most of our community loves Berlin like we love Berlin. Not Daria, though. Daria, who is from Moscow, hates Berlin like I hated San Francisco, being from New York. It’s completely hilarious how much her disdain for the way Berlin does city is like my mine for SF. She even makes the same face I do.

Portrait of Daria first sitting second image Suzanne Forbes March 19 2019I have always understood that Daria’s talent is too big for Berlin, where nobody has any money.

I want her to have the massive success and fame she deserves even more than I want her to be near me. I want her to get to live in a city she loves, like I do.

She likes Hamburg, and moreover, she works with a tattoo studio there that is the right scale for her exploding career. She needs a platform that suits her expanding clientele. So that’s right, and as it should be, and I know I will see her when she comes to Berlin to see clients, because she’ll be sleeping on our couch!

Portrait of Daria first sitting first image by Suzanne Forbes March 19 2019As we are closing on the date she and her partner leave for their new city, we are making time for a portrait.

Like the portraits of our Bay Area loved ones that hang all over the house, a portrait of Daria will be a companion and comfort. We had talked about doing a glamorous one too, but with time growing short the highest priority was this vision of her. Like a Russian ballerina witch ninja vampire, absorbed in creating – she is editing photos on her iPad. Like I have watched her so many times in so many cafes all over the city that I came to know with her. Our next sitting is in April, and hopefully that will finish it; if not, we’ll finish it when she’s sleeping on our couch!

Daria’s website, her tatto insta and her art insta.

Here are some of our adventures together over the last three years.

Our first art collab, which was my first Berlin art collab and art trade

Our first Drawing Adventure

When we had the first art collab in my finished kitchen/workshop and I wrote, “I am the happiest I’ve been since I was 19.”

And more about how great that was!

When we did Berlin Graphic Days Night Market

When she called me on overworking hands

The house reveal after our first Joint Daria&Dan Birthday Party

My first watercolor in 25 years, live drawing with Daria at Altes Finanzamt

When I had the courage to try watercolors again because of her, at Drink and Draw.

When we made watercolors in Schöneberg

One of the days when I had bad grief and PTSD and Daria made all the difference

The frame I made for her moth drawing

On the way to a secret cemetery cafe

How I had my first Berlin art show at her tattoo studio

Daria says the right thing, always

When she did the lettering for my She-Krampus

When we drew Amanda Palmer backstage

one of the times we went to the Apple store for her damn phone

When my gothic skull was a little passe, but there’s no pleasing the young

Life drawing happytimes at ESDIP in 2017

Life drawing at the Drink and Draw Midnight Salon

At the Women’s Halloween Art Salon

When she took all the photos at the Dollhouse Lab reveal party

Live-drawing Miss Natasha at our A(RT)fair event

When we went to Life Drawing at Lydia’s

Where I talk about how having a true peer forces me to grow

How her giving me a personal doll-wigging workshop enabled me to finish a years-old project

Drawing Daria tattooing in the Friechrichshain studio, with friends

 

Women make amazing tattoo art in Berlin.

Daria tattooing by Suzanne Forbes June 29 2017I drew Daria tattooing at Tremuschi Ink, the studio where she creates her works.

I swung for the fences with this one, and I kinda missed. To try and apply my new techniques of mixed media coloring to such a complex, detailed drawing – with such deep space!- was perhaps an act of hubris. I barely have a grasp of this new approach, and definitely don’t feel skilful in handling pastels.

And I absolutely loved the drawing in its original state. But I felt I had to see if I could make it even better. I’m not sure I did.

Daria tattooing by Suzanne Forbes June 2017 line versionLuckily, in a moment of foresight, I photocopied the original line drawing.

Drawings by Suzanne Forbes Berlin June 2017The scan is dark, because the photocopy picked up the midtone of the kraft paper, and I hadn’t finished drawing Daria’s tattoo machine. Someone with better digital editing skills than me can sort out the values, prolly.

I was quite scared to add the mixed media (pastel, oil pastel and markers) to the line drawing, and it took me almost a month to get down to it.

Rightly so; it turned out to be a bit beyond me to fully reconcile the values so the drawing reads well.

I kinda feel like I destroyed something I really liked, and that’s good. You gotta kill your darlings in the art biz.

After all, I can always make another drawing of Daria making a tattoo. And I want to go back to Tremuschi and draw Vivi tattooing too, when she gets back from her tattoo cons of Europe tour! I might do a whole series of drawings of women tattoo artists of Berlin!