Female characters with Japanese elements, Japanese anime and animals all featuring punchy colors like turquoise, mint green and pink. These are the tattoos of Tania Tkachenko, a tattoo artist from Siberia who mixes neo-traditional, illustrative and realistic in her works.
Hello Tania, would you like to introduce yourself to our readers?
Of course, hello everybody I’m Tania, tattoo artist from Russia with a lot of ideas and not enough time for doing all of them!
Where do you currently work?
Most of the time I’m based in Tomsk, Russia. It’s a small cozy city in the center of Siberia. But I used to travel, now I plan to move to Europe, because I have a lot of friends, colleagues and favorite tattoo studios there. As far as I can remember, I always wanted to live somewhere else. It’s impossible to explain it, but I just feel like I belong up there. Now it’ll also be good for my career and creative development.
The most prominent aspect in your tattoos is the colour, how do you use it and what are your preferences?
I’ve always thought I chose colours spontaneously. But I guess it’s still the imprint of art school and intuition. I have my favorite palette of colors, but not every time I manage to use it.
At almost every job I use turquoise and mint shades, also I prefer to use pink and peachy colors.
I can’t surely say if it’s gonna change in the future, but now I’d like to make my palette more permanent and recognizable, like my own signature style.
Speaking of themes, what can you tell me about them?
Undoubtedly my favorite motives are female characters with Japanese attributes. I come up with images in my head and every character is different every time. Sometimes I can mix it with anime themes. From time to time I make animalistic projects.
The style you refer to is the Neo Traditional, how come this choice?
I can’t say it was spontaneous, but something in that style got me hooked during the period when I got my first tattoos. When I chose the ideas for my own tattoos I only looked at old school or neo traditional styles. Later, when I started my career, I was already immersed in these outlines, bright colors and illustrative looks.
And how do you personalise it in your way?
I think it’s not the ordinary Neo Traditional style, it looks like a mix of illustration and realistic tricks, a pinch of my personal vision, some neotraditional techniques and voila.
You do very beautiful oil paintings, what do you like to paint? Is the style on canvas different from what you do on skin?
Oil painting is a long and laborious process. Even preparation takes a long time considering I like to paint large canvases. So I rarely paint, I always need to plan ahead or set aside time to paint something. And when I have this time – in most cases I will draw a portrait. And yes, I paint in realistic style, not neotraditional or something similar.
What is your background? How did you become a tattoo artist?
I started with the brush and other artistic tools. As I remember I’ve been drawing since I was 8. I graduated from art school and the university with my major in Design. There were academic drawing, painting, digital art, sculpting, everything that was related to creativity.
And after university I started my career, now I’ve been tattooing for 5 years. My career started quite suddenly. At that time I was friend with a guy from a music band, who was getting tattoos from a local tattoo artist and, as it turned out later, my future mentor. He introduced me to him. So, as soon as I graduated from university, I immediately came to the studio to get acquainted. Rinat turned out to be a very “right” person for my development. With two artistic educations there was no problem, it was only necessary to adjust to new tools and learn how to connect with people.
And to wind up this interview, what are your aspirations in your professional life?
I want to finally be satisfied with my work, try not to look for mistakes constantly and engage in self-control, to be a confident master. And also try to be more sociable and expand the circle of communication.
