"Attractive Chinese Symbol"? It might be attractive, but it's not chinese (or japanese)

If you are surfing on the internet in search for a so-called "Chinese/Japanese character tattoo" you might find this piece of garbage:

This tattoo-design is promoted on many websites, but, as you can see in the images below, no one would say what this symbol could mean. Of course, one can find tons of worthless descriptions such as "Match Your Character with Chinese Symbol Tattoos Chinese Symbol Tattoos For Body Girls .... Neck-Tattoo-Chinese-Symbol-Design-Ideas Tribal Chinese Symbol Side Neck Tattoo · Attractive Chinese Symbol Side Neck Tattoo · Chinese Symbol Tattoo On Neck", but not a single concrete translation of this symbol:

The reason behind those elusive explanations is the fact that the ideogram is so poorly written that it makes it unintelligible. In conclusion, don't use this distorted ideogram as a starting point for your Kanji/Hanzi tattoo.

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This is NOT a Kanji / Hanzi tattoo. This is just a doodle.
What possibly could be wrong with this tattoo?

Russian Criminal Tattoos: Russian Church tattoos

The church (sometimes depicted as a cathedral, monastery, fortress. etc, but usually depicted as a traditional russian church) is one of the main themes of "Vory v Zakone" tattoos. Usually this tattoos are large, covering significant areas of the chest or of the upper back. The number of domes/cupolas/towers signifies the number of convictions or, less often, it represent the number of years of incarceration (usually each dome represents a conviction; the number of the years served in prison is indicated trough dots tattooed on the knuckles).

(Photo: Arkady Bronnikov/FUEL Russian Criminal Tattoo Archive)

Russian Criminal Tattoos: Madonna and Child

A thief in law (Russian: vor v zakone) in the Soviet Union, the post-Soviet states and respective diasporas abroad is a specifically granted formal status of a professional criminal who enjoys elite position within the organized crime environment and employs informal authority over its lower-status members. Each new Vor is vetted (literally "crowned", with respective rituals and tattoos) by consensus of several Vors. Vor culture is inseparable with prison organized crime: only repeatedly jailed convicts are eligible for a high Vor status. Thieves in law are drawn from many nationalities from a number of post-Soviet states. According to the estimates of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, there were about 500 "thiefs-in-law", with the majority being of Caucasus ethnicities.(source: Wikipedia).

The Vor v Zakone are also known for their impressive tattoos. Tattoos are often done as a rite of passage in the criminal world - some of the Vor v Zakone members are tattooed before they are even sentenced to prison. It is hard to decode these tattoos because most of the tattoos have multiple hidden meanings. Some of the most common imagery is religious: the Madonna and Child, Russian churches, crosses, etc. However, these tattoos have absolutely nothing to do with religious beliefs; their real meanings are rooted in prison and criminal traditions.

For example, Madonna and baby Jesus is one of the most popular tattoos worn by criminals, and usually this tattoo symbolise loyalty to a criminal clan (the bearer of the tattoo is "clean before his friends" in that he will never betray them to authorities); it can also mean that the wearer believes the Mother of God will ward off evil; as well as meaning that the wearer has been behind bars from an early age.

(Photo: Arkady Bronnikov/FUEL Russian Criminal Tattoo Archive)

My recommendations: Dan Quirk's artworks

If you are looking for inspiration for an 3D anatomy tattoo / an anatomy-tattoo or if you are searching for a crazy make-up for the Halloween-party, you should check out this websites:
http://danquirk.blogspot.ro/
https://www.behance.net/dannyquirk


Dan Quirk is a graphic artist who exposes the human anatomy in a harmless and interesting way while using the human body as his pallet. Elaborately exposing life-like muscles and ligaments across an uncut pallet of human skin, artist Danny Quirk's recreation of the human body opened up reveals beauty to be more than skin deep. Painting a thin layer of the stretchy liquid over his models, his detailed work amazingly promises no pain despite the perceived exposure of their spines, jaws, arteries and other anatomical pieces. When it's finished, the designs simply peel off. (source: www.dailymail.co.uk)

Below you can see several examples of Dan Quirk’s artworks. I've selected only a few images from his collection. For more images, visit the original photo-gallery at this address: http://dannyquirkartwork.tumblr.com/

My tattoo-designs: Sagittarius written with Kanji / Hanzi

Hello, everyone! In this post I'd like to present you one of my tattoo-designs which combines the symbols of the zodiac sign of the Archer (a Centaurus and an arrow) with the Chinese / Japanese Characters for Sagittarius (constellation and sign of the zodiac):

Ideograms reading:
- in japanese: Kanji: 射手座; hiragana: いてざ; reading: iteza
- in chinese: Hanzi: 射手座; pinyin: shèshǒuzuò. In chinese there is also another word used for Sagitarius: Rénmǎzuò (traditional Chinese characters: 人馬座; simplified Chinese characters: 人马座).

For more zodiac tattoos visit my website - seiza.ro. If you use any of my tattoo-designs as a model / inspiration / starting-point for a tattoo you might consider sending me some photos of the tattoo once it's complete. Thank you in advance.

Related posts:
Zodiac tattoo - Libra tattoo (Balance tattoo)
Yin Yang tattoo design

Don't waste your skin (neither your time and your money)! Don't use this Kanji-chart as a start point for a tattoo!!

Hello, everyone! In this post I want to warn you against a so-called "kanji chart" which, for the sake of the truth should be rather called "Laughably distorted Hanzi/Kanji chart". Below you can see the (in)famous chart:

At the first sight, the so-called chart and the accompanying text seem pretty credible, but don't let the appearances fool you: nearly all the ideograms presented in this image are distorted and several of them are wrongly translated.

So, if you want to get a Kanji/Hanzi tattoo, don't waste your time, don't waste your money, and, above all, don't waste your skin - and don't use this chart as inspiration for your future tattoo.

Similar posts:
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Don't believe this guy - he has no idea what he's talking about:)
This is NOT a Kanji / Hanzi tattoo. This is just a doodle.
What possibly could be wrong with this tattoo?

Yin Yang tattoo design

Yin Yang tattoo design. The ideograms present in the drawing are the traditional chinese characters for Yin Yang (Hànzì: 陰陽; pinyin: yīn yáng).

For more Yin Yang / chinese symbols tattoos visit my website - www.seiza.ro. If you use any of my tattoo-designs as a model / inspiration / starting-point for a tattoo you might consider sending me some photos of the tattoo once it's complete. Thank you in advance.

Uv tattoos are not glow-in-the-dark tattoos!

Hello, everyone. In this post I'll talk about differences between the main types of glowing tattoos, namely the Uv reactive tattoos (also called blacklight tattoos) and the so-called "glow in the dark tattoos". Blacklight tattoos (also known as UV tattoos) are often confused with the glow-in-the-dark tattoos and there are not few those who try to get a glow-in-the-dark tattoo and get instead a Uv reactive tattoo.

Blacklight tattoos

UV tattoos (blacklight tattoos, ultraviolet tattoos, uv-reactive tattoos, etc) are tattoos made with a special ink that is visible under ultraviolet light (blacklight). Contrary to popular belief, these tattoos DON'T CONTAIN either phospors or phosporus and they DON'T GLOW IN THE DARK. As their name implies, these tattoos don't glow by themselves, their luminosity is caused to REACT to the ultraviolet light (black light). They need a source of black light to glow; if you don't expose them at black light, they WON'T GLOW.

The ink used for the UV-tattoos contains fluorescent substances. Fluorescence is the emission of light by a substance that has absorbed light or other electromagnetic radiation. The emitted light has a longer wavelength, and therefore lower energy, than the absorbed radiation. The most striking examples of fluorescence occur when the absorbed radiation is in the ultraviolet region of the spectrum, and thus invisible to the human eye, and the emitted light is in the visible region (source: wikipedia).

Glow in the dark tattoos

Glow in the dark tattoos are made with phosphorescent ink; as any other phosphorescent substance, the phosphorescent ink needs to be charged with energy by exposure to light; the energy is "stored" for a (relatively) long time (depending on the phosphors used this time can vary from several minutes to several hours) and is slowly released in the form of light; due to this process of absorbing-storing-releasing of the energy, tattoos that contain phosphorescent ink glow in the dark. (read more about the phosphorescent tattoos in this post).

Related posts:
Uv-reactive tattoos and glow-in-the-dark tattoos for the Halloween-party. Are they a good idea or a very bad one? Glow-in-the-dark-tattoos: Phosphorescence / Persistent luminescence / Radioluminescence