Macabreink

Freehand, drawn on the body

No stencils and no design prepared in advance. Macabreink draws every piece straight onto the skin with a marker, following your anatomy, and you approve that drawing before any needle starts. It is slower at the front end and it is why no two pieces are alike — none of them could be repeated on anyone else.

Blackout and abstract lettering, combined

He was the first artist in Panama to put solid blackout together with abstract lettering and a clean artistic finish: shapes of bare skin left inside the black, with letterforms built into those gaps. From a distance it reads as a solid black limb; up close it is a composition. That combination is what the studio is recognised for.

Finished in one session

A full arm, wrist to shoulder, is tattooed in a single session of around 3 hours. A full leg takes up to about 7, depending on the design and the finishing work. Bodysuits and projects spanning several body areas are the exception and are planned across sessions. For everything else you come in once and leave with the piece done — and because the black is laid in one continuous sitting, the area heals as one tone instead of showing the joins between appointments.

Macabreink publishes the full blackout method on YouTube for free, to over 1.2 million subscribers: machine setup, needles, the four saturation methods and which one each body area needs. Most artists keep that to themselves.

If you want to see how the work is actually done before you book it, start with the free blackout guide. Personalised classes at the studio are available separately.

Macabreink founded Subleink Tattoo Shop Art Gallery in Obarrio, Panama City, and still tattoos there as a resident artist alongside the rest of the team. The gallery wall is his too: every canvas hanging in the studio is his own painting, worked in numbered collections.

The studio was built around blackout, and it is still the thing people travel for. More on the studio and the space itself.