ERIC MARCINIZYN

When it comes to black-and-grey, Eric Marcinizyn is one of the industry’s heavy hitters.

He’s become world-renowned for his effortlessly smooth shading and ability to create faces so beautiful they defy what we thought possible. However, like every great tattooer of yesterday and today, he needed to start somewhere and spent “tens of thousands of hours” perfecting his craft. And of course, we can all say that Marcinizyn’s time was very well spent.

How did you get into tattooing? When I was in the 5th grade, my best friend made a tattoo machine out of a cassette player motor. He was 13 or 14 years old at the time, I was a bit younger. I remember he tattooed the Operation Ivy guy on his leg and did various other punk rock tattoos on friends. I wasn’t gnarly enough at the time to get something, but I was definitely hooked. When I was 16, I had a friend whose father was a tattoo artist, and he had been tattooing from a very young age. I would hang with him a lot when he was tattooing, sometimes make his stencils for other people he was working on. The first tattoos I ever got were from him. The first time I ever picked up a machine was one of his and the first tattoo I ever did was on his leg. For all of that, I am forever grateful. Thank you, Steve.