The Idea
Before I came to Korea in 2019, I discovered Greem’s tattoos through Hugo K., as they are married and own a private tattoo studio together. Her tattooing style is characteristic of sharp angles, stars, bold linework, no shading, and no curves, which I felt would go great with an idea I had been sitting on for a couple of years: a 20-sided die, AKA a D20.
Yes, I wanted a Dungeons & Dragons tattoo. And I wanted it to roll a 1, which in-game means that I fail whatever action I attempted to take in the worst possible way. Basically, the story behind that is that whenever I mess up something, instead of feeling bad about it, I just tell myself I rolled a natural “1” and I will roll better next time. I wanted to spice it up with a broken sword too, so I drew out a few sketches to visualize the design before I reached out to her.
Here were some of the first drawings:
But in the end, I sent this to her:
Getting the Tattoo
Greem wrote most of her Instagram posts in short English phrases at the time and I knew that she had a lot of foreign clients, so I thought it was fine to contact her in English – luckily this worked out just fine. However, that was me in 2019. If I were in the same situation now, I would have reached out in Korean even if I needed a translator.
So personally, I recommend reaching out to artists in Korean first unless they have posted their booking policy or longer captions in English. If your Korean is limited like mine was at the time, use Papago, not Google Translate.
For the record, I reached out to her through KakaoTalk, a Korean messaging app. She has her ID in her Instagram bio.
She was very kind and friendly, so it was all just a good experience. Plus, her workspace was very neat and clean. Her studio had a really cool aesthetic. Everything was pitch black: the chairs, the shelves, the knick-knacks on these shelves, the wall decorations, etc. They all seemed darker against the white walls. However, she and Hugo moved their studio, which I have not seen so I don’t know if they changed their look significantly.
Anyway, when she was tattooing me, I was reading Demon Slayer and I fell asleep for a bit at some point because I was lying on my stomach. But it’s okay, I didn’t mess it up. Here’s how it turned out:
I loved how Greem rebalanced the patterns and made the guard wider. I especially liked the moon-shaped pommel and I’m still so impressed by how clean her linework is. I can only imagine how steady her hand has to be to achieve her particular style.
Woah! That’s such a cool outlook! I’m stealing it…