With the start of a new year, our hope is to continue publishing inspiring stories about accomplished artists from all around the world. We are happy to provide an interview with the leading innovator of watercolor tattoo style and daily Rebelle user, a well-known Colombian artist Bryan Sánchez M. Continue reading about his passion for art and teaching.
Hello, Bryan! Thank you so much for agreeing to do an interview for our blog. We believe it will be of great inspiration for our readers. Surely, some of our longtime faithful Rebelle fans will recognize your work, however, they might not know about you. Could you please introduce yourself?
I am Bryan Sánchez M. I am a fine artist, art director, muralist, and tattoo artist from Colombia, well-known for my tattoo style, which I call 'sketchy watercolor.'
What inspired you to become a tattoo artist? How did you start with this interesting and unusual craft?
I am lucky and grateful, I knew I would be an artist since I was 4 years old. My godmother sent me a box full of toys and I chose to play with a small box of watercolors I found in there. My mother always talks about that moment. I have always been the kid who used to draw in the Math class. Another good thing, I have always felt the support of my family with my goal of being an artist.
For any tattoo virgins out there, could you please describe the process of creation of a tattoo and how long does it take? From your experience, where does it hurt the most?
I love this part, tattooing is one of the most important things of my life, I feel honored every time when people travel across the world to collect one of my tattoos. One of the most important things to create something special is to involve the client in the creative process.
The first thing is to fill a form where I explain my process, waiting list, what I do, and what I don’t. After receiving the application, I read the initial idea and prepare a brainstorming of things that would work for the idea. Even when it looks like something common, my idea is to try to find an original way to make it unique and personal. This is the part where I love to use Rebelle because it helps me create a lot of potential options to show to my client. It is saving me time doing small adjustments and especially, I am being eco-friendly as this software emulates the idea of painting without having to use paper and painting each color option, for example.
After the meeting with the client where I show the options, we choose the right one and we are all set. I recommend to sleep well the night before and choose the music we are going to listen to during our tattoo session. Music is really important for my creative process.
Where do you usually seek inspiration for your artwork?
Inspiration is everywhere, I love advertising, branding, books, movies, animation, especially for the management of color theory, etc. What I always recommend are the books “The art of…”, which explains the creative process of movies, comics, characters, and so on. Another good inspiration source is a documentary on Netflix called ABSTRACT. I love it!
You often give online and in-person lectures around the globe. What are some topics you would like to explore in the future?
Teaching is something I love, exploring and sharing ideas is always a good way to improve our work. One of the things I love the most is Color theory, creating my own color palettes to communicate a message. My idea is to encourage people to find their own style, exploring their own creative process. In this pursuit, I am grateful when I feel the support of great companies in digital art like ESCAPE MOTIONS and WACOM. I am sure we will continue sharing knowledge around the world, especially in-person seminars, I miss the classrooms with this particular pandemic lockdown.
As a keen Rebelle user, what are the features you like the most?
Rebelle has become my no.1 tool in my creative process for my tattoos, paintings, and also my murals. It helps me a lot to emulate the drips I will have to do later while painting the wall. I think this part plus the blow option is something I love to show on my seminars and see the blow mind expression of the attendees. I use the software every day and I always find something to improve at as well.
How did a pandemic and lockdowns influence your business and travels? People seem to be more careful about physical touch – do they still want to get tattoos? Also, there are restrictions about bigger gatherings – how did this situation influence your teaching projects?
This particular context has given us a lot of things to do, learn, and re-invent. For me, as a tattoo artist, I felt a hard time without traveling as I am used to doing every month, also people who travel were not allowed to travel. On the other hand, I had the chance to share more time with my family and enjoy special times with my 2 years old daughter. I had time to think about new projects and had more time to paint. Even as it is not the same feeling, it was great to be a part of big projects of virtual seminars like TATTOO EXPLORER and WACOM WEBINARS.
Another fun fact is that with this pandemic situation people realized that maybe there is no tomorrow so they feel more encouraged to get that first tattoo they were afraid of before.
We will continue working and resisting, resilient to the hard times, working, creating, and trying to save the world with art!
Thank you, Bryan, for opening a window to the tattoo artists’ world and for sharing with us the insides of this process. I am sure, the world can be thankful for the little package of watercolors that started your career and passion path. We wish you all the best with future art projects and seminars, as well as many satisfied clients with a piece of your art on their skin. Have a wonderful year!
Thank you very much for this opportunity and I hope to see you continue creating great tools for digital artists around the world!
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Visit Bryan’s portfolio at:
www.bryansanchezm.com
instagram.com/bryan_sanchezm
