MEET ITALIAN TATTOO ARTIST SAMUELE BRIGANTI AND FIND OUT ABOUT HIS 2012 DOCUMENTARY 'BACK TO THE ROOTS'

You’re a wonderful artist, your tattoos have such a distinguishable quality to them, your use of colour is like painting it’s really incredible - is it something that came from painting before or a skill you’ve picked up whilst tattooing?

Well, I think painting and tattooing are similar sometimes; I paint my flashes with watercolors as the Old Tattoo Masters used to, it's a one shot kind of painting.
 It's not like oil or acrylics where you can go over many times to correct or obtain a certain shade; you need to be quick and know exactly where to put the blacks and the colors. It's a good training. The way I paint is surely a consequence of the way I tattoo.

Talk us through your process when someone comes to ask you to tattoo them - from concept to final outcome.

The majority of my customers are tattoo collectors and tattoo artists so basically they contact me saying "whatever you'd like to create”. 
Sometimes I also get very strange requests, subjects that at first look so far from my style, but then turn to be something really amazing that I would never have thought about! I work with amazing people that travel from everywhere; Italy, Europe, America, Australia and South America. 

You’ve also got merchandise for sale on your website - included in which are some lovely sketchbooks, are these full of things you’d love to tattoo or are the works created specifically for the books?

Sketchbooks were an important source of references before the web became so popular in the tattoo world; there were very few ways of looking and studying other tattooers’ styles. If you were lucky enough you could watch them working at Tattoo Conventions, or in magazines.
 A sketchbook is basically a collection of drawings which (in my case 99% of the time) have been already tattooed. And should be used as reference, an inspiration. I still like to collect them.

You made a documentary back in 2012, talk us through it and why you decided to create it.

My fiancee’s brother is an amazing and talented film maker, and I really like his attention to details, so I invited him for a couple of days of filming at the shop, but trust me when I say I didn’t even realized he was filming until he showed me the first cuts.
 It wasn’t really planned we chatted about my job, how I started, and the hand-poked tattoos (which I enjoyed doing a lot in that period). We decided to include a limited edition DVD of BACK TO THE ROOTS to my Sketchbook Volume 3 and then it was published on youtube too.

Tell us your; favourite, longest, most fun and hardest tattoos that you’ve done?

That’s a tough question!!! 
Favourite: all and none, I mean I love everything I do, and at the same time I’m quite never completely satisfied. However if the tattoo includes a tiger head or a panther I definitely like it much more! Longest: Back-pieces. Traditional tattoos are usually one-session pieces but a full back takes a lot of time, long sessions that can last up to 6 hours. I once tattooed this guy for 6 hours and at a point we had to stop because I was more in pain than he was. I later found out I had an herniated disc. Fun: 2 Euro Coin sized tiger and panther head. 
Hardest: I once had to tattoo a throat during a Convention, without a tattoo bed, so the customer was sitting with his head tilted backwards and I was standing in front of him. But that happened many years ago.

You’re based in Italy with your studio - but do you ever travel to tattoo or would you consider it in the future? And if so where would you want to go?

I’ve always traveled a lot, both in Europe and USA, and although I don’t attend many tattoo conventions anymore I still travel. 
My next stops are definitely Australia and Japan, I also want to visit Northern Europe. 

VISIT www.samuelebriganti.com TO SEE MORE