Bert Grimm was involved in the tattoo world from the age of around 11 or 12. He would hang around the tattoo shops in Portland Oregon, the shops of Sailor Gus, Sailor George and Charlie Western became his home from home.
Bert started tattooing in 1912 and continued to do so for the next 70 years.
He is without doubt one of the most influencial tattoo artists of the twentieth century and his original designs have been re-created and re-imagined continuously by other tattoo artists across the world.
Bert is best known for the shop he ran at the Nu Pike in Long Beach, California from the 1950's to the late 60's. The Nu Pike was a large amusement park that dates back to the late 1800's and was the home of many tattoo shops across the years.
Bert Grimm's World Famous Tattoo was the oldest and longest running tattoo parlour in the history of the united states, it covered generations of sailors in beautiful emblems of there travels inked across there skin.
A young man who has been heavily tattooed by Bert Grimm. I really like how Bert has considered the composition with this piece. Composition is very important when working with traditional tattoo styles, because the designs where so bold and heavily dependant on black shapes and negative space, it was important to ensure the piece is readable and has a flowing eye path to follow. This is successfully achieved as we can see here with this nautical/patriotic piece embellished with lost of detail.
A beautiful and haunting design by Bert Grimm.
Although personally I am not directly interested in each of the elements of this piece separately, there are elements that I really like. I think that the design or the ship is 'dime a dozen', a repeated emblem seen in many variations throughout the tattoo world that is essentially the same every time. however I really like the fish creatures he has used to shape the composition of the image. They have a very haunted impersonal and inhuman look to them. It is this look and feel that Bert Grimm has achieved with these creatures that I wish to replicate within my own work. The bold black and line work have accented his design perfectly and I will explore how he has done this within my development work.
Some small tattoo designs on a flash sheet also done by Bert Grimm, He shows here with these pieces just how much you can express with a few simple lines on two colour designs. He has used these elements in his media to express and attitude that these designs share, although they are all so different. His visual voice and the attitude of his work is expressed with definitive presence here in these pieces.
Here in this beautiful full and detailed piece by Bert, he has shown us the skill and thought he puts into his work that set him apart from the basic tattoo artist stock of his time. His use of full colour here is complimentary to the detailed design, giving the impression of fullness, movement and life, it is intense and complicated.. or is it? if you look closer at the design you can see that it is fairly simple line work, with a mere three colours used.. A great example of how the thought put into these simple traditional tattoo style designs can change the way you view them completely, I will take great inspiration from Bert Grimm's work when developing my own style and try to hack his code of composition and colour use so that my own work has the same effect.
