![]() As tattoos move from counter-culture to pop culture, elaborate body art is more common on a global scale than ever before. ![]() Needles with mercury-containing red dyes, manganese purples and even glow-in-the-dark pigments are used to create everything from elaborate black and grey portraits to American traditional eagles and new-school graphic-art designs. These days tattoos are, obviously, less archaic but the act of tattooing is still extreme and certainly not for the faint of heart. This practice is still employed for hardcore skin art fanatics and Angelina Jolie even reportedly received the treatment for the text that is inked on her back shoulder. The ancient tebori skin art method in Japan took this a step further, using a sharpened bamboo stick called a nomi and repeatedly "stabbing" the design into the skin. The theory is that thorns were used to pierce the skin deeply enough to insert the substance. Tattoo lines found on the arm of the 5300-year-old Tyrolean iceman, who was discovered at the Italian-Austrian border in 1991 by Alpine climbers, suggest the etchings were made with soot. But the tattoo industry has been around since records began: Cultures around the world have been modifying their bodies with ink for thousands of years, from the aboriginals of New Zealand, to the Irezumi tattoos of Japan that represent spiritual and decorative homage and date back as far as 10,000 BC. Ink," and "Ink Master," which have established tattooists as cutting edge modern artists. Tattoos, once the mark of a rebel or a marginalised group, have lately become entirely mainstream - arguably rendered more popular by reality TV series like "Miami Ink," "L.A.
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