Tattoo Fight Club running wild on Instagram

Tattoo Fight Club running wild on Instagram
Article by: SlingerVille Staff
September 26, 2012

On a typical day Austin Spencer, artist and owner at Las Vegas’ Studio 21 Tattoo, was doing two things that he does everyday-- illustrating and networking—when an idea came to him and he just went with it.

Spencer was drawing some stuff inspired by the work of a fellow tattoo artist he had met at a convention, Jonathan Penchoff of Black Lotus Tattooers in Gilbert, Arizona.

“He’s always drawing hipster-type stuff, so I was replicating it and hash tagging him on Instagram, just kinda making fun of him,” Spencer says. “Then I called him up to make sure he wasn’t mad, and we were laughing our asses off.”

According to LasVegasWeekly.com, Spencer and Penchoff came up with a fun exercise; each artist would pick a theme, they would compose new drawings incorporating those themes, post them both to Instagram and see which their followers would prefer.

“He picked a monkey and I picked church. We both drew a monkey head with a church on top,” Spencer says. “But just by cross-promoting each other to our followers, we gained new followers.” The idea was born.

About a week ago, Penchoff (@earthgrasper) and Spencer (@onmydong) created the Instagram feed @TattooFightClub. They determined the rules. Two artists who want to battle get two days to choose their thematic elements and the direction of their line drawings, finish their work and share the two images together on Instagram with the #tattoofightclub hashtag.

Hundreds of pieces started flowing in, with the hashtag, through email, all over. As of today, Tattoo Fight Club has 7,592 followers, after one week. “I haven’t been able to sleep. I was up until 3:30 in the morning last night just commenting on people’s stuff on my phone, nerding out,” Spencer says. “We had 600 followers the first day. And it’s been 100 percent positive.”

“Tattoo Fight Club has already become more than a way for artists to show off their style. These simple line drawings are the first step to creating a tattoo. Instead of just being exposed to the finished product, fans and followers get to see the beginning stages of the art form. And at least one Tattoo Fight Club drawing has already been tattooed on someone, by La Crosse, Wisconsin artist Justin Harris (@greenbaybully). The subjects for that one were wolf and all-seeing eye,” stated LasVegasWeekly.com.

Spencer’s has big plans for Tattoo Fight Club. Soon, artists will be able to go to tattoofightclub.com to hash out these artistic battles. They have already created a logo and a small line of merchandise will be on the way. Someone who wants to put together a book of the artwork has also approached them.

“Everyone who is helping this along are volunteers, people who just want to get involved, tattoo artists and people who are just interested,” he says. “We just want to have fun and promote each other, but also push ourselves as illustrators.”

According to LasVegasWeekly.com, Spencer plans to incorporate Tattoo Fight Club into his ideas he’s working on for Studio 21’s 10-year anniversary early next year.

For now, Spencer is enjoying watching his idea grow.

“We just put it out there, and now there are tattoo artists all over the country sitting around working on this thing we created a week ago.”

Source: http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/2012/sep/24/week-old-tattoo-fight-club-running-wild-instagram/

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