Tattooing in Avignon — Art Nouveau, colour and neo-traditional

Hello everyone!

For a long time I had an article here that simply presented my work as “a tattoo artist in Avignon”. And when I reread it today, I realized that it no longer really told the good story. Avignon is obviously part of my story, because I grew up there in tattooing and Graphicaderme has been a part of my family forever, but my work is no longer about a single city.

What I want to keep in this article is rather my way of working: the big projects, Art Nouveau, color, black and gray, painting, and especially this obsession with creating an image that really works on the body.

I rarely start from a simple “reason”.”

When someone comes up with an idea, I think very quickly about the composition. The area of the body, the size, the way the tattoo will move, what will be visible from a distance, what should remain legible in ten years… all of this is just as important as the subject itself.

A drawing can be beautiful on paper and become completely flat once placed on a sleeve or on the back. This is often where my work really begins: adapting the image to the body rather than simply reproducing it.

Painting often comes up in my projects

Alphonse Mucha, Tamara de Lempicka, Édouard Bisson, Caravage… these are references that I have been looking at for a long time and that inevitably end up slipping into my compositional style.

I don’t necessarily seek to copy an artwork as such. What interests me more is to understand what gives it its strength: a pose, a light, a line, a way of guiding the gaze. Only then do I look at how this logic can be translated onto the skin.

On some projects, such as Madame Boucard by Tamara de Lempicka, I remain very faithful to the work. On others, the reference becomes much more diffuse.

Art nouveau, color, black and gray: I mix colors more than before

For a long time I tried to define my work with very precise categories. Today I feel much less of a need for that. There is obviously a lot of Art Nouveau, because I like organic lines and compositions that complement the body. There is color, which has taken up a huge part of my work, but also always black and gray.

I also retain something of the neo-traditional in the readability and structure. What interests me is especially that the tattoo remains strong once all these influences have been mixed together.

I detailed this evolution in my article on my way of working with color, as well as that dedicated to my Art Nouveau compositions.

Avignon remains an important part of my journey

Obviously, I’m not going to erase Avignon from my history just because my plans have evolved. It’s there that I grew up around Graphicaderme, that I met a lot of tattoo artists, that I did a lot of my first big pieces and that in 2025 I received a color tattooing award at the Avignon Convention.

But today, I prefer that this blog tells my work in a more broad way, without automatically associating each project with a specific address. Cities change, projects move, and so do the guest spots. My approach, however, remains much more stable.

What always remains at the center

A readable composition, an image that follows the body, enough space for it to evolve over time, and a real discussion with the person who will wear it.

That’s what I want to keep here, more than just a simple “tattoo in Avignon”. If you discover my work with this article, you can also go see my complete journey between tattooing, design and webdesign.