Roberto Seifert

I've been lucky enough to know Roberto for a couple years now. He frequently does guest appearances in the shop where I work, and is always welcome whenever he comes by because he's one of the most awesome Germans ever! He was nice enough to do a little Q&A with me over facebook the other day, and said I could post it here. So this is what he had to say: 1. WHO ARE YOU? WHERE DO YOU WORK? TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF! My name is Roberto Seifert Fäustlin ,I am 37 years old and I am living in Leipzig (East-Germany about 1 hour south of berlin). I am a travelling tattooer,that means I work at different shops in Bavaria ,which is a 5 hours trip from where I live. The shop I work the longest for,about 5 years now, is Pandaemonium-Tattoo in Memmingen. They are working on their webpage for ever, it is not online.* And since 2 years I also frequently work at Time-Travelling-Tattoo in Landshut near Munich). I think it is www.neatcha.com. Both shops are really known in Germany for their big blackwork. And the last year I also guestspotted Rob Koss' shop at Luzern in Switzerland, XXX-Tattoo, where I plan to settle down next year and work a normal Monday to Friday shift. 2. WHY DID YOU BECOME A TATTOOER? That is difficult to explain.I got really late in contact with tattooing, when I was about 25! In the late 80`s I had some close friends who were tattooed with black and grey stuff (I was the singer of a skater-grindcoreband and my friends had pushhead stuff and tribals on them) but I never got to the point where I made a appointment at a shop. 1995 I moved to Düsseldorf for studying architecture, where I met Hennes from True love tattoo, who was working at fineline then. We were both surfing and skating so I saw all these guys with coloured arms. At that time they started doing all this new school stuff.I really freaked out about what I saw in the skin there, that was exactly what I wanted, from that day I was hooked up with it... Two years later I had to cancel studying because of a really bad snowboard accident...I was nearly 18 months in hospital so I had time to think about what I did so far. In the beginning I wanted to study art, but I skip[ped] that because my family was not that happy with it. So I correced that course.... I think it was destiny! Tattooing seemed to be exactly what I was looking for all these years. Tattoing was grounded, not as detached as art. And you work with a customer, not alone for yourself at home! I went back to Hennes,to get another tattoo and asked him a ton of questions about apprenticing, and half a year later I had an apprenticeship at seven star tattoo. 3. IN FIVE WORDS, DESCRIBE YOUR APPRENTICESHIP: Pain in the ass...but absolutly essential!! Ok I need 7 words, but this is true. 4. WHAT IS THE BEST THING ABOUT BEING A TATTOOER? Being your own boss. Travelling the world. Meet a lot of nice people who are enjoying exact the same. It is a handcraft, and also can be high class art if you want, thats what i like the most. 5. IN YOUR OWN WORDS, TELL ME WHAT A "traditional tattoo" IS. A traditional tattoo!? That depends on which tradition you are talking about! There are several Pol[ynesian] traditions and Japanese traditions, Inuit traditions.....!! Normaly people mean Western American tradition wich is just 100 jears old, but it is the most popular tradition right now. It's done with an electrical-tattoo-machine...[redacted] The drawing is the most important step...do as much details as necessary but keep it as simple as possible. It is like drawing an old comicversion of something realistic. Do it with flat simple shading, fading from black to colour, no fancy 3-d effects! Only tattoo with deep pigmented colors, no pastell-tones! Do not mix too much! A traditional tattooer needs less than 10 colours!! Try to use 1/3 black,1/3 colour and 1/3 skin..do it fast and precise. A lot of the modern tattooers believe that comes from the experience over the years with seeing tattoos getting older, but they seem to forget that the material and technical help a tattooer had 50 years ago was very limited; getting a good running machine, precise needles, bright pigments,(and I am not talking about hygiene). The old way to make a stencil is lightyears away from what we are doing today! I beleive the modern stencil was the most important step for tattooing to become what it is today. That changed the details in tattoos, nearly everything was possible. That effects more customers with different style-wishes and more tattooers with different style-skills...and so on. There still is a big evolution going on the last 30 years... What we call the modern traditional tattoo is the using of traditional images. 6. AS A TATTOOER, WHAT INSPIRES YOU? A lot of things. Watching nature. All forms of art. Because of my background it is more skateboardart, comics and rockposters, but I think also old advertisements, architecture, old toys, modern art and postcards. The most important part is all the other tattooers I worked with for sure. I need to work with other tattooers, that inspires me the most. The feedback you get from watching each others work is really essential for me. I am not the singleman shopguy. 7. WHEN ARE YOU COMING BACK TO VICTORIA?** DO YOU HAVE ANY PLANS TO DO ANY GUEST APPEARANCES ANYWHERE OR WORK AT ANY CONVENTIONS? Like I told before I am concentrating now on settling a little in Luzern. So I will cut down the guestspotting a little bit. I still plan to visit Victoria cause it is more than just a guestspot..it is more like a family for me. I will try to get some free time maybe in november this year to come over to you guys. And in the future there will always be a little time I cut off for you! I am concentrating on doing some conventions in Europe, I was in Stockholm last week and I will do St.Gallen(CH), Evian(F), Brighton(UK), Frankfurt(D) and Hamburg(D).(click the names of the conventions to see more) Roberto has a bunch of sketchbooks and flash for sale. CLICK HERE to see his stuff on gentlemanstattooflash.com CLICK HERE for Roberto's own website CLICK HERE for Roberto's myspace page *note* I asked him for the website so I could link to them, that answer didn't come out of nowhere **I asked this for my own personal knowledge, haha, but hey, I might as well share because his answer was so sweet (awww)*** ***p.s. i'm such a girl sometimes SORRY ABOUT WRITING MY QUESTIONS IN CAPS, the formatting on this blog doesn't allow for bold fonts also, i put links to all the shops mentioned in this post ... as long as i could find them