Meet Mark Richards. Mark has come a long way from a small town in Maine, where as a kid he was sketching fighter jets and skulls, to now being named Orlando’s top tattoo artist. For him, that journey is as much about art as it's about survival.
An art school dropout from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), Mark has always used art as a way to express himself. From sketching to painting to everything in between, it’s felt like a natural progression for him as an artist to explore the world of tattoo. Even from an early age, Mark remembers how he admired the ink his dad had along his arms and legs.
“I thought they looked badass. I was like, ‘I’m gonna have a lot of tattoos when I get older.’ I’ve always wanted to get covered but, growing up, I just didn’t have the means to do it.”
It wasn’t until Mark landed his first tattoo apprenticeship at a small shop that he would begin to take this seriously as a career. After nearly 9 months of watching other artists and learning the craft, Mark showed a lot of promise and was finally ready to make his mark.
Starting out wasn’t easy. It seemed like fitting in with the tattoo lifestyle was going to be a lot harder than it looked.
“I’ve never felt like I fit in with tattooing. I didn’t rush to get ‘the look’. I did almost 5 years of tattooing without anything on my arms and I caught a lot of shit from other artists.”
It didn’t stop there. A little over a year into his promising career, the artist that had taught Mark everything, decided to leave the shop. Still with a lot to learn, Mark was quickly promoted to head artist. It was the opportunity of a lifetime for someone so young in their career, but with little experience to fall back on, Mark found himself having to navigate the sometimes tricky artist-client relationship.
“It was good in the fact that it was a sink or swim moment for me. But it was bad in the sense that I didn’t have anyone to turn to. I could’ve formed some really bad habits during that time but luckily I didn’t.”
Mark used this opportunity to grow as an artist and a person. Heavily influenced from New School artists like Jime Litwalk and Tony Ciavarro, Mark wanted to learn as much as he could from others in the industry. While in Miami for a seminar, Mark had a chance encounter with one of the artists that has inspired him, Tanane Whitfield.
“I went down there to learn and pick his brain a little. I wanted to understand how he accomplishes certain things, his thought process, you know, stuff that any artist would wonder. He ended up picking me out of the crowd to do the demonstration on….[that experience] kind of re-lit the fire for me.”
Mark has learned to embrace new ideas. Not only has it helped him become a better artist, it made him more appreciative of the craft from the other side of the chair.
Now a full-time member of the H&H Orlando team, Mark has learned to adapt his own style and become known for his unique approach to the New School illustrative genre.
“[New School] is just more fun. A lot of times they have storylines that go along with them. You come up with these characters who have these interesting backgrounds. The story makes the art a lot more fun. It’s a narrative piece instead of just a piece.”
For him, it’s more than just the artwork. It’s the story that he hopes to tell at the end of the day. But don’t ask him what that story looks like just yet. It’s a blank canvas with a couple doodles. And for now, we think he prefers to keep it that way.
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