It wasn’t the plan to become a tattoo artist when he picked up drawing again in his early twenties, but it just turned out that way. “Just for fun, some illustrations, which were from the beginning already a bit political or with some sort of message. I posted them on Instagram, then some friends said it would be cool as a tattoo.”

Mattijs, or as his tattoo name Mattys, started off doing stick and poke tattoos in student rooms, after some time got asked to work in a tattoo studio and by now it is his fulltime profession.

“For a long time I thought I wasn’t good at drawing at all. And a lot of drawings from the early days I couldn’t really tattoo in the beginning. I liked the drawings but wasn’t really paying attention to how I could make it into a good tattoo. I didn’t start off with becoming a tattoo artist as the goal, so it still amazes me sometimes that it happened like that.” Read more