Zorloni 1-Ton

I’m Andrea Zorloni, a tattoo artist who has been drawn to tattoos since childhood, when I would notice them on people at the beach. The real turning point came around age 20, when I started watching Ink Master and a whole new world opened up to me. I never imagined that this passion could become a career, but I kept nurturing it. My work centers on the sacred and the profane, and I tattoo a lot of statues in black and grey, often paired with darker figures like demons and skulls. To find inspiration, I study other tattooers’ work and try to understand what they had in mind when designing. I then browse image galleries and Pinterest for photos with strong contrast that convey something, and from those I create designs that feel truly mine. One of my proudest pieces is a Madonna I tattooed in Germany a year ago. The client wanted a religious image with a street art twist, so I added writer-style lettering across her face, and it became one of my most viral tattoos. I’ve known Sullen for many years, since I was a newcomer visiting the conventions in Milan and Lugano and buying their artist collaboration shirts every time. For my Sullen artist series piece, I redrew that Madonna so it would sit properly on a t-shirt, since a design works differently on fabric than on skin. Through this collaboration, I want to show that realism is more than copying photos, because there is always study behind it. By editing and reworking references, you can make each piece unique.