We were lucky to catch up with Danny Elliott recently and have shared our conversation below.

Danny, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

Tattooing itself involves a very specific process. You’re taking your clients idea, and even when you get to put your own spin on it, you’re bringing that idea to life as a shared expression of their personality and your own artistic vision. You use a stencil to eliminate possible mistakes, you get used to using certain color combinations to get perfect blends, do it in an aseptic environment, you play music or movies to distract your client from the pain all while you worry constantly about getting enough footage to promote it in a social media driven environment – The list goes on. The rhythm creates consistency so that when a client orders a “Danny Elliott style” portrait with a side of neon and graffiti I can serve it up every time without fail. It’s a process that I genuinely love in spite of the long days and in spite of the pressure because I can deliver and it’s a rewarding experience for both my client and myself. A few years ago however, I still found myself wondering…what if I did away with all of that?

What if we took away the stencil and the planned color palette and embraced the imperfection? What if we took away the studio environment and distractions and all we had to listen to was the wind rustling through the grass, a the occasional soft crunch of footsteps from wildlife or passersby? What if we gave our control of the design over to Mother Nature? The result wouldn’t be my own at that point, but instead it would be collaborative with the world around me and the artist would be unknown.

It took Millions of years to form what we see at Red Rocks park near Denver, then I timed the season and sunrise just right (twice) to light the landscape properly, but last year I created the worlds first Plein Air Tattoo (a landscape tattooed form life) and we filmed “Artist Unknown” in 2022. It premiered as a short film in both the Wyoming International Film Festival and the Silicon Beach Film Festival this summer, and I’ll be online for free this fall.

The experience was honestly one of the highlights of my career and my life in general. It was so rewarding to create freely, without added pressure or expectations I’ve imposed on myself day to day. It’s something I definitely plan on doing again, and I loved refocusing on the process rather than the results, but thankfully the results were pretty good too. Haha.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’ve always been an artist and created however I could. Mostly pencil and paper because it was cheap, but growing up my parent’s actually encouraged me to draw on my walls and when that wasn’t quite enough space I became a tattoo artist so I could draw on people professionally in 2011.

Anyone can see the type of work I prefer just by checking out my website or socials, but the main throughline in my artistic journey is that for me it is a relentless pursuit of progress. Everyday is a grind of pushing for more detail, better flow on the body, unique ways to make every piece stand out, etc. I’m currently touring around Spain and France looking for new inspiration outside of the tattoo world, and I’m excited about what the future holds. I’m not interested in creating average tattoos. I want to take whatever concept we start with and make magic.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

To put it simply, they’re cool in concept but terrible for the environment – I honestly think they’re a bit ahead of their time though. One day when our energy sources aren’t polluting the environment and it the carbon footprint of a server running to house digital art is net zero then I’’ll be on board. If we couple that with a market that has more use for NFT’s, for example something like Halliday’s Oasis in “Ready Player one”, a virtual world that we’re part of rather than a virtual space that we access via the phone or computer I think original art will have more value there.

As it stands a lot of “NFT’s” are simply too easy to copy with a good enough digital file that makes owning the original kind of pointless, so tha’ts something to combat also. I saw one Artist, London Reese, create a painting in the real world, then he digitized it, and burned the original documenting his process of destroying it. The only place it continued to exist was on the thumb drive that he sold – it’s that kind of commitment to the process and exclusivity that will help original NFT’s hold value over time.

I don’t have any plans on making any myself at the moment, but who knows. Build a server that runs on solar power and I’ll paint something just to burn it too. Sounds like a Good Friday.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I get to spend my time on this earth in pursuit of my passions and I have the freedom to explore all possibilities. Every day is something new, and I get to connect with people in a way that lasts a lifetime.

Contact Info:

• Website: DannyElliott.ink
• Instagram: @DannyElliott_ink
• Other: TikTok & Twitch: @DannyElliott_ink

Image Credits
The Personal photo was taken by Art Cantu, Owner of Natural Ink Magazine.