Sylvain, a heavily tattooed school teacher from Essonne, in France, risks losing his job, because some parents don’t approve of his full-body tattoo, which includes his face.

The 35-year-old teacher, who goes by Freaky Hoody on social media, recently went on French television channel BFM TV to complain about the threat of losing his job strictly based on his appearance. He claims that his superiors have asked him to no longer teach kindergarten children, after receiving complaints from parents regarding his unconventional looks. Apparently, these people don’t even have children in the classes he teaches, but they have an issue with his tattoos, which cover the vast majority of his body, including his face, and even his eyeballs.

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Over the years, we’ve featured some exceptionally talented tattoo artists on Oddity Central, but when it comes to surrealism and face morph tattoos, few can match Arlo DiCristina.

DiCristina, who goes by @ArloTattoos on social media, has been practicing tattooing since he was a teenager, and now runs his own tattoo shop, Elysium Studios, in Grand Junction, Colorado. He rose to fame a few years ago, when one of his projects, a portrait of iconic Batman villain, Joker, with his face interwoven into a skyline of Gotham City, went viral on social media, gaining praise from both tattoo enthusiasts as well as other inking masters. The name Arlo DiCristina has been linked to surrealist and face morph tattoos ever since and he has accepted the association as a badge of honor, specializing in the the two tattooing styles.

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A young tattoo artist who goes by the name ‘Ngoc’ on social media has become famous for helping people, especially women hide their scars by inking beautiful artworks over them

For many people having to live with visible scars, either from accidental burns, operations like appendectomy or cesarean section is an everyday struggle. But thanks to talented tattoo artist Ngoc, some of them don’t have to. The Hanoi-based artist is known as a magician in the Vietnamese tattooing community, as scars are considered very difficult to deal with, but she always seems to find the best design to perfectly conceal them.

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Belgian tattoo artist Indy Voet has earned a reputation for executing permanent tattoos in the most unconventional places, from people’s finger webs, to the hidden space behind their ears. But his specialty is hand poking tattoos on the roof of people’s mouths.

Voet has been doing roof of the mouth tattoos for about five years and has since developed his own technique as well as a portfolio of tattoos that fit the unusual location. A former body piercing artist with ten years of experience under his belt, the young Belgian found the transition to doing tattoos in uncommon places natural. Although having a tattoo inked on the roof of the mouth means that dentists are the only ones who will truly be able to admire it, people seem to think having a secret tattoo is pretty cool.

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Looking at the tattoos of Mexican artist Yatzil Elizalde, your first reflex is to squint, thinking there is something wrong with your eyes, but it’s just the artist’s unique ‘blurry effect’ style playing tricks on you.

Coming up with a unique tattooing style usually requires a lot of experience and confidence, so it was really surprising for us to learn that the creator of these stunning double vision tattoos was only 25-years-old. Even more surprising was the fact that she had started out as a visual artist, before taking up tattooing six years ago and opening her own studio in Hermosillo, Mexico’s Sonora state.

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Men usually show off their affection to their better halves by buying them flowers, complimenting them or showering them with gifts, but one Vietnamese man decided to show off his love for his fiancee in a rather unusual way – by tattoing a large portrait of her on his back.

22-year-old Truong Van Lam allegedly spent nearly 24 hours having his girlfriend’s portrait inked on his back, in three separate sessions. The first one, which lasted eight hours, was in November of last year, and sine then he went under the needle two more times, one for over six hours, and the other nine hours. The result is a permanent portrait of his 20-year-old girlfriend, Luong Kha Tran, a tattooed version of a photograph of her.

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A young Canadian man who tattooed most of his body, including his face, hands and legs bright blue, claims that the “whimsical element” has really helped him enjoy his life way more than before.

Donnie Snider, a former forklift driver from Scarborough, in Canada’s Ontario region, started permanently coloring his body blue three years ago, and is now almost completely Smurf-like in color. It all started when he asked his sister to tattoo a part of his leg and foot with the bright blue hue; he liked it so much that he kept on turning part of his body blue, partly because of the psychological impact he experienced. If before he felt  trapped by conformity and had a “lack of confidence”, the permanent makeover really gave him a big boost.

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An Argentinian man desperate to have his tattoo removed just a week after having it done, used a cheese grater to scratch it off, even if it meant letting go of some of his skin in the process.

The 21-year-old man, who preferred to remain anonymous, opted for the unusual and most likely painful tattoo removal method two years ago, but a video and pictures of his arm, before and after, only just went viral, after one of his friends decided to post them online. A resident of the Argentinian city of Mendoza, the protagonist of the viral footage was located by local media reporters and was happy to share his motivation for using a cheese grater to remove a fresh tattoo he had had done on his wrist.

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Looking at the stitched patch tattoos of Eduardo “Duda” Lozano, it’s hard to believe that he only pioneered the new style three months ago. Photos of his amazing creations have been doing the rounds online ever since and he’s already been invited to tattoo conventions all over the world.

The Sao Paolo-based artist has been doing tattoos since 2002, but he only recently got the idea for the stitched patch style, as a throwback to his days working as a logo designer for caps and embroidered shirts. Three months ago, he created a Garfield patch tattoo design as an experiment, and that very same day improved on the new style with a tattoo of Courage the Cowardly Dog. After posting the photos on his Instagram and receiving positive feedback from his fans and other tattoo artists, Lozano realized he was on to something special and decided to focus on stitched patch tattoos going forward. He is now recognized as the pioneer of the style.

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Kelsey Karter, a 24-year-old singer from New Zealand, has been getting a lot of attention these past couple of days for allegedly getting former One Direction member Harry Styles’ face tattooed on her cheek.

The self-confessed Styles fan shocked her fans three days ago, when she posted a photo of herself with what looked like a tattoo of the English heartthrob inked on the right side of her face. She had previously hinted that she was planning something special to celebrate Styles’ 25th birthday, tweeting “Finally know what I’m getting Harry for his birthday,” but no one expected her to get a facial tattoo of him.

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A young Ohio mother was recently arrested for allowing her 10-year-old son to get a permanent tattoo in unsanitary conditions, from a 16-year-old unlicensed artist. She later claimed she got simply got tired of her son asking for a tattoo.

34-year-old Nikki Dickinson was arrested last week in Bellefontaine, Ohio, after a disturbing video showing her young son getting a tattoo on his arm went viral on social media. Dickinson doesn’t appear in the video simply because she is the one recording the footage, but she admitted to police that she gave her parental consent for the tattooing, because her son had been pleading with her to get a tattoo of the first initial of his name. It’s unclear whether she knew that the 16-year-unlicensed tattoo artist had a history of malpractice and once gave a client MRSA (a Stafilococus aureus strain) from a dirty needle.

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Jesse Rix has been tattooing since 2005 and specializes in a wide range of styles, from realism to nature pieces, but it’s hid geometric, three-dimensional optical illusion tattoos that really get people talking. Some of his works are so trippy that you could swear you’re looking at a fantastic world underneath a person’s skin.

In most of his incredible tattooed optical illusions, Rix uses geometrical shapes like hexagons and cubes to “remove” pieces of skin from his subjects and reveal the colorful world beneath. However, his art and skills are constantly evolving, as shown in some of his latest works, which feature windows inked on to his subjects through which you can see the universe beneath their skin. The New Hampshire-based artist is obviously a master of the trompe-l’œil technique, and some of his tattoos are so insanely realistic they can be kind of creepy to look at.

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The Russian branch of Domino’s Pizza was curious to know just how much people love their pies, so they came up with a promotion that challenged fans to get a tattoo of the Domino’s logo in a visible spot on their bodies, for the chance to win 100 free pizzas per year, for 100 years. The response was overwhelming.

When Domino’s launched their unusual promotion, on August 31st, they probably expected just a few die-hard pizza fans to take them up on their offer, but they were inundated by hundreds of photos of fresh tattoos on social media, in the first couple of days. In an attempt to stave off the wave of tattoos and requests for free pizzas, the company had to clarify that only the first 350 people to get the tattoo – which had to be at least 2 cm (0.79 inches) in length – and post it on social media would get the 10,000 free pizzas. They also released an image clarifying the visible parts of the body where candidates could get the tattoo, but that didn’t help things too much.

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To say French tattoo artist Eliot Kohek is a master of black and grey realism would be a gross understatement. Some of the works he has inked on his clients over the years look ready to jump off of their skin.

Judging by the level of detail in Eliot Kohek’s tattoos, it’s hard to believe that he has no formal artistic training. He has been fond of drawing for as long as he can remember, but it wasn’t until he attended a tattoo convention at age 19 that he knew that’s what he wanted to do with his life. He quit his job and found a talented tattoo artist who would let him watch as he inked his clients. For practical experience, Eliot would practice everything he learned on his friends. Today, he is regarded as one of the world’s most talented tattoo artists, and it’s easy to see why.

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A Swedish mother of two whose tattoo artist misspelled her son’s name decided that it was easier and a lot less painful to legally change the boy’s name rather than go through several painful laser removal sessions.

30-year-old Johanna Giselhäll Sandström, from Kyrkhult, Sweden, wanted to show her devotion to her two children, Nova and Kevin, by having their names tattooed on her arm. She visited a local tattoo shop, told one of the tattooists there what she wanted and gave him her children’s name. He never asked anything about the spelling and instead just went to work on her arm. The woman didn’t notice anything strange about the tattoo at first, but when she got home and had a closer look at it, her heart sank. Instead of ‘Kevin’ the artist had misspelled it ‘Kelvin’.

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