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.

Photo: Arlo DiCristina/Instagram

“All of my artistic training has come from hours and hours of practice and simply trial and error. I’m learning constantly, whether it’s from artists that I work with at Elysium or scrolling through Instagram,” the talented artist told Tattoo Life. “I am always trying to acquire new knowledge and techniques.” In order to take his tattoo designs to a whole new level, DiCristina has dedicated much of his free time to learning 3D sculpting and image editing software. “My most recent artistic venture has been creating my own references by playing around with 3D sculpting in the program ZBrush,” the artist said. “Once I learned how to digitally sculpt, I would bring my model into KeyShot for rendering, lighting, and then finally bring it into Photoshop to add some final components. It has been a whole new process and challenge.” For more amazing tattoos, check out the work of Eduardo “Duda” Lozano, a Brazilian artist who specializes in stitched patch tattoos, the black and grey masterpieces of Eliot Kohec, or the photographic tattoos of Inal Bersekov.