Photos of a young topless man wrapped in plastic foil and tied to a tree in Hanoi for allegedly failing to pay for his tattoos have been doing the rounds on Vietnamese social media.

It’s winter in Vietnam right now, with temperatures dropping under 10 degrees Celsius, so seeing topless men on the streets isn’t what you would call normal, especially ones wrapped tightly in plastic foil and tied to trees. And yet this was the sight some in Hanoi were treated to last week – a young shirtless man wearing a bike helmet, wrapped in see-through plastic and tied to a tree, with a sign that read “I hate paying for tattoos“. Photos of the man were posted online, and quickly went viral.

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Kerstin Tristan, a 55-year-old woman from Leipzig, in Germany, reportedly spent around $35,000 over the last five years covering almost her entire body with colorful tattoos.

It all started in 2015, when Kerstin, who worked as a taxi driver for most of her life, decided to get her very first tattoo, to add a bit of color to her life. That very first piece of body art started what some would go as far as calling an obsession, as Tristan went from one tattoo on her arm to a colorful body suit in just five years. The German woman apparently spent a whopping 30,000 euros ($35,000) on her ink so far, and doesn’t plant to stop anytime soon.

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A Scottish fan of rap superstar Eminem has set a new Guinness record for most tattoos of a single musician after getting 28 tattoos inspired by her idol inked on her body.

35-year-old Nikki Patterson got her first tattoo, a smiley face, when she was 18, and she has added dozens of them since then. Three years ago, she got her first portrait of Eminem, whose music she had adored ever since she heard “Stan” for the first time, and she kept adding to them. Today, out of the 52 tattoos on Nikki’s body, 28 of them are inspired by Eminem, and 16 of them are portraits of the musician.

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Palmistry, or the art of palm reading, is very popular in Thailand, so one entrepreneur has founded a business that specializes in tattooing people’s palm lines to allegedly change their fortunes for the better.

They say you make “your own luck” and if you believe in palmistry there is now a very simple way to change your destiny. All you have to do is visit a certain tattoo shop in Nonthaburi, Thailand, and ask to have your life, love or luck lines altered with the help of tattoos. Even if you don’t know what lines need to be altered, they have palm reading experts who can tell you what lines need to be tattooed in order to improve your prosperity, health or love life.

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mrT stucklife is a talented tattoo artist out of Stockholm, Sweden, who has been getting a lot of attention online for his statuesque black-and-white tattoos.

The young Swedish tattooist has an impressive portfolio of black-and-white tattoos, from portraits of pop icons and famous movie scenes to original designs, but it’s his hyperrealistic statuesque tattoos that have been getting a lot of attention on social media platforms like Instagram. And for good reason, as his Greco-Roman art-inspired masterpieces sometimes look chiseled onto their wearers’ bodies.

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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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The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Tasmania, Australia, isn’t the only museum to have shut its gates because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but it stands out because of its unique, human artwork.

As hard as it is to believe, Tim is both a man and an artwork. A former tattoo parlor owner from Zurich, in Switzerland, he agreed to have his back tattooed by artist Belgian artist Wim Delvoye in 2006, and has been exhibiting his body art in museums and art galleries ever since. He has been coming to MONA since 2011, for stints that can last up to six months at a time and see him sitting with his legs crossed on a plinth, in complete silence, showing off Delvoye’s artwork. And even though MONA closed down on March 18, he continues to sit in the empty museum for six hours a day. That is his job…

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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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