Luis and The Tattooed Monk

Last month, I met Luis at the NYC Urban Tattoo Convention and he shared this cool sleeve:

Luis's artist is David Styles, who works out of House of Styles Tattoos & Body Piercing in the Bronx.
He is one of Styles' best customers and says he has about 40 hours of work all told on his canvas.

As for this section of sleeve, Luis explains:

"This is The Tattooed Monk. Basically The story behind him is that he's drunk and belligerent, so he's all over the place ... He was actually a crime lord in ancient China - the Chinese and Japanese have different stories - so basically he tried to redeem himself  by joining a monastery and becoming a monk so he could find inner peace and everything ... he just really found out that he couldn't take life without liquor. So he ... just kinda went and took on some monster - he beat the monster but, in turn, destroyed the monastery. so he ended up getting kicked out ... you see a lot of  Japanese yakuza members running around with this tattoo, [like a] big back piece or something like that."

Here's a larger perspective from the House of Styles Facebook page:

Photo courtesy of House of Styles Tattoo & Body Piercing

Thanks to Luis for sharing his awesome sleeve with us here on Tattoosday!

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