I wanted to give a shout-out to Roland Pacheco, a tattooer, writer and owner of X-Isle Tattoo in Hawi, Big Island, Hawaii.

I’ve met him a couple of times, but have yet to get inked by him (timing problems; I dive a lot when I’m in hawaii so it leaves my windows to get tattooed somewhat problematic).

The thing I specifically wanted to share was some of his brilliant breakdowns of how he designs the polynesian work he does; I’ve never seen anything like it.

Here’s an example of one of his diagrams (click the image to see Roland’s writeup).

 

 

 

 

The details on design elements like use a the fibonachi sequence and meaning of both shape and content is absolutely wonderful.

Roland’s blog is here, and his shop website is here.

This is the best shop I’ve found anywhere on the Big Island. It’s a long way from Kailua-Kona, but it’s worth it.