We sat down with Chaim Machlev, the tattoo artist known as DotsToLines, at his studio in Los Angeles to discuss his journey into tattooing, the way he approaches creating body art, and the inspiration behind his Lino mug design.
You took an unconventional path to becoming a tattoo artist. Can you tell us a little about your journey?
I was born and raised in Tel Aviv. I was an IT guy when I got my first tattoo at 30 years old. The whole process of getting tattooed and putting trust into someone was very inspiring. After getting tattooed, I basically could not even function or think about my work anymore. All I could think of was tattooing.
I left for the desert to isolate myself and try to understand what I should do next. After a few days in total solitude, I realized it would be a lie to continue my life the way it was. I decided I’d do everything I could to become a tattoo artist. It came to me during a sunrise in the desert. I came back from the desert, I sold everything, and I moved to Berlin with a little backpack.
How did you learn to tattoo?
I always loved art — music, traditional art, fine art, sculptures— but I had never actually created art before. It was a very hard journey in the beginning to find someone who would teach me, because besides super high motivation, I didn’t have a portfolio or any drawings to show. It was extremely hard to find someone to open the door for me. Eventually I did find that after a year in Germany, but realized that I just had to start tattooing people. I opened a little shop with some money I saved from side jobs, lived inside, and I just started tattooing people for free. There are a lot of punks in Berlin—They just want to get tattooed, and they don’t care what it looks like. I tattooed them for free day and night, just to understand how to do it. I just jumped straight into it.
How did this impact your style of tattooing?
My way of working is very different than other artists because of that. Because I didn’t go through the traditional way of tattooing, I still lack the tools that other artists that worked from a very young age have—drawing and techniques and stuff, I don’t have that. On the other hand, it’s very easy for me to think outside of the box.
I never got conditioned to create in a certain direction, I never developed a tunnel view that that this is the only way. I work a lot with my feelings. I started to simplify big pieces that I saw to understand why they work and try to do it as minimally as possible — just with lines.
I want to get to the point where my tattoos look more natural on the body than if the body weren’t tattooed.
What is your process working with clients?
Most of the clients that come to the studio have a general idea [of what they want], but most of the time we do something completely different. What I try to do is work with the body structure, instead of just making something and putting it on somebody. It’s more like body art, see what works on the body—I want to get to the point where my tattoos look more natural on the body than if the body weren’t tattooed. If you find the right design for someone and this person is like, “oh my god it looks like it’s always been there”. Even if your body changes, these things are timeless. So adapting meanings to this stuff is much easier. It’s really easy for me to adapt to it, really easy for me to connect to it, it’s also very abstract, so it’s very easy to adapt meanings to it later on.
Right. Your relationship with a tattoo can change over time. You grow with it.
100% Yep totally. I think when tattooing is done right it’s a way to reclaim and get connected to your body which is sometimes very hard in our world, because everyone tells you that something is wrong—You have improve, you have to buy, you have create, you have to use—And then you think to yourself, wait, that’s not true!
Is there a way that you describe your style to people?
What I try to do is body art rather than tattooing. I try to look at the body and understand what works with the existing tattoos, what limitations we have, and what could work when the person is completely naked. Instead of taking a subject or a motif and tattooing it on your body, why don’t we treat the body as the motif, and the tattoo will be the subject on top of it. You can draw the most beautiful subject ever, but at the end of the day, it’s never really made for the specific body. It's never really individualized. What I try to do is to accentuate or emphasize movements throughout the body, and I try to do it in the most minimalistic way.
The more my career develops, the more I go more and more abstract with it. Minimalistic stuff is so easily digested by people. It’s easy to see it and to feel like, ok, that really works, I really like that.
It’s interesting that you call your style minimalist, but so many of the pieces you do are so complex.
It’s kind of like the different sides of me-- One side is very spiritual and very flowing, and the other side is very computer-oriented. Some of the stuff I do is very complex but the movement is very simple, the movement is very minimal.
In our product design, we talk about the way that precision and humanity intersect, and I think that your style captures that perfectly. You have your spiritual side, but you’re also a computer scientist. You capture something that feels very organic with a great deal of precision.
Exactly. It really relates to product design when it’s well done.
It’s minimal but it’s intentional.
This is the thing, minimal stuff is much, much harder, because if one thing doesn’t work well, it just doesn’t work anymore. It needs to be well thought out. On the contrary, if things are not minimal you can hide it with a little more colors, a little more shading, more designs— it’s all about creating a balance.
How did you approach this design... obviously it’s quite different than putting something on somebody’s body forever.
I did exactly like I do any other design, I just stared at the mugs for hours until I understood. Again, I never really studied art or design, so I develop through experimenting, and then when I realize I have shivers on my back I know that’s the way to go.
Because that mug, it’s perfect the way it is. You look at it and you think ok, whatever I try to do on it to improve it won’t work, so maybe I’m just going to try to create a little movement or a little volume and maybe it will become an optical illusion? I try to do something that is not cannibalizing the design but tries to flow with it.
Selfishly, I see lines when I look at the mug. I thought in the beginning, maybe I’ll go with mandalas, maybe I’ll go with dot work, and then no—everything is just so curvy, so curved lines. And then I just started designing and then it just worked, you know?
For more about Chaim Machlev, visit his website or follow on Instagram.