MIKKO INKSANITY
MIKKO INKSANITY
MIKKO INKSANITY
FOUNDER OF BELOW ZERO
LONG-TIME PROFESSIONAL
Mikko is the founder of Below Zero, and he has a long career in tattooing. He specializes in realism and surrealism, and mostly works on large scale tattoos and projects. He works both in black & grey and colour.
“I have always been quite obsessive about visual imagery, and it has followed me through my life in both good and bad.”
Mikko started working as a tattoo artist in 2007. This was a time before social media played as strong a part as it does nowadays, - so if you wanted to learn more about the culture and tattooing itself, you had to go out in the world and get to work with different artists.
And this is exactly what Mikko did.
Mikko spent the first 10 years of his tattoo career traveling around Europe and a bit of the USA as well, and participated in the prestigious events of the industry. In these events Mikko won different competitions and gathered recognition, which was particularly important for a tattoo artist in the beginning of his career.
During the years spent out in the world, Mikko improved his skills at different levels, both in terms of tools and design. By getting to work with the best of this era, as well as following tattoo artists specialized in different styles, he was able to constantly draw information towards these skills.
In addition to all the fame and everything Mikko learned, this trip also granted him a bunch of dear memories.'
Eventually, Mikko settled down to start a family, and this is how Below Zero was born in the beginning of 2015, - and now, a decade later, the studio keeps on blooming.
In his own doing, Mikko finds himself to be ‘omnivorous’, - he likes a variety of different subjects and gets easily inspired by them.
However, realism and surrealism are the most natural and the most pleasant topics for him.
Mikko considers body shapes and adapting images to them to be his biggest individual development leap in recent years. “For this I thank my amazing clients. Because of them I have been able to create much larger tattoos and projects”, to quote his words directly.
“I am the happiest when I’m creating something.”
Outside of tattooing, Mikko does other forms of art, - drawing traditionally, painting, or creating with 3D. Wading through various research projects in the field of visual arts also fills a large part of his free time. Family life keeps him busy as well.
