Interview in Skin Deep
The British magazine Skin Deep published an interview with Xavi García Boix in its issue 178, of November 2009. Its website, Big Tattoo Planet, published it online on 27 May 2010. It was written by the tattoo artist Gavin Rodrigues, who had come across his work in 2005 while looking for references for a portrait, and who visited him in Valencia in 2007. This is a summary of what it said.
How he started
He came to tattooing almost by accident. In the early nineties, in the south of Seville, he opened a studio with some friends as a partner, with no intention of tattooing. A friend asked him to design a tattoo because he could draw and, once in the chair, asked him to do it himself. It was his first tattoo, and after that commissions kept coming.
Training
He started out in advertising and graphic design, taught graphic arts for eight years and, when he was already tattooing, studied Fine Arts for five. He also worked as a photographer and sculptor. For him, artistic training is essential: if you can't resolve an image on paper, you will hardly manage it on skin.
Influences
In painting he cited Van Gogh, Velázquez, Goya and the masters of the Renaissance, such as Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo. In tattooing, Filip Leu, Bernie Luther and Shige, and he said he had learned from the work of Tom Renshaw, Shane O'Neill, Bob Tyrrell, Kari Barba and Robert Hernandez, among others.
How he works
He defined his work as black and grey realism, above all portraits, with clarity as the priority. He likes to discuss the design with the client over a coffee, listen to them up to a point and make proposals. He develops his ideas in pencil on tissue paper, makes use of Photoshop and prepares almost all his tattoos on the same day: he draws in the morning and tattoos in the afternoon. He also explained that he had stopped doing Japanese tattooing because, although he admires it, it is not his language.
Outside the studio
He said he had worked at few conventions, where he had received several awards, and that when the working day ends he switches off from tattooing: his free time is for his partner, his dog and surfing.
Works featured in the interview
Credits: interview by Gavin Rodrigues. Photos by Xavi García Boix.
Original interview in English: Big Tattoo Planet, copy preserved on the Internet Archive.