Mark Ryden is an American painter and perhaps the most successful artist of the so-called lowbrow art movement which emerged from Southern California in the late 1970s on the backs of Robert Williams, Gary Panter and eventually Juxtapoz magazine. Ryden’s work is both surreal and realistic thanks to his masterful skills as a painter. His work can best be appreciated in person, where the beauty of his brushstrokes and attention to detail really emerge. The themes of his work have ranged from meat to Abe Lincoln to numerology and his work has frequently included bunnies, bees, trees and doe-eyed women. It is for all of these reasons that his artwork seems to translate particularly well to tattoos, with his images adorning the most important canvases of all: the human kind. Here’s a look at some Ryden-inspired tattos alongside some of the works that inspired them.

Rose, a goth girl crying tears of blood, seems to be one of the most popular Ryden works to be translated to skin. Here are several different versions, some very good, and some kind of awful.

The original was part of his 2003 show entitled “Blood,” which was comprised of very small paintings. The actual painting below measures 3.5 x 4.5 inches.

His “Fountain” painting, depicting a girl holding her head while blood shoots from her neck is also from the “Blood” show. The original is in the middle below, flanked by two different interpretations.

“Clear Hearts, Grey Flowers” was painted as the cover to the band Jack Off Jill’s 2000 LP of the same name, and the three women on the merry-go-round in the painting are the women in the band. Here’s the original:

This person had the three girls separated:

Here’s a backpiece:

And here’s a single image on a shoulder of the girl riding the bee:

“Just the Girls” includes a pair of Ryden’s trademark porcelain-faced doe-eyed women. A section of the original is below alongside a black and grey interpretation:

“Nurse Sue” was part of Ryden’s “Tree” show in 2007 at the Michael Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles, and the tattooed version below adds a cool blue border that really makes the image pop off the skin.

Don’t all little girls pray to “Saint Barbie”? This one appears to be a work in progress:

“Sophia’s Mercurial Water” was part of the “Bunnies and Bees” show, which, as you might have guessed, had paintings loaded with lots of bees and bunnies.

The next few tattoos were inspired by Ryden’s “Meat” show. This is a section from “The Ecstasy of Cecelia,” which features a girl at the piano.

This is “Dog Named Jesus,” which makes for a beautiful sleeve as you can see in the inset:

And these two tattoos are both from images contained in “Princess Sputnik.” Godspeed indeed.

This is the original:

Got a Ryden tattoo of your own? and we’ll add it.

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