The Astronaut Who Carried a Universe
The Astronaut Who Carried a Universe
I have this recurring thought, usually when I'm driving home from Montana Tattoo Company in the dark. It's about containment. The car contains me. The road contains the car. The valley contains the road. We're all just vessels inside of other vessels, trying not to spill. This tattoo started with that exact feeling, but the client brought the perfect container for it: an astronaut.
More Than a Helmet
This isn't a portrait of a person in a suit. It's a portrait of a suit holding an absence. The helmet is open, but there's no face looking back at you. Instead, there's a collapse. A black hole, a nebula, the silent, violent birth of stars, all contained within the void where a head should be. The client didn't want an explorer; he wanted the exploration itself. The suit became the frame for a window into a personal cosmos, one he carries with him on a very terrestrial leg. The realism of the suit's fabric, the hoses, the mechanical details, that's all just set dressing. The truth is in the empty space.
The Gravity of Grey
Black and grey realism, when you strip away the color, forces a different kind of conversation. It's all about density and light, about saying everything with value alone. The biggest challenge here was making the cosmic interior feel infinite and heavy, while keeping the suit material feel tactile and light. You achieve that through contrast, but more importantly, through texture. The suit has the fine, stippled texture of woven fabric. The universe inside has the soft, blended, almost out-of-focus texture of something too vast to comprehend. The hard, crisp edge of the helmet rim is the only thing separating the two realities. That edge had to be perfect. It's the event horizon of the piece.
The Collaboration in the Void
The client came to me at Unorthodox Tattoo with two words: "astronaut" and "void." He talked about feeling like a shell sometimes, a professional container moving through the world, while inside was this chaotic, beautiful, untamed mess of ideas and emotions. My job wasn't to design a cool space scene. It was to design a specific kind of emptiness that felt full. We talked about cosmic imagery, and he kept rejecting obvious symbols—planets, rings, moons. He wanted the raw material. The stuff before it becomes something. That's how we landed on the nebulous cloud, the pure, unformed potential. The suit is his life, the structure. The void is everything that makes living in that structure worthwhile, and terrifying. He got the tattoo on his calf, a place he sees every day. A reminder that the vessel is meaningless without what it carries.
I have really been enjoying these deep dives into the mythological and surreal worlds. After years of focusing heavily on realism and reference based work, shifting into storytelling and symbolic imagery feels like a creative rebirth. Thank you for being part of the journey. If you are interested in collaborating on a project, you can explore my work and reach out through UnorthodoxTattoo.com or visit my personal site at MickeySchlick.com or visit the shop at MontanaTattooCompany.com. For more insight into mythology inspired surrealism, visit the Neo Japanese Surrealism page at this link. Book a consultation, explore portfolios, and bring your idea to life. The studio is fully automated with aftercare, directions, booking options, and consistent customer service available 24 hours a day at 406-215-4321. If you would like to talk with me directly, just ask and I will connect with you as soon as possible.
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