The man behind the ink - Tan Kong Meng

In issue #1, TIS brings you a story of a man behind his love of ink in the lifestyle-interview column.

Tan Kong Meng, better known as Kong Meng among his friends and customers started his infatuation with tattoos when he was just only nine years old. From then on he has his keen interest in it and hence started his learning process to master the art and technique of tattooing. His learning process has been a long journey of self discovery, learning from tattoo artist, and through mediums such as books, arts, paintings and so forth. Having to work with other artist at their shops and going from house to house to tattoo his customers, he has now built his 'tattoo hub' located in Sunway Mentari.

Though he may not start off as a tattoo artist, Meng made his way up by practicing hard and emphasize on the importance of sketching, drawing and shadings. "It is important that the tattoo artiste is well equip with such knowledge cause it helps alot in minimising the time hence the pain. You would be able to 'agak' where to whack first" says Meng.Having his own tattoo parlour, Permanent Expression Tat2, Meng spends most of his time drawing and practicing his strokes in sketching while waiting for customers. "We tattoo artiste never have fixed income, in the sense that we never know when is a good month and when is not. It may vary from month to month. Walk in customers is becoming more common for me now, but I still do have my regulars".Since '99, about 10 years ago he gain more interest in the art of tattooing, where he started collecting pictures from newspaper, magazines, just about everywhere. Once he laid his eyes on of his friend doing "hand poke", a method back in those days people perform tattoos, he felt the interest grew, hence he started off "hand poking" on friends at the tender age of 15. Having so much of experience and passion into tattoos, he has now full body covered with tattoos. He had his first tattoo on the thigh at the age of 16, though he feels tattoo is such a painful thing to endure, but he just went on with it. Since he wanted a tattoo so bad, he just bear with it, and broke that mental barrier of pain and just accepted the pain. He then continued until he was 18, and left to Singapore to work. From there on, it never stopped.