YANNI SHAY

​

Yanni is a Greek tattoo artist born in Russia, raised in Greece and Germany for most of his life. He loves art, tattoos and different cultures. Having visited NYC before, Yanni has always had a connection to the city and on his last trip he solidified his time here by tattooing alongside our artists here at the shop. 

 

Before he was tattooing, Yanni was a supervisor at a hotel and a waiter in a restaurant for around 6 years. There, he already met a lot of people from different countries which sparked an interest in traveling. Since he was a kid, he loved drawing with pencils. He liked drawing super heroes in school with other friends and later on he started drawing tattoo flash for his friends and his own tattoos.

 

Yanni always had an interest for art and the will to create his own. His grandfather is a painter and is still making a lot of oil paintings so he has always been a great influence when it came to creating his own art. After he started tattooing in 2015, Yanni tried out some different styles and ended up with black and gray, chicano realism, ornamental and scripts. For him, these styles are the most interesting to tattoo. Smooth shades, clean lines, thin or bold, solid black, and different elements combined to create the harmony in the design.

 

What inspires him most is old cathedrals and churches, old temples and ruins, graffiti, street art, and mandalas. Since he started tattooing, he started traveling to experience different cultures and ideas for new inspiration in order to grow as a person, grow his spirit and his skills as a tattoo artist.