Chicago tattoos: Alli Davis' style evokes the fairy-tale illustrations she loved as a kid
As a kid, Alli Davis liked to lose herself in storybooks. The stories of Peter Rabbit and Greek mythology pulled her in. The illustrated versions were even better.
An artist from a young age, she worked to replicate their illustrations in her own drawings. Now 24, Davis says she's still aiming to emulate that style but now as a tattoo artist.
"In some ways, I'm kind of revisiting more things that I liked to draw as a child," Davis says. "A big inspiration for my style was in old illustrations in books or children's books. I always think of those pen-and-ink drawings that you might see in an old novel."
As a freshman at Columbia College Chicago in 2018, Davis says she stumbled upon plenty of self-appointed tattoo artists experimenting on campus.
"Going to art school, it's kind of inevitable you're going to run into people hand-poking in their dorms," she says of a tattoo method that involves applying ink through dots poked into the skin, rather than drawing the tattoo with a machine.
Davis says she dabbled in tattooing back then. So some of her friends since that time have some of her oldest tattoos.
In 2018, around Halloween, Daniela Villanueva threw a party and invited Davis to tattoo some of the guests.
"I remember being at the party," Villanueva says, "and asking all my friends, 'Should I get a tattoo on my butt?' And they were, like, 'Yes!' "
Villanueva is still friends with Davis, and her left arm is something of a shrine to Davis' work, which she says has grown more professional looking as she has honed her craft. From the first tattoo — a heart with a knife through it on Villanueva's backside — she has gone on to create a bear with a cowboy hat and other tattoos that Villanueva likes to show off.
"Being like, 'My friend has done all my tattoos,' it’s such a cool flex," Villanueva says.
Davis, who is Vietnamese American, lives in Logan Square and works at Magpie Ink Studio, an Asian-owned studio with an all-Asian staff.
She says she has tried using a tattoo machine a few times, but the stick-and-poke technique is still her bread-and-butter even as she has focused on improving her shading and worked to increase the amount of detail in her tattoos.
Davis says she enjoys working on larger, more intricate pieces.
Most of Davis work involves flash designs that she has predrawn and not custom designs. Her style is heavy on medieval and mythical imagery, like designs depicting dragons, knights and a Joan of Arc piece she did for Emma Younger.
Younger, who uses they/them pronouns, has long been drawn to the story of Joan of Arc, which they view through a queer lens. Joan of Arc dressed in traditionally male armor and became a revered leader by bending gender norms.
"It’s a very queer story of her being a voice of a higher power in this case," Younger says. "Also the rendition that Alli had drawn up was so 'this young person is so calm cool and collected.' "
Of her early work, Davis says, "I think it was a really great time in my life because being in art school, you're exposed to so many artists and creatives, and I feel like that really influenced my trajectory into pursuing this freelance sort of career."