Ilkim Koc is a Turkish tattoo artist who is vegan for 6 years. Since he turned himself to vegan (2015) , he also tranformed his works and his tattoo shop to a vegan one.
“When i became vegan, i start to realize there are many animal derived ingredients used in lots of materials we use when we do tattoos. On the other hand, some of them are not considered “ cruelty free”. Since i became vegan, the things that i use must be vegan too! I did my research and tried to switch my materials to cruelty free and vegan ones. It was not that easy in the beginning, because veganism was not that common and understandable. I want to give and example;There were some common products (such as vaseline) contained “lanolin- sheep wool fat” which was really hard to find the cruelty free and vegan. So i contacted some vegan tattoo artist in other countries and did some research about what i can use instead. By this way, i finally succeeded to change all materials and my tattoo shop became uniqe,Because there was no other vegan tattoo shops in my country .I felt like i made a good step for animal rights .
When i started to change my materials, my clients were also curious if it is gonna effect my works. Of course, lots of my clients were not vegan at that time. So it was kind of challanging. At the same time, i had o explain why i am doing it, people got more curious. It was also a good step because people start to demand vegan tattoos. Vegan tattoos contains mostly plant based and natural ingredients. So it is more eco-friendly than others.
Recently, while the veganism spreading, it is now easy to reach vegan-friendly- CF products. It means that we do not need to harm animals by having a tattoo.
Ilkim Koc lives in Bodrum but he also works in Istanbul time to time. He started his tatoo artist career on neotraditional and olschool Works. He participated Bulgarian International tattoo fest with his tattoo studio and won an award in 2014
He is now working on geometric linework and sometimes minimalist style. If you want yo check his work or get an appointment you can check his instagram adress (@ilkimkoctattooer)
Here is some of his works, lets have a look!
More info: Instagram
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Sofia Tattoo Fest 2014 Ilkım Koc Work
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