TätowierMagazin Young Talent Contest

21-year-old Munich girl is Germany's new tattoo star

The best tattoo under high pressure: Melissa Flattinger has been named Germany's best young tattoo artist by a jury of experts

Germany's new shooting star in tattoo heaven has been crowned: tattoo artist Melissa Flattinger from Munich won over the five-member expert jury of the big TätowierMagazin young talent contest on Sunday. The 21-year-old engraved a large ornamental motif on her customer's back live at the Tattoomenta tattoo and piercing show in Kassel, beating off competition from Flo Gropper (26) from Memmingen and Rebecca Bertelwick (27) from Dortmund.

Nationwide competition

The nationwide competition has attracted great interest in the industry every year since 2004. After a month-long preliminary decision, which is carried out via Germany's oldest tattoo magazine TätowierMagazin, the jury only reveals the theme to the three finalists at the beginning of Tattoomenta - this year it was »Mischwesen« (mixed creatures) in reference to the 500th anniversary of Hieronymus Bosch's death. The tattoo contestants spent the entire Saturday researching the theme, developing ideas and finally drawing the motif entirely on their own.

The tattoo is created in front of thousands of trade fair visitors

On Sunday, things got serious: in front of countless trade fair visitors, the three finalists tattooed their design onto their customer's skin and underwent expert judging on the big stage in the evening. This time, the jury consisted of TätowierMagazin editor-in-chief Dirk-Boris Rödel, TATTOO-EROTICA editor-in-chief Boris Glatthaar, Tattoomenta organizer and tattoo artist Jenny from Studio Jenny B's Tattoo (Kassel, Göttingen and Paderborn) and tattoo artists Lars Wilczinski from Blue Moon Tattoo (Berlin) and Dea Vectorink from The Rusty Anchor (Gerolstein).

Rapid tattoo career

The competition attracts a lot of attention in the scene primarily because all of the finalists are tattooing at an impressive level, even in the eyes of experts - and none of them must have more than three years' experience. All three finalists are generally predicted by scene insiders to have rapid careers, especially the first-place winner.

Munich woman stings »oriental Wolpertinger«

The jury rated the motif of this year's winner Melissa as imaginative and extremely well crafted. The 21-year-old also scored points for adapting the tattoo to the wearer's body and her previous tattoo style. The Munich-based artist from the Corpsepainter Tattoo studio drew a cat with antlers and large ears and embedded it in a fine, ornamental mandala blackwork. In this way, she creatively processed the jury's thematic brief - the result was a kind of »oriental Wolpertinger«.

2nd place goes to Memmingen, 3rd place to Dortmund

Runner-up Flo Gropper from Studio Pain4Pleasure in Memmingen opted for a portrait with tentacles in the style of black and gray realism. Rebecca Bertelwick from Atelier Kaninchenbau in Dortmund took third place with a colorful mixed creature motif of rat and swan directly inspired by Bosch.
The Tattoomenta tattoo and piercing show is one of the most renowned public fairs in the tattoo scene. It attracts thousands of visitors to northern Hesse every year.

Picture credits: TätowierMagazin/Annegret Arnold