A Russian tattoo artist finds blind faith in his needle

By Evgenia Novozhenina and Alexander Paramoshin

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Like a piano player moving up a scale, Igor Mikhaylov runs his gloved hands along his client's upturned arm, feeling out precisely where he should place his stencil.

The 38-year-old tattoo artist, who is legally blind, is in high demand.

"This is something that impresses and thrills you," said a woman who gave her name only as Alexandra. She had just received a tattoo saying "Love" in Braille from Mikhaylov at a tattoo studio off Moscow's trendy Novy Arbat Avenue last month.

Mikhaylov began to lose his eyesight at the age of eight, the result of a genetic illness. He can perceive gradations in light and can make out the contours of objects. He still remembers what the world around him looks like.

His customers find his tattoos exciting because they demand an imaginative leap of faith.

"The visual images that I have today are in fact being completed with the help of my imagination and my memory. In other words, what I imagine is much sharper than what I can see now," Mikhaylov explained.

A trained classical guitarist and graduate of a top Moscow music college, Mikhaylov approaches the art of tattooing with nimble fingers and an open mind. There's no instruction manual for how to tattoo blind.

Mikhaylov's customers choose a word or phrase, which he translates into Braille. He then tattoos the image onto the skin using a single needle dipped into ink, what is known as a stick-and-poke tattoo.

"How to take a needle to this or that corner, how to find this middle line, which way to use to move a needle in corners – it all reminded me of working with a (guitar) string where these small aspects and peculiarities matter," Mikhaylov said. "I had to develop my own technique."

In between tattooing gigs and music performances, Mikhaylov finds time to win tournament trophies as a member of Russia's national table tennis team for the visually impaired.

A neon sign hanging on the wall by his work station in the Moscow tattoo parlour could serve as Mikhaylov's personal mantra: "Your Comfort Zone Will Kill You".

(Reporting by Reuters in Moscow; Writing by Lucy Papachristou in Tbilisi; Editing by Patricia Reaney)