Kian Forreal · Horisumi
Every line
has a lineage.
Traditional Japanese tattooing, carved by hand.
Surry Hills, Sydney.
系譜 The short version
Thirty-three years,
one style, one standard.
Tattooing professionally since 1993 — after five solid years of flash and walk-ins, paying dues in real shops for real tattooers. Learned the trade in Toronto under David ‘Crazy Ace’ Daniels.
Tebori learned in Gifu, Japan, under Sensei Horikashi — my teacher, my tattoo brother, and one of the finest craftsmen alive. On the floor, over years. Not a weekend course. A long time learning it the correct way.
Given the name Horisumi in Yokohama by Master Horiyoshi III after twenty years on the tools.
Hori — to carve. Sumi — the ink, and also truth.
手彫り The hand
There’s the machine,
and there’s the hand.
Machines are great. I use them for outlines, because nothing makes a cleaner, sharper line. But the background, the shading, the colour — I put that in by hand.
A sashibo (bamboo tool), a cluster of needles at the tip and the rhythm of the hand. It’s the way it’s been done in Japan for hundreds of years, and it does something a machine can’t: it hurts less, it bleeds less, it heals faster, and the colour sits in the skin richer and more alive and gets better with age.
You’re not lying there for six hours listening to something buzz next to your ear and scrape across your skin. You’re being worked on. You’re present for it.
Here’s the honest part, though. Tebori isn’t magic, and it isn’t better just because it’s older. A bad tebori tattoo is still a bad tattoo. What matters is how you learned and from whom and what standard you live by. I learned in Gifu, Japan, from Sensei Horikashi —and worked on the floor for years in Australia honing my skills.
作品 The work
Built to be there
in forty years.
Backpieces, bodysuits, sleeves. Colour chosen for how it will look when you’re seventy — not for how it photographs the week it’s finished.
和彫り The bodysuit
The long game.
A bodysuit isn’t a tattoo. It’s a decision you keep making, session after session, for years.
Most people never get there, and that’s fine — it isn’t for everyone. But if you’re serious, we can design the whole body first, before a single needle goes in, so it reads as one piece from the back of your neck to the bottom of your ankle. Backpiece, background, chest plates, sleeves — one story, told once, properly. There is no rush, go at your pace.
言葉 In their words
The people who sat
through it.
“I began to realise what real tattoo art looked like, and that what I was currently wearing was not art, but rather a stain that I wanted to cover.”
Teja — acupuncturist, Kung Fu academy director
“Quality was my primary concern. Budget and schedule did not enter the equation.”
Shannon Adams — dragon backpiece
記録 The record
Outside the studio.
Lectures, demonstrations, columns and collaborations. Thirty years of talking about the craft in all corners of polite society.
Lecture
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Japanese tattoo art & history
Lecture
The Japan Foundation, Sydney
Irezumi & culture
Presentation
Newcastle Museum of Art
Public demonstration
Collaboration
Archie Rose Distilling Co.
Award-winning gin
Writing
Columns & features, tattoo press
Since 2006
相談 The consult
How this starts.
Consults are free and in person at the studio or by video call. I answer every enquiry myself.
Honest wait times, because I’d rather you know up front than find out later.
Small tebori, one sitting
1–4 months
Sleeves, backs, legs, ribs
1–4 months to consult
tattooing starts 6–10 months in
Full bodysuit
Next available slot
serious enquiries only
If you’ve already got large Japanese work from me, you don’t go back on the list — you just wait for the next slot.
No rush. That’s kind of the whole idea.