Brian Robinson’s eyes are trained on Alex Rosario’s right arm with a laser-beam focus. It’s what Rosario calls his “bad arm.” He rests it atop a white towel under a light. With a gloved hand, Robinson approaches the arm and shaves a length of skin. Rather than attempting to rehabilitate this arm in some way, Robinson adds to the bad, shading the skeleton faces of a pack of ghouls with a buzzing tattoo gun. Rosario calls them “lost souls.” The whole arm is cloaked in a sleeve of intricate ink, flames curling up toward his shoulders.
Rosario’s left arm, however, is his “good” arm, marked with the Virgin Mary and the Statue of Liberty wrapped in a Dominican flag. All, good and bad, is the work of Robinson, Rosario’s brother-in-law and trusted tattoo artist.
“People say that they’re addictive,” says Robinson, 32, of tattoos. In Rosario’s case, the habit might have something to do with Robinson’s light touch. “I could fall sleep,” says Rosario, 29, his arm prone under Robinson’s gun, the room silent except for the whir of the instrument.
Nicknamed “B-Tat,” Robinson has been tattooing professionally for six years. Now, Robinson is bringing his talent to a national audience. He’s one of 10 contestants in “Ink Master,” a $100,000 tattoo artist competition premiering tonight on the Spike network. Among the judges is self-avowed “tattoo collector” Dave Navarro, guitarist for the band Jane’s Addiction, and Chris Nuñez, formerly of the TLC show “Miami Ink.”