Getting inked with Francois

What started as a love of sketching in notebooks soon became a passion for tattooing on people. At the age of 12, Francois Rossouw fell in love with tattoos and that love has only grown over the 18 years that followed.

Despite being only 12, Francois found that his steadiness and ability to draw with either hand made him a natural. What sets Francois apart from other tattoo artists is his ability to do his own tattoos.

Being ambidextrous means that he can add to his ever-growing collection, on his own body. He soon began getting clients and hasn’t stopped since. Drawing free hand, Francois doesn’t need carbon paper to trace the outlines onto his clients. His wife, Cathy Ann, is testament to his skills as all her tattoos have been done by him. His tattooing talent has seen him work his magic in Durban, Johannesburg, Ladysmith and even Newcastle and has finally brought him to Dundee.

Despite having being only based in Dundee for two months, his tattoos have become the new craze in town. His business, Spider’s Ink, has already got people flocking to his Strathmore Park home to get new tattoos done or old ones fixed up. Choosing a name for his tattoo parlour was easy too. He combined two of his loves, spiders and tattoo ink. His fascination with spiders started at an early age as well and he now owns two tarantulas. Spiders have also served as an inspiration for many of his own tattoos which are spiders or spider related. He loves doing fantasy inspired tattoos, especially fairies and dragons as well.

The strangest tattoo request he has even received was doing a tattoo on someone’s toe. His biggest job: doing a tattoo on someone’s whole back. While very passionate about his job, Francois is also very safety conscious. “I don’t do tattoos on people underage or those under the influence of drugs or alcohol.” He has created a lotion which he uses as a numbing agent to ease the pain. He also asks his clients to sign a contract beforehand. Francois opens all needles in front of the client so that they can see they expiry dates and allows them to keep the needle afterwards as a souvenir. He gets all his ink from LA Ink.

“You can never get bored as a tattoo artist because there’s always different things you can do and more things you can add on to existing tattoos,” Francois said. However, there is a lot of pressure on tattoo artists because you can’t mess up. Looking to the future, Francois aims to start UV tattooing during the course of next year. He just needs to complete his diploma in it first.

“It’s addictive. Once you get one, you just want to get more.” So expect to see more inked-up bodies in town as Francois aims to leave his permanent mark on the people of the area.

If anyone is interested in having a tattoo done Francois can be contacted on 082 833 3659.

View some of his work below: