Twenty years ago, Lokesh Verma began as a tattoo artist when it was not even a profession. Back in Delhi from Luxembourg, where he opened his first European studio in 2021, he is on the Google list of the World’s Top 10 tattoo artists. A Guinness-World record holder (2009-10), Verma was also the curator of the HeartWork Tattoo Festival, India’s only international tattoo festival, which he shut down after he moved his business, Devil’z Tattooz, overseas to Europe in 2021.
“Tattoos are a form of self-expression. It showcases your individuality without you saying a word,” says the artist, who fell in love with them in the early 2000s when he was a DJ at a party and he saw a man with a big tattoo and was immediately fascinated by it. He, however, says he never wanted to be a tattoo artist in the first place. “I just wanted to figure out the art and the process. I earned six to seven thousand at that time with my side gigs. So, when one of my friends was coming from the US, I asked him to bring me a tattoo kit, and the equipment. I just wanted to give it a try,” he recalls.
Verma’s “first canvas” was his father, who got a small tribal symbol tattooed on his hand. Next, he experimented on himself—the ‘devil’ artwork he inked on his left arm then, he hasn’t removed. “I was playing by the name of DJ Devil, hence the tattoo. It is surrounded by random scribbling inspired by American wrestler Undertaker. I didn’t know it had to mean anything. I wanted to try out how the machine works that injects ink into the skin,” he says. He started tattooing people for free and spent a considerable portion of his income importing the equipment. “I was making losses for a year, but I was being driven by passion to master it,” he says.
Starting from the bottom
Verma made his first paid tattoo, a dragon on the biceps of one of his customers, in 2004. He earned Rs 3,000, higher than his monthly stipend at an export house and Rs 30,000 from tattooing on weekends. He next started Devil’z Tattooz in a small room inside his friend’s salon in Vasant Vihar and shifted to his own studio in Greater Kailash 1 a few years later. At that time, there were no tattoo studios in Delhi, except one in Gurugram. It didn’t take long for the word to spread and his clientele grew. A second studio was opened in Gurugram’s Galleria market followed by one in Dwarka’s Vegas Mall. In 2021, Verma relocated to Luxembourg to keep his family away from the effects of Delhi’s pollution. Now, he visits India twice a year.
Verma is also one of the first artists in India to do a coloured portrait tattoo, one of the most challenging genres of tattoos. He achieved the feat in 2012. He has a Guinness World record for tattooing the maximum number of flags – 199 – on an individual’s body. Verma has also inked cricketers Shikhar Dhawan, Umesh Yadav, Ishant Sharma and Bollywood stars like Swara Bhaskar, Tapsee Pannu, Esha Gupta, and Remo D’Souza.
Family Support
Born and brought up in Delhi, Verma’s father is a retired army officer, and his mother, a teacher. He got his first job at the age of 18. “I was distributing pamphlets on the day of my 12th board exams,” he recalls. While pursuing his MBA, he also worked at the local McDonald’s during the day and as a DJ at night. “When you have nothing to lose, you can take a shot to anything. You can take all the risks,” he says. “I remember, after quitting my job, I earned Rs 72,000 a month from tattooing. It was equivalent to my family’s six-month income.”
Verma believes his love for art is hereditary. “My sister is a better artist than me. She even completed the scribbling on my first tattoo. However, art is for the rich, and when you have to put food on the table, you cannot pursue passion,” he says. In 2010, he married his college sweetheart, Sanober Ahmed. Verma has a black-and-grey tattoo of his wife and a coloured portrait of his son around the shoulder and biceps area of the left hand.
Passing the baton
Over the years, Verma has travelled to 17 countries and has worked with some of the world’s greatest tattoo studios such as Paul Booth’s Last Rites Gallery in New York and Nikko Hurtado’s Black Anchor Collective in Los Angeles. “Travelling always opens up the mind and inspires creativity,” he says. “In India, it is difficult to change the client’s mindset. They come with a certain photograph and are stuck on that. People outside are open to suggestions, giving us room for creativity,” he says.
Verma has also been a mentor to several young tattoo artists. However, his key focus is hygiene. “Art they can learn; I teach them how to maintain hygiene. I always make sure that we enforce strict European standards across our studios,” says Verma. His message for artists starting out in this industry? “Chase dreams,” he says, “not money.”