JJ OHLINGER
We're happy to share a selection of tattoos done by JJ Ohlinger. Click the image to browse the portfolio. We also invite you to give him a follow in Instagram (link above) if you like to keep up with the most recent pieces.
JJ loves tattooing all types of designs, large or small. To schedule a consult, please use this form, text us, or send him a DM on Instagram.
ABOUT JJ OHLINGER
There has never been a time in JJ's life he wasn't making art. Some of his earliest memories are of drawing and painting at the kitchen table in his childhood home in Omaha, Nebraska.
Starting in the third grade, he began formal art training under Sister Mary, a nun who had herself apprenticed under Georgia O'Keeffe. JJ began by learning calligraphy, then moved on to pencil drawings, and finally to oil paint and watercolor. His earliest oil paintings were landscapes created only with his fingers (at the insistence of Sister Mary) before he was allowed to move on to brushes. To this day, JJ still creates most oil paintings mainly with his fingers.
In college, JJ majored in Scientific Illustration at the University of Georgia, back in the dark ages before computers where you actually had to draw things yourself from observation. During this time he was required to learn how to manipulate various art mediums including pen and ink, charcoal, airbrushing, pastels - as well as to master illustration techniques such as crosshatch, line shading, stippling, and more. This foundation led to JJ's lifelong curiosity toward all art forms, and a willingness and desire to "try things out."
A summer internship at the Center for American Archeology in Illinois led to the opportunity to create charcoal drawings of the skeletal remains of Midland woman. Fate led to some of those drawings being exhibited at the Smithsonian Institute, where associates of the Grateful Dead saw them and recruited JJ to a job as an illustrator for the band. JJ moved to California and spent a few glorious months designing stage backdrops, charitable event invitations and one glorious t-shirt with a Georgia Peach stealie theme. He was fully exposed to the "rock and roll lifestyle," inadvertently insulted Carlos Santana and unexpectedly met Bob Dylan. If Jerry hadn't died, he probably would have stayed forever. But alas, good things do sadly end, and he moved on to graphic design at the beginning of the computer wave in the 90s in San Francisco, which led him back to the east coast a few years later where he owned a small advertising agency and graphic design firm. (This is where JJ and Darlene met, BTW).
After a few years in commercial art, JJ realized he missed doing fine art and began painting and exhibiting his original artwork again. He also began teaching painting to others, both oil and watercolor. Through friendships with other artists he also was able to occasionally dabble in printmaking, ceramics, welding, and other mediums. During a fateful day when getting a tattoo, JJ remarked to his tattoo artist that it "looks fun, and I wonder what it's like to draw that way." Jason offered to teach him a few things, and after learning and experimenting on some very cool and trusting friends, within 6 months JJ found himself working full time in a tattoo shop, launched into an unexpected new career as a tattooer, still going strong 15 years later (10 of those years owning Prohibition Ink Tattoo in Salt Lake City, Utah.
JJ continues to make art of all kinds. He especially loves tattooing as it is the one art he feels is a true collaboration between himself and whomever is wearing it.