Inked Talk

Portrait tattoos are popular as memorials to those who have passed on and as tributes of respect to those we admire. While portrait tattoos in general range from remarkable to mediocre to downright sad, sometimes a portrait tattoo is so unique in its message that it merits mention.

23-year old Jack Newton of Brighton, UK, had Stephen Hawking’s likeness tattooed onto his leg by Stewart Francis at the Angelic Hell tattoo studios in Brighton. Newton admits that he tried to read Hawking’s most famous scientific work, A Brief History of Time, but found it confusing. Nevertheless, he sees Hawking as an inspirational man because he achieved so much despite his physical limitations. Hawking, who suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (or ALS), a condition more commonly called Lou Gehrig’s Disease. At age 21 he was given no more than three years to live, butt he overcame that prognosis as the progress of the disease slowed more than expected. Hawking is confined to a wheelchair and unable to speak unassisted, yet he is universally recognized as a foremost mind in the areas of cosmology, quantum gravity and string theory.

The portrait is underlined, rather oddly, with a line from Monty Python’s Life of Brian: “‘He’s not the messiah. He’s a very naughty boy.”

The tattoo was done in one single seven-hour session, and the likeness is unmistakable. Newton himself is a tattoo artist apprenticing at Angelic Hell. The ink has already won a number of awards at tattoo conventions, and recently made worldwide news in a number of online articles.