Daryl Jimmy’s road to tattooing was beset upon all sides by the tyranny of evil men. After he ditched high school, he had to swallow a bitter pill – art school would not accept him. He angrily took to building, repressing his creative urges, until the call of tattooing was bellowing loudly enough to give him tinnitus.
In his hometown of Marilyn, 20 minutes outside of Washington DC, Daryl went shop to shop, hustling for an apprenticeship. He played shop gofer for a few different places, before realizing he was being taken advantage of and his overlords had no intention of teaching him to tattoo. Out of sheer desperation, our protagonist ordered a machine online (uh-oh) and, like the virgin he was, proceeded to “hack himself up at home” with varying degrees of success. Finally, Capitol Tattoo came to rescue, and employed Daryl. Under the tutelage of Tyler at Capitol, Daryl was encouraged to look beyond one teacher and into the wider world of tattooing. The upside of this is that these days, he genuinely enjoys learning and collaborating with others.
As with most tattooists, he paints watercolors and spends the bulk of his spare time drawing tattoo flash. Daryl’s favorite style of tattooing is, as he aptly describes it, “neo-traditional, semi-realistic 90s color bomb” work.
“My favorite stuff is honestly stuff from the 90s,” he says. “I thought Marcus Pacheco and those dudes were really doing right. They took it as far as I was interested in, in terms of realism. I’m capable of being really meticulous, but I don’t like it.” He also loves the work of prolific 17th century baroque painter, Peter Paul Rubens, who’s understanding of “the science of reality” blows his mind.
Cartooning and graphic illustration are another of Daryl’s passions. He doesn’t use reference, and often he prefers to not trace, but look at an object and free draw. “If I’m drawing an animal, sometimes it might be a bit anatomically fucked, an eye might be bigger than the other, but it will come out looking more like the animal if I draw it myself, even though it’s an exaggeration. I like cartooning because it’s exaggerated, it’s boiling something down to its simplest essence.”
Daryl believes old school values are still important and relevant, despite the changing times. “There’s a reason for things. There’s a reason to turn away someone who wants their hand tattooed for their first tattoo. There’s a reason you try not to shit on the guy down the street, even if he pisses you off or does a crappy job. There are reasons for all these things, and even if you haven’t been around long enough to see the full extrapolation of why people did things the way they did, there’s probably a reason and you shouldn’t be as arrogant as to presume that you just know better because you don’t see why.”
At the dinner table of his dreams, Daryl would play host to artists Walton Ford, Rubins, (our own) Adam Craft, Mike Rubendall & Jeff Gogue. He would serve a color-bomb risotto with a side of fucked animal eyeball.
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