I don’t know what went through my head when I agreed to review the new Kat Von D book High Voltage Tattoo. I don’t really know much about her besides the fact that she was on reality tv and is a tattoo artist. I didn’t watch her shows, they aren’t my thing. Typical rock/stripper chick is what I labelled her prior to reading this book. I’ve discovered that she’s a talented artist. I’ve discovered that I kinda like her.

The book features a short bio, history of her career in the tattoo world, a tattoo map of her body and representative examples of the genre using examples of her work on her clients and friends.

Some of my favourite things in the book are:

• The presentation of the book. It fits in perfectly with her style down to the font.
• Her tattoo map is pretty detailed and impressive it hard for me to imagine getting one tattoo let alone the number of ones Kat has to warrent such an in depth analysis.
• She sets the record straight on tattto culture and dispells some myths still floating around.
• The section about portraits was really well done. It did a very good job of giving the reader some insight into the emotional connection evoked by the portait tattoo.
• I wish the section about tools was a little bigger. The pictures were intriguing as her tools are custom made. There is a whole industry around custom tools, I guess that subject could be a book in it’s own right.

Overall it was a surprisinly pleasant read. It changed my neutral opnion of Kat Von D to a positive one. She’s a smart cookie with many diverse interests I didn’t expect to find out. I also learned a bit about tattoing