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TattooLOG

References, processes and ideas that guide my tattoo work. It’s a space to give context and clarity to the style and the thinking behind the designs.

 

Carved in collapse.

It was a small flash—just a simple rendering of the bust. I think the ideat deserved more space. Bigger.

I tattooed this piece at Visions of Ecstasy in Berlin. The idea wasn’t mine—my client brought it to me. He showed me the sculpture and said, “I think this is Alexander the Great.”

Not the warrior version everyone knows. Not the man at the peak of his empire. This was different.

The figure’s head leans to the side, eyes unfocused, mouth slightly open—like he’s already slipping away. There’s no defiance, no power pose. Just stillness.

It felt honest. Not a hero being remembered, but a man being let go.

And the more I looked at it, the more I saw what he meant. The face wasn’t about glory—it was about everything falling apart. You can feel the weight of something that’s already too far gone.

After his death, everything he built unraveled. He left no clear successor, and almost immediately, his generals—once loyal—turned on each other. The empire split into pieces, each one claiming power, each one at war with the others. Greece, Egypt, Persia—all divided. What had been one vast, unified force collapsed into rival kingdoms, and the dream of a single empire faded before it ever really settled. In the end, the conquest outlived the conqueror by barely a breath.

Alexander’s empire didn’t survive him. The second he was gone, it began to crack. That collapse—it’s there, in his expression. The weight, the letting go, the silence after the noise.

I sketched the head once. Just to understand it better. It stayed with me—not as a symbol of greatness, but as a reminder. Even the biggest stories end. Even the strongest figures come undone.

That’s what we captured in the tattoo. Not the legend, but the moment after

notattoo_berlin

jorge cruzComment