I’m Tonya - a digital illustrator, tattoo artist, and “Mother of Dragons” :) Besides art, I love cars, traveling, and collecting Furbys from 1999. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved painting. My favorite game was a 2D game called “Tarzan”, which featured beautiful jungle locations and animals, and I enjoyed painting similar scenes. This is how I started drawing animals as well. As I grew older, I began adding more hidden meaning to my work, revealing human nature through animal art. I started my journey in the tattoo industry back in Ukraine, where I’m from. When I was a college student, my classmates regularly asked me to draw fake tattoos on them with a permanent marker. They told me I should consider becoming a tattoo artist. I was always a creative person and my work was always related to art - for example, at age nineteen I started my own brand of hand-painted tote bags. A few years later, I decided to try tattooing. In 2022, due to the war in my home country, I moved to the United States, where I had to start everything from zero. Here I made tattooing my full-time job and I’m extremely happy with all the connections and amazing experiences it has brought me. Two years ago, a girl requested a dragon tattoo on her thigh, and I created a custom design of a feminine dragon using a mix of fine and bold lines. I didn’t want it to look like the typical dragon tattoos I’d seen online, so I added my own style. It quickly gained attention among my clients, and people began asking for dragon tattoos. I’ve done many dragons over the past two years. It brought me recognition in my area, and now I’m known as the “Mother of Dragons.”
My favorite things to tattoo are dragons, mythical creatures, animals, and pets. Every tattoo is a piece of art to me, but I especially love when my clients attach personal meaning to it. I prefer large-scale projects that flow with the natural curves of the body and enhance its beauty, but I also don’t mind doing small- to medium-sized tattoos, especially memorial pieces. I love it when my clients choose pet memorial tattoos in an illustrative style. I feel it’s the best way to show their personality and create a truly unique tattoo - like a little exclusive cartoon story about a loved one. Tattoos have the power to transform, empower, and inspire, making your body truly and uniquely yours. Isn’t it beautiful?
