A woman who's covered in tattoos says her son thinks she's ugly and her mum cries when she sees her. Evgeniia Ksovreli-Knoott has ink on most of her body and likes designs such as skulls, eyes, and death-inspired patterns.
As well as having designs on her face, hands, arms and legs, she's even had her eyelids inked - which she said were the most painful. Her fingertips, she said, were the most difficult and the ink on them keeps rubbing off. She's now planning to have her tongue tattooed black.
Evgeniia, 36, was just 14 when she got her first tattoo. Fast forward two decades and she said it was too "hard to count" how many she has, but she has no plans to stop - because her favourite is always the next one, reports the Mirror.
Evgeniia, an actress from Moscow, Russia, said: "My favourite is usually the upcoming one. It's the same as a recently composed song, it becomes my favourite for a while because it's an acute suffering.
"Right now I'm about to inject ink in my tongue and gums, it will become black. It's a way to remind myself that I should not allow people to hurt me.
"I hope to find an experienced tattooist to make colour stay on my fingertips. Eyelids took four sessions and the first one lasted eight hours with no painkiller at all, which was hell."
Evgeniia's tattoo journey began when she was 14 and since then she's spent hours under the needle - but luckily she's always liked similar designs that followed a gothic pattern.
She added: "I was 14. It's death on my left buttock. Cost me fifty dollars, (it is the) size of a cigarette pack. I wanted a skull and had to hide it from my parents. The next day everyone in my school saw my a**. I was in seventh grade, I was a metalhead.
"My style evolved in parallel with my personality. At an early age I didn't think about styling my look, even these days, I don't know exactly how my tattoo is going to look like.
"I come to a tattoo artist with a particular idea, like, now I want my nose to look like the beak of a vulture. Or I need one green eyebrow that is always surprised. My style in clothing, in life, in music, in performance, in everything I do, is psychedelic punk."
Despite being committed to her image, Evgeniia said her style doesn't always go down well with her friends and family.
She said: "Most of my friends think I have too much and they don't want me to colour my sclera (the white of the eye) or they say I used to be prettier without face tatts. My mother cries when she sees me, she thinks she did a bad job as a loving mother, which is not true at all. My son is shy of me, he says I am ugly. Recently, I realised that I miss like-minded tattooed people in my surroundings.
"In Moscow, Russia, where I was born and spent the first 22 years of my life, their reaction on the streets was very negative, I was bullied and insulted every day everywhere. I knew that society was screwed before this current war. Because a freak is a barometer of freedom of expression.
"In Goa, in India, where I spent 10 years of my adult life, I was quite popular and celebrated as an artist of underground psychedelic fashion. In Western Europe and in England, I felt most comfortable - people in the streets were either indifferent or welcoming. In Israel, where I live now, I haven't seen people with extremely tattooed faces, but I believe only in Tel Aviv it's relatively safe and comfortable to move around the city."
Her tattoos make getting a job harder in some respects, as she looks so unique, but there are benefits as Evgeniia said they make her appealing to the opposite sex.
She said: "My tattoos made me an exotic lover to those one-night stands. It was never a problem, as I'm generally a charming female.
"I could not get a working man's job in Russia, for sure. But I never really wanted any other job rather than a self-employed artist.
"As a performer or a fashion artist, I get easily recognised and remembered, because my face is really original and authentic. My eye tattoo design became the logo of my brand, so it sells."
