Belgian tattoo artist Indy Voet has earned a reputation for executing permanent tattoos in the most unconventional places, from people’s finger webs, to the hidden space behind their ears. But his specialty is hand poking tattoos on the roof of people’s mouths.
Voet has been doing roof of the mouth tattoos for about five years and has since developed his own technique as well as a portfolio of tattoos that fit the unusual location. A former body piercing artist with ten years of experience under his belt, the young Belgian found the transition to doing tattoos in uncommon places natural. Although having a tattoo inked on the roof of the mouth means that dentists are the only ones who will truly be able to admire it, people seem to think having a secret tattoo is pretty cool.
“I don’t really use anything other than a needle and some dexterity, combined with the trust of my client,” Indy Voet told Inked Mag, adding that using a tattoo machine would be too harsh on this sensitive location, plus there’s not a lot of space to maneuver.
The first thing I thought when seeing these tattoos was “wow, that must hurt!” but Voet claims that 90 percent of people describe these tattoos as being almost painless or at least, very easy to handle,” while the other 10 percent complain mostly complain about jaw muscle ache, from keeping their mouth wide open for long periods of time.
As for the healing period after getting a tattoo on the roof of the mouth, the Belgian artist says that “healing is like any other mouth tattoo or piercing—don’t have anything too spicy, no strong liquor and be careful what you put in your mouth for a couple of days. Other than that, the natural resources of the mouth do the rest.”
With Covid-19 causing havoc around the world, and the mouth and nose being the primary ways of transmission, roof of mouth tattoos are not exactly popular these days. But you can still check out all of Indy Voet’s works on his Instagram.
