About the artist
I’m Luis. Most people call me Nimbus.
Mexican, raised in Ogden. I’ve been drawing since I was a kid doodling on church pamphlets, and tattooing since 2021. This is the long version.
Where
Black Collar Tattoo
Ogden, Utah
Tattooing since
2021 — two
apprenticeships in
Raised on
Chicano art, lowriders,
skate decks, cathedrals
Reach me
DM or text
801·657·1329
Where it starts
The first things I drew were on church pamphlets.
Church architecture, skate logos, and a comment on the internet I probably should have ignored.
I didn’t want to be at church. But a cathedral is hard to argue with — the peaks, the filigree, the way the whole structure balances out. I’m still mesmerized every time I see one. I’d take a loose pamphlet and one of those little donation pencils and draw through the service.
From there it was skateboard logos and homemade posters. I taped about twenty of them up around my parents’ house and got cooked for it by my cousins — they thought making your own posters was ghetto. Kids at school thought they were sick, so I kept going, right onto the desks.
Then high school did what high school does. Cars, racing, friends, a job at McDonald’s to pay for a car habit. I didn’t draw for years.
Four years ago I picked it back up — doodles, colored pencils, and a drawing of my 1985 BMW. I posted it, and somebody in the comments said that foo draws once and thinks he is a tattoo artist.
I hate to admit it, but that comment fueled everything in me to pursue this even more.
Four years later, still going
Art was never really the plan. It became the plan. And I’d rather be doing this than anything else I’ve been paid for.
Two apprenticeships
I learned the shop before I learned the machine.
I started by signing up for a figure drawing class at a shop I’d been watching for months, driving an hour — sometimes two — to sit in a room and be nervous about drawing in front of other people. What actually caught me wasn’t the classes. It was how everyone in that shop treated each other.
In 2021 I packed up every piece of art I owned and hit shops on my way home from a haircut. The first one had a closed sign and black curtains. Half a block down was Heavy Hitters — lowriders in frames, Chicano art on the walls, a pool table at the door, oldies playing. It sat in the same neighborhood I grew up in, across the street from the corner store I used to skate to when my mom forgot the cokes. I almost didn’t stop. I stopped.
Two apprenticeships later, I know what I want a shop to feel like and what I won’t repeat.
What I kept
Three things I took with me.
Some of it was rough. All of it left me with a way of working that shows up in your appointment.
I.
Show up early
My first shop day started two hours before anyone else rolled in. Coffee, quiet room, deep clean, every station set the same way every time. Nobody saw it happen and that was the point — the room has to be ready before you are.
II.
Be curious about the person
I think there’s a lot in a good conversation. You don’t owe me a story, and plenty of people come in for a weird little tattoo they just love. But if you want to talk, I’m genuinely interested in what makes you tick.
III.
Stand on your own two feet
I used to think an apprentice wasn’t allowed to question anything. I’ve since learned you can be serious about this work and still have standards about how you’re treated. Being unapologetically myself is one of the things I carry from the people who taught me.
The tattoo matters. So does your time here.
You can ask questions. You can be nervous. We can laugh, talk, or keep things quiet. Some tattoos mean a lot. Some end up meaning more along the way. And sometimes you just want something you love. You don’t owe me a story.
The Nimbus Chronicles
I write the whole thing down.
Letters about the day to day of this job — what I’m drawing, what two apprenticeships actually taught me, and the parts nobody posts. If something in one of them hits home, reply to it. I answer everything.
Whose chair you’re sitting in
Now you know who’s holding the machine.
Find something on the flash wall you love, or tell me what you’ve been thinking about and I’ll draw it from scratch. Either way, appreciate you being here.