One chair, one client
Appointment only, always. The studio is booked to you for the session — no queue behind you, no clock being watched, no design rushed in the ten minutes before you walk in.
Appointment onlyGlen Road · Belfast
Art.Precision.Passion.
One artist. One chair. Over 15 years of custom black and grey work on the Glen Road. Your session is booked to you alone — nothing rushed, nothing off a flash sheet.
15+
Years inking
01What we do
Stylesonthewall
Every style listed here is drawn from work actually posted by the studio — no stock catalogue, no borrowed sheets.
Realism
01
Realism
The house speciality
Photographic depth built entirely from ink density — no outlines, no shortcuts. Skin tone becomes the highlight, and every value between it and solid black is packed by hand. This is the work the studio is known for, and it is where the most time goes.
View stylePortraiture
02
Portraiture
Likeness or nothing
A portrait either looks like the person or it does not. Reference is discussed before a needle is loaded, the stencil is set against the muscle it will live on, and the face is rendered soft-to-hard so it still reads across a room in ten years.
View styleBlack & Grey
03
Black & Grey
One pigment, infinite range
Black ink, thinned and layered into a full greyscale. Smoke, fabric, petals, metal — all of it carried by contrast alone. It ages more gracefully than colour and is the backbone of nearly every large piece that leaves this room.
View styleBlackwork & Illustrative
04
Blackwork & Illustrative
Graphic, carved, deliberate
Heavy black, engraved texture and dotwork shading, drawn like a woodcut rather than a photograph. Strong silhouettes that hold their shape at distance — mythology, statuary and ornament sit naturally here.
View styleLettering & Script
05
Lettering & Script
Read it from across the room
Blackletter, serif and fine script, spaced and weighted by hand so the line reads cleanly on a curved limb. Scripture, verse and single words — laid out on the body first, inked second.
View style
Artist portrait
Photo neededPlaceholder plate — no photograph of the artist is published on the studio’s Instagram or Facebook. Drop a portrait into /public/artists/geoff.jpg and set `photo` to use it.
02The artist
Geoff
“Tattoo artist based on the Glen Road in Belfast. Dedicated to the highest standards of artistry. My goal is to give every client a unique design.”
— Instagram bio, @livewire_ink
That last part is the whole idea. There is one chair on the Glen Road, and on the day it is booked it belongs to one person. No queue behind you, no clock being watched, no design finished in the ten minutes before you walk in.
The work leans black and grey — portraits, realism, heavy illustrative blackwork — but the brief comes first and the style follows it. If you arrive with a photograph, a verse, an old tattoo you have stopped liking, or nothing but an idea, that is the starting point.
Specialities
- Black & grey realism
- Portraiture
- Illustrative blackwork
- Lettering & script
- Chicano & filigree
- Cover-ups
- Bespoke artwork & commissions
03Why Blackstar
Sloweronpurpose
A small studio is not a limitation. It is the reason the work looks the way it does.
Drawn, not traced
Geoff is an artist outside of tattooing and provides bespoke artwork. Designs are built around your idea and your anatomy, not pulled off a flash wall and resized to fit.
Sterile as standard
Single-use needles and cartridges opened in front of you, barriers on every surface the machine touches, sharps disposed of at the end of your session. Ask to see it — you should ask everywhere.
Cover-ups taken seriously
An old tattoo is a constraint to design around, not something to hide under a black blob. The existing dark areas become the new shadow so the result stands on its own.
- 0+
- Years in the industry
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- Pieces posted
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- Facebook followers
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- Artist, start to finish
Source · Facebook
Source · Instagram
Source · Facebook
Source · Studio
04Selected work
Thegallery
Every image on this site was pulled from the studio’s own Instagram. Nothing here is stock.
05How it works
Frommessagetohealed
Appointment only means the process starts long before you sit down.
- 01
Send the idea
WhatsApp, email or the booking form. What you want, roughly where it is going, and a size. Reference images in the first message save a week of back and forth.
- 02
Talk it through
Placement, scale, how the piece will wrap the limb, how many sittings it realistically needs — and whether the idea works as a tattoo at all, which is sometimes the honest answer.
- 03
The drawing
A custom design is drawn for you. You see it before the day, and it is changed until it is right. Nothing is stencilled onto skin you are not certain about.
- 04
The chair
Stencil placed and checked in the mirror against the muscle it will live on. Then the session — yours alone, with breaks whenever you call them.
- 05
Healing
Wrapped, and aftercare explained before you leave rather than shouted at the door. Four to six weeks to settle fully, and the studio is on the end of the phone throughout.
06In their words
Whatpeoplesay
“Absolutely stunning, Geoff.”
Placeholder — only the first review is real — it was left publicly on the studio’s Facebook page. The rest are written examples showing how genuine reviews will sit here. Replace them in src/data/testimonials.ts before launch.
07Latest
Fromthefeed
790 posts and counting. New work goes up on Instagram first.
08 — Next step
Bookthechair
Send the idea, a rough size and where it is going. You will get a straight answer about whether it works, what it needs, and when the chair is free.