24 July 2023 , 08:28
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A man who has spent more than £40,000 on tattoos that cover 90% of his body, has clapped back at rude trolls who judged him for his extreme look.
The body modification enthusiast, known as Britain's 'most tattooed man', was born Mathew Whelan but changed his name to King Of Ink Land Body Art The Extreme Ink-ite in 2008, and goes by Body Art, or B Art, for short.
He has blue and green ink covering his forehead, cheeks and chin - and has even inked his eyeballs so they are completely black.
Body Art, 42, recently posted a video on TikTok addressing one of the trolls who asked him: "What the f*** you done to your face, man?". In response, the self-professed Birmingham ink addict called the hater "dumb and rude", but refused to take the comment seriously.
He has covered his whole face in ink (tiktok.com/@tattooedtory)
King Of Ink Land, before he covered his body in ink (INSTAGRAM)In jest, he then panned the camera to his mum, who was holding an iron, and said: "She kind of put this iron on my skin and I turn like this. That's before the aliens come down and probed me and stuff, but she put the iron on my skin and we got this complexion."
Customer fumes as tattoo artist selfishly hid their initials in design
Captioning the video, Body Art wrote: "Absolutely love a stupid question. They deserve a stupid answer. I'm sure they know they are being rude unless they are just trying to troll."
Body Art loves his heavily inked look, but earlier in the year vowed to pause his hobby until he pays off the remaining £66,000 left on his mortgage. He previously said: "Getting tattoos can be an addiction, however, this is a lifestyle for me, which I can start and pause whenever I please. I'm taking a break from being inked while I concentrate on clearing my mortgage, so I'll be slowing down over the next few years."
He claims to have spent more than 1,500 hours under the needle - and in 2016 he even set a record when he had 36 tattoo artists work on him at once.
The last tattoo he had was in January, when he had his left arm tattooed with blackout to cover previous tattoos. He explained: "I am living an abbreviation of my name, B Art, as I'm being art in my life no matter what others say or think of my tattoos. I last had ink put on me in January this year, when I got my left arm tattooed with blackout to cover previous tattoos.
"They [the tattoos] are part of my journey, and I will go on to evolve more at some point in the future – just not anytime soon."