E! Online got an interview with the tattoo artist who created the new “face” tattoo on Chris Brown’s neck – the one that looks suspiciously like the sad photo of Rihanna post-beating that we saw on TMZ over three years ago. Chris has claimed that the photo is not of Rihanna despite the obvious comparisons. His people told Gossip Cop that “It is a ‘Sugar Skull,’ which is associated with the Mexican celebration of the ‘Day of the Dead,’ combined with a MAC cosmetics design that Brown had seen.” Mmmhmm. I googled “Sugar Skull,” and the designs look like skulls with embellishments on them. They’re not half faces, and they look cartoonish not like hot women. He could be telling the truth about the Mac Ad. I found these photos that look just the design on his neck, and they also look a lot like Rihanna’s chiseled face. I’m sure that’s a total coincidence.

Anyway Chris’ tattoo artist was articulate and also very clear spoken in his statement to E! – he said that he refuses to do tattoos that are racist, that are gang-related, or that glorify domestic violence. He really sounds steadfast in his insistence that the tattoo is NOT of Rihanna and that if he had any suspicion that it was he wouldn’t have done it. Here’s more:

Chris Brown’s not the only one who was stung by accusations that he had tattooed a battered-looking Rihanna on his neck.

“I hate when people misinterpret what I do,” veteran tattoo artist Peter Koskela, the man behind Brown’s latest piece of body art, exclusively tells E! News. “It was really a blow to me to think that people would think so little of a person that I would actually put a picture of a beaten woman on his neck. That was crazy to me, that he would come to me and say, ‘Hey, I want Rihanna’s face on me.'”

Well, it sounds especially absurd when he puts it that way.

What did Chris Brown have to say for himself?

“I would never promote any kind of domestic violence like that,” Koskela continued. “Even if he asked me to do it, I would have bounced right there. I don’t do racist tattoos, I don’t do gang-related tattoos and I don’t do anything hurtful. That is just the motto I live by. The other tattoo artists might, but I just don’t.”
As soon as the eyebrows started arching in response to Brown’s new tat, the R&B star—who shared a friendly smooch with Rihanna in the middle of the MTV Video Music Awards just last week—immediately quashed the speculation that the meme-inspiring face on his neck was an image of his ex-girlfriend.

“The dude is serious about his art,” Koskela, who drew the face Aug. 30, says of his repeat client. “When something inspires him, he wants it somewhere on his body, but he never said why he wanted to get that particular piece.”

“When I did see the picture [of Brown in Vegas] and his head was cocked to the side, it did look like it was rough around the edges,” the artist admitted, referring to the image that got tongues wagging. “People thought it was a beat-up face, but it takes two weeks to heal because the neck is constantly moving.”

Koskela, who says he has also tattooed the other side of Brown’s neck in addition to a snake on his right shoulder blade and the bandit under his left arm, tells us that he has only seen the F.A.M.E. artist with his current girlfriend, Karrueche Tran.

Rihanna “never comes up at all,” he says.

[From E! Online]

When I got my two tattoos back in the day, I deliberately chose designs that could be interpreted two different ways. I have a tattoo of the two faces/vase illusion (I was very young, and now I think it’s lame) and a piece of a Miro painting that looks like an eye or a fish. What I’m saying is that Chris probably got this complicated design so that it would look like Rihanna, but also so he had a backstory for it and could claim it was something other than an artistic version of Rihanna’s photo after he beat her.

I’ve studied the photo of Rihanna that TMZ circulated – I HATE looking at it again, honestly, and compared it to the tattoo on Chris’ neck. There are similarities, especially in the face shape, the full lips, and injuries/half “skull” part of the tattoo. I don’t think Chris innocently got that tattoo because he liked the design.

In related news about Chris, he hosted a back to school event for the Jenesse Center, which is a domestic violence center and intervention program that Halle Berry also supports.

Also, I’ve been looking through this tattoo artist’s tumblr and I love this Nemo tattoo! That is all.

Update: Thanks to LittleFatMe for the info on the design this is supposedly based on, below:

Photo credit: WENN, MAC and Instagram