Mark Machado, who likes to go by the name of Mister Cartoon, is a 49-year-old Mexican American tattoo artist from Los Angeles, California. During his teenage years, he began his career as an artist by airbrushing T-shirts and lowrider cars, as well as creating graffiti murals in the streets of LA before he pursued his actual tattooing career. As Mister Cartoon got more into tattoos, he adopted his own “Fine line” tattoo style involving skulls, religious imagery, graffiti, and more. His style became very popular in the California prison system.
This “fine line” style basically incorporated very detailed tattoos with black and grey ink. After his work circulated throughout the city of Los Angeles, it caught the attention of many people in the city including famous celebrities. Mister Cartoon got the opportunity to tattoo these celebrities including Beyoncé, Kobe Bryant, Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Travis Barker, Dr. Dre, 50 Cent, YG, and many more. He has also collaborated with popular brands we all know such as Nike, Vans, and Diesel. His work has even made appearances in magazines such as Rolling Stone, Complex, XXL, and GQ.
Today, Mister Cartoon continues to tattoo and now has his own private studio in Downtown Los Angeles. He now has his own website where he sells T-Shirts, hoodies, beanies, snapbacks, and more. Some of these products are actually collaborations with Nike and LA sport teams such as the LA Clippers and LA Kings. His Instagram page now has over 300,000 followers and there you can see all of his upcoming projects and amazing tattoos he has done on his clients.
As mentioned earlier, he is mostly known for his “fine line” tattoo style. More specifically, his tattoos involve skulls, religious imagery, and “cry now, laugh later” references involving the masks and clowns you see in some of his tattoos. His work tends to represent the street life in Los Angeles. If you drive around Los Angeles, or the streets of East Los Angeles in particular, you may come across many religious murals, graffiti murals, and lowrider vehicles in which he says he gets lots of his inspiration from. Because he was born and raised in this area, he was exposed to these things on a daily basis. He likes to represent his hometown in his artwork and many of his clients, even those that aren’t from Los Angeles, truly admire his work!
