Golem's talk at TAPE 2025 wasn't an ego trip or a recipe list. It was an honest debrief on a job that moves fast — sometimes too fast — and how you stay relevant when the ground keeps shifting under your feet. Beyond the stories, he actually laid out a method: understand the world, build a strong identity, adapt without losing yourself.
Know Where You Come From to Know Where You're Going
Golem starts where few people start: career counseling. At 16, he asks to become an illustrator. They send him to dental prosthetics instead. A wrong turn that became the first pillar of his career.
Three years learning morphology, volume logic, gesture precision, and close observation of the very small. Teeth become a lesson in construction.
What looks like a detour becomes a foundation: every stage feeds the next. You don't always choose which doors open, but you choose what you do with them. His "bag of diamonds" — as he calls it — starts there. A collection of seemingly unrelated skills that eventually build a singular vision.
Drawing Is Thinking, Not Just Technique
For Golem, drawing isn't executing a gesture. It's translating an understanding of the world. His prosthetics teacher left him with two ideas.
What's true in the macrocosm is true in the microcosm. Look at a mountain or a jaw — same logic applies. Flows, tensions, anchor points. Nature repeats its structures.
Function creates beauty. Living things are built to work. That internal logic produces harmony. In art, it gives you a solid base: understand before you invent, structure before you stylize.
These two lessons became his foundation. Later, they let him see that every character — even a stylized one — needs a believable architecture. Internal structure comes before appearance. A good drawing, like a good tattoo, comes from coherence.
Observe, Define, Execute — a Simple Framework
Golem breaks his creative process into three phases.
Observe
Get out of the feed. Stop scrolling. Pick up books. Analyze simple shapes. Understand light. Slow observation is urgent again in a world flooded with fast images.
Define the Intention
Before drawing a line, know what you want to say. An emotion. A movement. A message. Style should be a consequence, not a costume.
Execute
Reclaim awareness of the gesture. Understand how the brain builds the connections needed to control a line. Golem reminds us that a steady hand isn't a gift — it's training that connects brain and hand, a repeated dialogue.
This applies to drawing and tattooing. He insists on something obvious that's often forgotten: you get one chance at a first good visual impression. A visible tattoo on social media needs to carry coherence immediately.
Building Your Mental Library: the Language of Simple Shapes
Golem spends real time on the actual basis of drawing: elementary forms. Cylinders, blocks, spheres, cones. Not as academic routine, but as a visual alphabet. The brain can't store infinite complex shapes. But it can get extremely good at recombining simple volumes.
That's how he builds a complete character live on Twitch, without references. That's also how you get fast, clear, and reliable in tattoo creation.
For tattooers who want to stylize, exaggerate, or distort: the skeleton is still key. Even a cartoon character needs internal logic. That's what makes a drawing feel alive.
Structure Applied to Tattooing: Coherence First
When he works with a student, Golem always starts with drawing. Not to judge — to understand where the blockages are. Color, contrast, composition, volume, intention. Sometimes he redoes an entire piece with the student before tattooing together, four hands.
He shows how even an inert object can become dynamic through structural deformation. In styles like neotrad or new school, this is a core skill.
Drawing becomes diagnosis, then treatment.
Diversify to Survive: the Universe as a Backbone
The second half of his talk is a strategy lesson. In a job where seasons, algorithms, and life's randomness can shake everything, he built an ecosystem around his graphic universe.
Prints, posters, comics, stickers, textiles, collaborations, video game work, prototyping, Twitch, Patreon, licensing, arcade cabinets. Every medium spreads the universe, stabilizes income, feeds visibility.
It's never about dilution. It's about coherence.
A client walking out with a T-shirt, a print, or a sticker takes a piece of the universe outside the shop. Not a business card — an extension of the visual identity. At conventions, this merch can be the difference between a loss and a profitable weekend.
Illustration becomes a patrimonial asset: a drawing made today can sell for 20 years.
Adapt Without Losing Yourself: the AI Question
Golem doesn't dodge it. Pinterest and ArtStation are flooded with AI. Photo-bashing studios don't always know if sources are human. The market accelerates. Behavior shifts.
His take isn't fatalistic though.
AI can: copy, vary, analyze, combine. It can't: live, feel, tell a story.
The singularity stays human: intention, lived experience, gesture, the relationship with the client, the narrative around a universe.
He says it plainly: don't refuse the tool, but don't lose your roots. Drawing remains a foundation. The universe remains an identity. The human remains a strength. That triangle protects you from everything.
What Sticks
- Every stage counts. Even the detours become resources if you recognize them.
- Drawing is structured thinking. Technique is just an extension.
- Structure over detail. The clearer the base, the freer and stronger the stylization.
- The universe is a vital pillar. It carries identity, coherence, and diversification.
- Diversifying isn't scattering. It's securing your career and opening doors.
- The human makes the difference. Clients buy into a story, not an isolated image.
- AI doesn't cancel the artist. It forces a return to fundamentals: intention, meaning, authenticity.
- The job changes, roots stay. Drawing, observation, and coherence don't age.
To Wrap Up
What stays with you from Golem isn't just technique or a vision. It's a way of living your craft. A way of accepting that everything moves but some pillars stay solid. A way of saying that real singularity builds over time.
And above all: keep feeding the inner kid. The one who draws instinctively and sees before understanding. The one he refuses to lose, and every artist should protect.
