Jimmy Q’s tattoos are easy to pick out even when he’s wearing a leather jacket. There’s the eye and spread wings around his throat, the little skull near his wrist, and that huge arrow running up his arm. Take away the clothes and there’s a whole other layer: big animal faces, flowers, portraits and smaller bits of lettering tucked between them.
The model, also known as Jimmy Quaintance, grew up in Venice Beach, California. In his Wonderland interview, he talked about doing a tattoo apprenticeship there and moving from drawing into tattooing. Skateboarding was another big part of his life before the London fashion work. That background helps explain why his collection feels at home with both a sleeveless shirt and a sharp jacket.
This is a collection to spend a little time with. The bold shapes grab you first, then you start noticing how differently the portraits and smaller lines are drawn. Here are five details worth a closer look, from the black skull on his right arm to the fine work on his fingers.
The skull tattoo just above his right wrist
Jimmy has a small front-facing skull just above his right wrist. It sits at the hand end of the forearm, above the large arrow, and has a simple, almost cheeky expression. The dark eye sockets are slightly uneven, the nose is a solid black shape, and the teeth make a short row across the bottom. You can read the face without needing a lot of tiny shading.
The skull’s pale centre is doing a lot of the work here. Against the black sockets and mouth, that open space keeps it from getting lost among the surrounding tattoos. It has a rounded outline rather than the long, narrow proportions of a realistic anatomical skull. The little marks above the eyes make it feel drawn by hand, which suits the more loose, old-school bits nearby.
Placement gives it a life of its own. When Jimmy brings his hand towards his face, the skull comes into the same view as his rings and the lettering on his hand. When his arm hangs down, it becomes the top end of a longer arrangement of shapes. A watch or bracelet can sit close to it, but the main face remains easy to recognise.
Skulls can mean plenty of things to different people. There’s no need to assign Jimmy a story about loss or mortality without his own explanation. What stands out here is the drawing: two dark eyes, a clear mouth and enough space around them to keep the expression intact. If it’s the look you like, those proportions are a better starting point than adding lots of extra detail.
The oversized arrow tattoo on his right forearm
Below the skull, a thick outlined arrow runs along Jimmy’s right forearm, pointing towards the wrist. It’s much larger than the small pictures around it. The broad arrowhead and heavy outer edge give it a graphic feel, almost like a sign, while the inside has lighter space and smaller marks. It stands out straight away when his arm is raised.
This isn’t the delicate little arrow you might put on the side of a finger. Its shape takes up a good stretch of the arm, with enough width to hold its own next to the skull and the darker tattoo work closer to the elbow. The long direction of the forearm suits it: your eye follows the arrow up towards the hand instead of stopping at one small point.
The surrounding designs help show just how bold it is. A curved face or a patch of lettering has lots of little changes in its outline. The arrow is mostly straight lines and a clear point. That difference gives the arm some variety. It doesn’t need to match every nearby picture to look like it belongs there.
It’s tempting to read an upward arrow as a message about progress, ambition or a fresh start. Those are possible meanings for someone choosing their own arrow, but they aren’t confirmed explanations for Jimmy’s. Here, the useful detail is the direction and scale. A design this long needs room, and the wide border is a big part of why you can still recognise it when the arm turns or bends. Shrinking the same shape into a tiny gap would give it a very different feel.
The snarling tiger tattoo across his stomach
Jimmy’s torso has several large animal designs, but the tiger across his stomach is especially hard to miss. The face has pointed ears, wide eyes, striped cheeks and an open mouth full of teeth. Its outline spreads across the abdomen, below the separate animal face higher on his chest. They’re two different designs, even though the front of his body can look like one busy picture at first.
The lower tiger is built around its expression. The eyes sit high and wide, the nose anchors the centre, and the open jaw reaches down below it. Dark stripes run out towards the cheeks, while small dots around the muzzle make the lighter areas feel less empty. You don’t need a solid wall of black for the face to look fierce. The spacing between the lines lets the teeth, whisker area and eyes stay separate.
There’s also a good balance between the tiger’s width and the length of his torso. The face takes up a broad patch of skin, with its cheeks spreading sideways rather than becoming a thin vertical image. Flowers and other outlines sit close by, but the animal’s eyes and mouth still give you somewhere clear to look. The shape is strong enough to work beside the other large pictures.
If you’re looking for ideas from this piece, pay attention to the expression before the extras. The wide eyes and open mouth give this tiger its mood. A closed mouth, narrower eyes or a different angle would change it completely. Jimmy’s personal reason for picking the animal isn’t established here, so calling it a statement about his personality would be a guess. The visible appeal is much easier to pin down: a bold, lively face with plenty of room for its strongest features.
The red-scarf woman portrait tattoo on his left upper arm
On Jimmy’s left upper arm, a woman’s face sits inside a red head covering. The cloth wraps around her head and trails down beside her face. Dark hair, outlined eyes and a small crescent mark near the forehead give the portrait a very different feel from his skull and arrow. Flowers and leaves fill the space around it, making the face the main focus of this part of the sleeve.
The red is a big part of the design. It draws a clear line between the woman’s pale face and the surrounding plants. Even with other colours lower on the arm, that long strip of red brings your eye back to the portrait. The face itself is more stylised than a photographic likeness, with clear brows, a narrow nose and a dark mouth. It has a drawn, illustrative quality.
The portrait follows the upper arm vertically. Her face starts high, close to the shoulder, and the trailing cloth carries the design towards the elbow. Leaves curl around the outside instead of sitting in a straight frame. That makes the sleeve feel fuller without hiding the woman’s expression. You can see how the larger portrait and the smaller floral shapes share the space.
It’s often tempting to give a portrait like this a name, or assume it’s a partner, relative or a character. The woman’s identity isn’t confirmed, so she stays an unnamed portrait. The design offers plenty to enjoy without guessing who she is. If you like this approach, think about how a cloth, hairstyle or floral border could give your own portrait a recognisable outline. The frame around the face matters almost as much as the face itself.
The lettering and linework tattoos on his fingers
Jimmy’s fingers have a much lighter sort of tattoo work. Small letters and thin angular lines run along the fingers, with darker letter shapes close to the knuckles. They sit beside large rings and the portrait on the back of his hand. The close view makes the difference in scale clear: these are little marks you notice during a gesture, rather than big pictures that fill a whole arm.
The letters don’t all present themselves as one neat line in this pose. Fingers bend, rings cover parts of the skin, and some of the finer work turns towards the sides. It’s better to enjoy the visible shapes than force them into a phrase that the view doesn’t fully show. The tall letter forms and overlapping lines add detail right up towards the fingertips.
There’s an interesting contrast with the skull and arrow on the other arm. Those pieces use thick borders and obvious shapes. Here, the lines are narrower and the spaces between them are small. The jewellery adds another layer, so the hand has a mix of dark letters, fine ink and bright metal. None of it needs to be perfectly symmetrical to feel connected.
For a related look at how separate hand designs fit into a bigger old-school collection, Ricki Hall’s tattoos make a useful comparison. Jimmy’s close-up is especially good for noticing the quieter details around the rings. If you’re drawn to finger lettering, first decide whether you want a word people can read straight away or small marks that reveal themselves as your hand moves. Those are different effects, and Jimmy’s mix leaves room for both.
What ties Jimmy Q’s collection together is the back-and-forth between big, simple shapes and smaller, softer details. The skull and arrow are immediate. The tiger gives the torso a strong expression. The upper-arm woman adds a sweep of red, while the fingers bring in fine lettering. Each part has its own pace, so you can take in the overall look quickly and still find something new when you look closer.
There’s no exact tattoo count here, and no reason to turn every picture into a personal message. These five details give a good sense of the range without pretending to explain his whole life. To see how the tattoos sit alongside his modelling style in motion, watch Jimmy in The Thiiird by Horiyoshi III film below.