The best artists rarely follow straight lines. They circle, they explore, they let one discipline inform another until something entirely new emerges. Dmytro Shcherbakov’s path to tattooing wound through interior design, architecture, and years of cross-cultural exchange before he found the medium that could contain his vision.
The Ukrainian-born artist, who also goes by ASPHALT tattoo, grew up in Novhorod-Siverskyi, a small town in northern Ukraine. It’s the kind of place where quiet surroundings naturally push you inward, and for Shcherbakov, that introspection channeled itself into art. He dabbled in theater, film, and music, but drawing stuck. It became his personal language before he ever imagined it could pay the bills.
After high school, Dmytro enrolled at Kyiv National University of Technologies and Design, earning a bachelor’s degree in Computer Interior and Furniture Design. The program taught him about structure, composition, and proportion, technical foundations that would later become essential to his tattoo work. A few years later, he moved to Warsaw to study architecture. That’s where tattooing found him.
“It started with curiosity,” Shcherbakov explains. “Sketching designs, studying artists, experimenting with form. It quickly grew into a deep passion.” He realized tattooing combined everything he loved about design, anatomy, and storytelling. By 2017, he’d shifted gears entirely, working as a tattoo artist in Poland and Ukraine before branching out to Germany and Belgium for guest spots.
What followed was an extended period of artistic nomadism. From 2022 onward, Shcherbakov spent years moving through Europe, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Germany, Belgium, constantly learning from different cultures. Each place approached the craft differently, and that exposure added layers to his understanding of what the medium could be. That cross-cultural exchange shaped his artistic voice in ways that staying in one place never would have.
In 2024, Dmytro Shcherbakov made his biggest move yet, relocating to the United States and joining the team at Logan Square Tattoo in Chicago. The transition opened him up to a new audience and a different tattoo market entirely. Along the way, he’s earned recognition at international tattoo festivals, both as an award recipient and as a judge. Those experiences deepened his appreciation for how diverse and innovative the tattoo community truly is. He genuinely loves networking, connecting with other artists, exchanging ideas, and seeing how the field keeps reinventing itself.
When you ask Dmytro what he does, he doesn’t lead with “tattoo artist.” He calls himself an artist first. “Tattooing is my medium,” he says, “but my work goes beyond the surface. It’s contemporary art that lives on the skin.”
It’s a distinction that matters to Dmytro Shcherbakov. While many tattoo artists draw inspiration from fine art, he’s approaching it from the opposite direction. He’s a trained designer and architect who found tattooing, not a tattooist who learned design. That education shapes everything he creates, from how he thinks about negative space to how he considers the body’s natural lines and movement. His tattoos don’t just sit on skin. They work with it, transform it.
His specialty lies in modern graphic and neo-tribal aesthetics. He describes his work as bold, elegant, and timeless. There’s nothing trendy about his approach. He’s after something that feels just as relevant decades from now as it does today. But here’s what sets his work apart. Every piece is tailored to the individual.
He designs around a person’s energy, their story, their movement. This is where his architecture training becomes essential. He’s not decorating a surface. He’s working with the body’s natural lines and structure, creating something that transforms with the person wearing it. The result isn’t just decoration. It’s wearable art that connects his artistic vision with the soul of the person wearing it.
Dmytro Shcherbakov draws inspiration from artists like @uncogrim, @bb_rung, and @comma_ttt on Instagram. What draws him to these artists is simple. Each brings something unique to the craft, and their creativity constantly motivates him to keep evolving. That spirit of innovation keeps his own work moving forward.
What might surprise people is that Shcherbakov recently published his first book. “Skin Not Paper: The Modern Tattoo Guide” is now available on Amazon, though he hasn’t made a big announcement about it yet. The book isn’t just technical guidance. It’s Shcherbakov’s attempt to formalize what tattooing as contemporary art actually means. Philosophy, composition, working with the body’s architecture, developing artistic voice. He’s treating tattooing with the same intellectual rigor you’d expect from any serious art discipline. The title alone challenges readers to rethink the medium entirely.
He’s not stopping there. Dmytro’s planning a webinar for Ukrainian tattoo artists and preparing a series of masterclasses where he’ll share insights from his artistic process and professional experience. It’s all part of a larger mission. Shcherbakov’s goal is ambitious. He wants to change how the entire industry thinks about the craft. To show that tattooing deserves the same respect, the same intellectual consideration, the same artistic rigor as any other contemporary art form.
What drives him hasn’t changed since those early days in Novhorod-Siverskyi. It’s curiosity. The excitement of creating something from a blank space. The privilege of turning someone’s personal vision into living art on their skin.
There’s something fitting about an artist who spent years moving between countries, absorbing different influences, never quite settling until he found the right place. Shcherbakov’s path wasn’t linear, and maybe that’s exactly why his work resonates. He learned early that art requires both technical precision and emotional honesty, that the best work comes from staying curious and refusing to get comfortable.
If you ask him what defines his approach, he’ll tell you he’s never afraid to evolve, always searching for something new. That restlessness has taken him from a small Ukrainian town to design school in Kyiv, architecture studies in Warsaw, years of travel across Europe, and now a thriving practice in Chicago. The journey isn’t finished. For someone like Dmytro Shcherbakov, it probably never will be. He’s too interested in what comes next, too committed to the idea that tattooing can be more than what it’s been. And that’s exactly the kind of artist the scene needs.
You can follow his work on Instagram or check out his book on Amazon.
