Scary Guy Uses Body As A Canvas Tucson Man Changes His Name, Tattoos 80 Percent Of His Skin

Looking at his extensively tattooed face and body and the two silver bars piercing his nose, the name seems to fit: the Scary Guy.

It’s even official, since tattoo shop owner Earl Kenneth Kaufmann got a judge to change his name to the Scary Guy on Feb. 2.

However, a name tag tattoo on his chest still proclaims: “Hello - My name is Earl.”

Beneath the red and blue melange on his face - he calls it “modern abstract tribalism” - and the other tattoos he stopped counting long ago, the Scary Guy comes across more like a teddy bear, someone bothered by the idea that people really might find him scary.

“He’s the sweetest guy you’ll ever know,” said the Scary Guy’s wife, Julie. “It’s an ironic name change because he’s not scary.”

“I’m a blink in time, and my soul is renting this space,” the Scary Guy said. “I just choose to paint it differently.”

He calls his body an artist’s canvas. More than 80 percent of it is covered with tattoos, including a UPC bar code on one arm. His massive right bicep displays a drawing from a 1940s murder mystery showing the New York City skyline and a woman holding a knife dripping with blood.

He said he’d wanted a tattoo ever since he was 8 years old, when he’d watch his dad and fellow ex-sailor buddies, all with anchors and other tattoos, swapping World War II tales in the garage of his family’s Minneapolis home.

In 1984, while visiting a brother in Tucson, the Scary Guy, then 30, impulsively stopped at a tattoo parlor.

“I had a tingling feeling in my gut, kind of knew that I was going to follow through on a commitment,” he said.

He picked out a dragon for his left arm. The next day, he got a tiger on his right arm. One day after that, he had a panther etched on his chest.

“I discovered this was a pretty cool form of self-expression,” he said. “Now I really believe tattooing is one of the finest forms of self-expression known to man. It’s very personal and it’s very about you at that time.”

The Scary Guy began designing his own art, getting tattooed by artists of kindred philosophy, and opened three tattoo shops in Tucson.

He slowly came to grips with friends being uncomfortable around him as his tattoos crept across his body.

But one of his hardest emotional transitions was in tattooing his face.

“I went through some time when I was in regret looking in a mirror, because I saw my face slowly disappear over three years,” he said.

The Scary Guy said it took him 3-1/2 years to have his face painted.

“I needed the time to digest that emotionally. And I tell that to everybody who gets tattooed extensively,” he said.

Because he had broken what was, until recently, a taboo against an artist tattooing a face, the Scary Guy said he was shunned and ridiculed within the tattoo world. He said his motivation to have his face tattooed came from his belief that tattooing should not have rules because tattooing touts freedom of expression.

Yet, he has tattooed only one other person’s face.

“I need to be socially responsible with other people’s lives,” the Scary Guy said.