Behind The Scenes Flic Snoop With My Gangster Squad Art work

HALF BACK PIECE

RIDES MAGAZINE SANCTIOND

Photo: 2 of 14

Enlarge +

◀

▶

Story: Michael Crenshaw

Photography: Estevan Oriol & Andrew Link

His skilled hands are the vehicles with which he creates art and breathes life into his canvases. Whether it’s with the everlasting ink of a tattoo, drawing or pin-striping—on his many automotive ventures—his skill is recognized as some of the underground art world’s best, and to even get a tattoo appointment with him may take months or years.

You may not know who Mark Machado is, but you certainly know Mister Cartoon.

Cartoon, as he’s recognized among those familiar with him, has an overwhelmingly animated presence in person. While not big in the standard sense—his stocky frame covered in tattoos is instantaneously recognizable, however—Cartoon’s visceral appearance is evident during conversation, while his deep eyes, which never seem to blink and miss a moment, stare back at you. He is an entrepreneur in every sense of the word, with Mister Cartoon Sanctiond Automotive car-care products being his coup de grâce within the automotive landscape. Stemming from his father’s love of the automobile, naming every car as they passed, Cartoon has made it his mission to involve himself in car culture, relishing in the fact that because of his status, he can now make almost anything a reality. We sat with Cartoon during a five-hour tattooing marathon and talked life, tattoos and his love affair with cars.

RIDES: When did your love of cars begin?
Mr. Cartoon: I always dreamed that maybe one day I could learn how you can tell the different cars from each other. [My father] started taking me to car shows, and I remember walking into one as a teenager, being able to see the cars. I started to notice the striping, the gold leaf–painted show signs. In California we get a cool breeze with the sun, and that feeling with the wet paint job and the gold leaf with murals—I fell in love right there.

So your artistic side came out after your passion with cars began?
Well, I saw a guy paint, but of course I’ve been drawing all my life with, like, with pencil or pens, stuff like that. And I started trying to do spray-paint graffiti. We would try to emulate New York graffiti writers. But on the other side of the tracks were all these lowriders and Bombs, and all these different kinds of cars. And I was like, “Man, that’s what I want to do. I like the way the cars lie on the floor, you know, when the bumpers are on the ground. And hey, the guys that own them—they look as cool as the cars!” They got tattoos, and they’re sleeved, you know?

The two went hand in hand?
I used to airbrush T-shirts at Freeway and Rick Ross’s Big Palace of Wheels. So he owned a wheel shop with those chandeliers and marble floors, with cars and wheels on the floor, in the ’80s, in South Central. I couldn’t believe that a place like that existed. They had a car wash on the side of it. I used to airbrush T-shirts there, and I would see the cars leave the car wash and hit the switch, and the baby chandeliers swinging in the back window, plaque in the back, flake roof. I was like, “That’s it. I’m gonna sell my soul to get a fuckin’ lowrider!”

Did you sell your soul?
I got a ’64 Impala, a Suzuki Samurai on Daytons. It was some real ’80s shit.

Explain why you have two Lifestyle tattoos.
We got our [Lifestyle Car Club] plaque. And this is the general spot where we get it, on the inside of the forearm. I got another plaque right here [points to his body]. I didn’t want people to notch; if you didn’t shoot this, and you’re shooting me from right here, I wanted to make sure there was another plaque right there, you know?

Wild stuff. So what trends are you seeing with custom cars?
It’s about luxury cars. Luxury cars got to have an equal amount of custom work on them as your [old-schools]. Well, not an equal amount, ’cause you don’t want to candy-paint your Euro. But you want to put a kit on, an exhaust, change the diffuser out, put a headliner in it, do your floor mats, the headrests—little things like that. What your average guy would never do, like paint your grilles the same color, take off the chrome, maybe paint it black.

So you have less of a canvas to work with?
Oh, for sure. You got to be very, very easy on that stuff, because it’s easy to cross the line.

What’s in your collection right now?
I never say, but I don’t really count them, because they’re always moving and changing. Or I sell them, or they are corporate company cars that I’m building. Like right now, we’re working on a custom project for Vans shoes.

So for Sanctiond Automotive, what do you foresee in the future of the brand?
I see Sanctiond going in everyone’s garage. Like your kids are gonna go, “Hey, my old man always had a bottle of Sanctiond in his garage.” I see it going all over the world. I see it penetrating deep Europe, South America, being in every auto show there is. I see it as being at car shows from Compton all the way to Grand Concourse, Pebble Beach. I think we’re the only company that can go between those two extremes.

And having the reputation of actually being there?
Yeah, being able to be at each one. It’s a movement. We want other people to come with us. We want all these car builders that are like sports heroes to us, you know what I mean? We’re about that with car builders. I didn’t redesign the wheel or anything, and I wasn’t the first person to think of wax, but I felt like FuBu with this one. That’s all I can really say. This is for us. I’m allowed to be obsessed with it because I’m pushing it. I’m a businessman. But without that, I was looking mad like I had low self-esteem or some shit. But I love building cars. I love to build. I love the build of it and the challenges.

ESTEVAN ORIOL STREET LIFE

NOEL & ANNE

SOUL SUNDAY

Welcome back to Soul Sundays! 

Today's artist are Thee Midniters singing one of my favorites "The town I live in" Thee midnighters were an American group, amongst the first Chicano rock bands to have a major hit in the U. S Also they were and one of the best known acts to come out of East Los Angeles in the 1960s, with a cover of "Land of a Thousand Dances", and the instrumental track, "Whittier Boulevard" in 1965. They were amongst the first rock acts to openly sing about Chicano themes in songs such as "Chicano Power" and "The Ballad of César Chávez" in the late 1960s.

Hope you enjoy my selection!

Mrs. Julie Toons

Soul Sundays

Skidrow Soul

Rip Gato

SATURDAYS TRAILER

LOWER SLEEVE AND HAND TATTOO

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

Billboard I created for UNDFTD thanks for the support, Have a Good Holiday weekend

Ctoon$

Thanks to http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com and United Airlines

Industry

Ink Inc.

How an L.A. tattoo artist became corporate America's go-to guy for the urban market

Author Michael Kaplan

IN AN INDUSTRIAL POCKET OF DOWNTOWN L.A., a tattoo artist by the name of Mr. Cartoon administers his empire. It occupies several buildings fronted by steel garage doors, behind which resides a small fortune in customized cars. Adorned with bespoke art in the front and fitted with hydraulics in the rear, most of them date back to the 1960s and all are shinier than the day they were made.

Upstairs, in a cozy studio, Cartoon tattoos clients like Snoop Dogg, Justin Timberlake and Beyoncé. His address and phone number are unlisted, and for non-celebrities the waiting list can be six months long. “When somebody comes in for an appointment, I congratulate him,” says the 5-foot-5 artist, who sports a shaved head and manicured goatee. “He had to work for it.”

Tattooing is what made the 43-year-old Cartoon (born Mark Machado) initially famous, but he has leveraged that into something far greater. Working with photographer Estevan Oriol and marketing man Mark Suroff, Cartoon formed SA Studios Global, which does advertising, marketing, event planning and product development for clients that include Metro PCS, Vans, Nike and Diesel. Earlier this year, he designed both a wristwatch and, unlikely as it sounds, a cologne for a fashion house. His own artwork, in the form of a tricked-out ice cream truck, has been exhibited at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.

For his next act, Mr. Cartoon is teaming up with Atticus Firey—formerly the president and COO of Meguiar’s, one of the world’s largest makers of car-care products—to launch Sanctiond Automotive, a line of washes and waxes. Meant to upend a $2.2 billion segment of the car-care industry, the venture promises to be a perfect marriage of Cartoon’s automotive, corporate and tattoo contacts. “I’ll give a ballplayer a discount on a tattoo and ask him to do a spot for the Web when we’re done,” Cartoon says. “He introduces himself and says, ‘Is your car Sanctiond?’”

Mr. Cartoon is an all-American success story. Born to middle-class Mexican parents and raised in the Los Angeles suburb of San Pedro, he was drawn to Latino street culture, fascinated by the bumping cars, wild tattoos and overall style that defined a certain segment of Chicano males in Southern California. He got his own tattoos as soon as he could afford them, always coming in with original designs.

In 1992, when he was 23 years old, Cartoon bought his first tattooing rig and learned the art by inking friends for free. When he opened his own shop in 2001, he exhibited the kind of confidence that would either make him or break him. “Right from the start, I had a $500 minimum for tattoos,” Cartoon remembers. “Somebody walked in with $450, I told him to come back when he had another $50.” The customer returned.

Thanks to partner Estevan Oriol, who road-managed The Fugees in their heyday, Cartoon soon caught fire with the music crowd. The athletes followed, including Carlos Boozer of the Chicago Bulls, Carl Crawford of the L.A. Dodgers and the New York Knicks’ Amar’e Stoudemire.

When Cartoon was asked to come to New York City for a Nike promotional event in 2003—”They wanted to pay me $10,000 to tattoo at a party”—he was stoked. “But Mark [Suroff ] told me that I had to turn it down unless they would let me come to New York as a sneaker designer, not as a tattoo artist. He said that if I took $10,000 for tattooing now, I’d never get more than that for something bigger later on.” Nike came around and Cartoon was officially in the sneaker business, creating shoes for the company and putting on major events designed to appeal to the urban community.

Other companies were quick to view Cartoon as a conduit to that same lucrative but elusive market. When, for example, the iced-tea brand Brisk was having trouble landing Eminem for a TV commercial, Cartoon dropped in and worked it out with a phone call—after all, he had just finished inking the volatile Detroit rapper. The resulting claymation ad helped his firm’s advertising arm win a cultural branding gig with Pepsi, Brisk’s parent company. Tying that story back to Sanctiond, Firey says, “How much better can it be than to have the guy who Fortune 100 companies hire to help reach urban markets?”

Back downstairs in his garage, amid more than a dozen customized autos and a trophy case jammed with awards for first-place finishes at car shows across the country, Cartoon half jokes that it might be “intervention time” vis-à-vis the car collection. But there is an upside.

“Now that I have a wax company, it makes sense for me to have all these cars,” Cartoon says. “It used to be that people thought I was crazy.”

MICHAEL KAPLAN, an entirely untattooed writer living in Brooklyn, writes for Wired, Details and the New York Times.

PHOTO BY ESTEVAN ORIOL

ESTEVAN ORIOL LA WOMEN

MISTER CARTOONS STUDIO ASSISTANT "got what it takes ?"

SOUL SUNDAYS

Hey welcome back to Soul Sundays 

today's artist is the "Lady of Soul" Mrs. Aretha Franklin singing two of my favorites "Rock steady" & "dr feel good"..... Hope you enjoy these selections!

Mrs. Julie Toons

Skidrow Soul

Soul Sundays

Rest in paradise Daddy

Saturday Movie Trailer

VIRGIN MARY

DIESEL TIME 2 RIDE LIMITED EDITION

LOVE IS THE ANSWER

PHOTOS BY ESTEVAN ORIOL

Classic Combination

SOUL SUNDAY

Mrs. Julie Toons

  Soul Sundays

  Skidrow Soul

SATURDAYS MOVIE TRAILER GS

THANKS TO KAT VON D AND WONDERLAND GALLERY GREAT SHOW

THROW BACK THURSDAY 07, CUSTOMER SENT IN PHOTO

ESTEVAN ORIOL NYC NOV 8TH MOVED TO FRIDAY THE 9TH DUE TO WEATHER IN NYC

Steve Angello from SHM

Mondays Blog Post Election Weak

SOUL SUNDAYS

Welcome back to my Soul Sundays... Today's dedication is Very, 

Very special to me. I normally don't put all my personal business on here but this is a chapter to my life & what makes my story even more real. This is for my Father "Gustavo". I've talked about my Dad several times on "Soul Sundays". He passed away yesterday. If it wasn't for him I wouldn't have the passion and love for Soul music the way I do. The crazy thing is that last week I spoke about him on Soul Sundays & how much he Loved to break dance. My Dad lived a very rough life. He was born in Guatemala but raised in Los Angeles, paramount to be exact. My Dad was very attracted & infatuated to the gangster lifestyle and what it had to offer that it took over his life. After, my parents separated everything went downhill. Drugs & Institutions took over his life. The best gift my father ever gave me was when he got clean and sober in order to walk me down the aisle. I will Always cherish that moment. "Ring my bell" by Anita Ward was one of my Dads favorites. He will always be close to my heart. Every oldie, funk and disco song I play will remind me of him. I love & will miss you Daddy!

Rest in Peace Dad

Mrs. Julie Toons

Soul Sundays

Skidrow Soul

SATURDAYS MOVIE TRAILERS

FRIDAYS TATTOO

SANCTIOND ITS OFFICIAL

Snoop Dogg and Mister Cartoon Join Forces At Sanctiond™ (via PR Newswire)

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 31, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Global Music Icon Snoop Dogg announced today he is joining Mister Cartoon as a business partner and ambassador of the Sanctiond™ Automotive brand. Over the years Mister Cartoon and Snoop Dogg have collaborated on numerous projects. History is made today…