"I'm a painter, that's my background," said Dingwell, 43, who this year opened his own studio in the Arts District. "I translate my painting into my tattooing." 

Last weekend, Dingwell gave a painting demonstration with the "Wet Paint Project" at the Coast City Comicon, a comic arts festival hosted by Coast City Comics.

The Wet Paint Project is a "live painting" demonstration that Dingwell unveiled at the Hell City Tattoo Fest in Phoenix, Ariz.

"People love to just watch you make art," Dingwell said, explaining the attraction.

This spring, Dingwell opened Chris Dingwell Studios in the State Theater Building 142 High St., Suite 401. Prior to that, he worked at Sanctuary Tattoo. Dingwell is married to Danielle Denise Madore, a tattoo artist at Sanctuary Tattoo.

Family life has curtailed some of his traveling, but Dingwell said he still attends tattoo events around the country. Destinations might include Phoenix for the Hell City Tattoo Fest in August or Keystone, Colo., for the Paradise Tattoo Gathering in September. Chet Zar, a special effects make-up artist, designer and sculptor for films such as, "The Ring", "Hellboy I & II" and the "Planet of the Apes" movie, often meets Dingwell at tattoo conventions.

"Chris Dingwell has a truly unique vision," Zar wrote in a statement to The Portland Daily Sun. "His artwork is incredibly original and that is something that is very difficult to come by these days. The colors and brush strokes vibrate with a kind of mad kinetic energy. I'm a fan!"

With a background in sculpture, Dingwell said he adapts the concepts of shaping a piece of pottery to tattooing a human body. 

"I try to translate the movement of the human body into the designs I do," he said.

Business manager Nancy Kureth said Dingwell's knowledge of figurative sculpture helps make him successful as he converts images to the contours of arms, legs, backs and other parts of the body.

"The human body is curved. ... He knows there's muscle and sinew and skin," she said. 

Asked about the difference between painting on canvas and creating tattoo art on a person, Dingwell summed it up this way: "Canvases don't talk back to you."