For over a decade, David Tevenal has been one of the most followed and respected tattoo artists in the world . Tevenal has joined the XACTpro Team, and XACTneedle™ David Tevenal tattoo cartridges are now part of his everyday setup.

For anyone in the tattoo world, that decision carries weight. Tevenal isn't an artist who chases brand deals. He's built his reputation on the work itself, and his audience of over 1.5 million followers across Instagram, Facebook, and Threads exists because people genuinely want to see what he creates next. When someone at that level picks a cartridge, the idea of David Tevenal tattoo cartridges stops being hypothetical and starts meaning something real about the product.

Who Is David Tevenal?

If you already know, skip ahead. If you don't, here's the short version: David Tevenal is a tattoo artist, muralist, illustrator, and painter based in Houston, Texas. He's also known by the moniker "Battle Damage" and refers to his approach as "the way of the Volcanic Hand," which makes more sense once you see his work.

His style lives at the intersection of several worlds. There's the influence of Japanese tattoo imagery, which shows up in his use of flowing compositions, bold subject matter, and full sleeve concepts. There's the graffiti and street art energy that gives his work a raw, kinetic quality most tattooers can't replicate. And then there's the comic book and pop culture influence that makes his designs feel alive, almost like they could jump off the skin.

He's not easy to categorize, and that's the point. People have tried labeling him neo-traditional, new school, illustrative, or Japanese-influenced. The truth is he pulls from all of those traditions and filters them through something entirely his own. His recent work on pieces like his "lucky toad" sleeve demonstrates how he layers bold linework with saturated color in ways that feel distinctly Tevenal and nobody else.

The Career Behind the Following

Tevenal's commercial client list reads like a who's who of brands that actually understand art. He's done work for Marvel Comics, Santa Cruz Skateboards, Vice Media, and The Hundreds. That crossover appeal between tattooing, illustration, and commercial work is rare. Most tattoo artists stay in their lane. Tevenal built multiple lanes and drives in all of them.

Beyond client work, he sells original paintings, licensed prints through Ink Crate, and has developed a full library of Procreate brushes and reference material used by other artists. He's a regular at major tattoo conventions across the country, with upcoming appearances at Louisville Tattoo Fest, Memphis Tattoo Fest, and Toledo Tattoo Fest in 2025 alone.

The 1.2 million followers on his Facebook artist page and nearly 400,000 on Instagram didn't come from marketing tricks. They came from years of consistently producing work that people stop scrolling to look at. His paintings on kraft paper, his custom sleeve designs, his convention flash work. It all adds up to an artist who simply outworks and out-creates most of his peers.

Why This Partnership Matters

Here's the thing about David Tevenal tattoo cartridges and this partnership: we didn't have to convince him. He tried XACTneedle™ cartridges, put them through real work on real clients, and decided on his own that these were the cartridges he wanted to run. There was no elaborate pitch or influencer campaign. The product did the talking.

For us at XACTbodyart, this is significant because it validates what we've been building. Our cartridges are manufactured with medical-device standards, precision-ground Japanese steel, and a proprietary medical-grade silicone membrane. We've spent 25 years perfecting needle manufacturing across multiple industries, and having an artist of Tevenal's caliber confirm that the performance matches the engineering means more than any ad we could run.

Tevenal rarely partners with brands. That kind of selectivity is exactly the standard the XACTpro Team was built around. We don't collect influencers. We work with artists who actually use and believe in the product.

What David Tevenal Runs: Inside His XACTneedle™ Setup

One of the more interesting aspects of bringing a new pro team member on board is seeing what they actually order when nobody's watching. The specific David Tevenal tattoo cartridges he selected tell a story about how he works and what his style demands from a needle.

His lineup includes the Classic Tight Round Liner #12 in both a 5-grouping (1205RLLT) and a 9-grouping (1209RLLT). The tight round liner configuration keeps the needle points closer together, which produces a crisper, more defined line. Running both a 5 and a 9 makes sense for someone whose work ranges from intricate detail inside a design to bolder structural lines that anchor the whole piece. If you've ever looked at a Tevenal sleeve and wondered how the fine detail work coexists with those thick, confident outlines, this is part of the answer.

He also runs the Classic Traditional Round Liner #12 in a 14-grouping (1214RL-TRAD). A traditional liner at 14 needles is a heavy hitter. This is what you reach for when you're laying down the kind of bold, unforgiving lines that Japanese and neo-traditional work demands. There's no room for inconsistency at that grouping, and the fact that he's running it in a traditional configuration rather than tight tells you he wants that slightly wider spread for a fatter, more saturated line.

For shading and color packing, he's using the Classic Curved Magnum #12 in a 15-grouping with a medium taper at 3.5mm (1215CM-MT). The curved magnum is the go-to for smooth color saturation and gradient work. At 15 needles with a medium taper, it's versatile enough to pack solid color while still handling softer transitions. Given the kind of vivid, saturated color work Tevenal is known for, this cartridge is doing a lot of the heavy lifting in his finished pieces.

All four David Tevenal tattoo cartridges are built on the same #12 (0.35mm) needle diameter, which is the standard gauge for most professional tattoo work. It's a balanced choice that performs well across line weight and shading applications without being so thick that it causes unnecessary trauma or so thin that it sacrifices ink deposit.

What This Means for the XACTpro Team

The XACTpro Team already includes artists like Tiffer Wright (Ink Master Season 11 finalist), Alexandra Fische, Zakk Ross, and over a dozen other working professionals across tattoo and piercing. Adding Tevenal to that roster puts another world-class name alongside artists who've independently chosen these cartridges based on performance.

This isn't a roster we assembled by writing checks. Every artist on the XACTpro Team uses our products because they tested them and made a choice. That's the standard, and Tevenal's addition reinforces it.

You can find David Tevenal on the XACTpro Team page, and you can follow his work on Instagram at @davetattoos or on his Facebook artist page.

To shop the same David Tevenal tattoo cartridges he runs daily, check out our full XACTneedle™ Next Generation lineup.