The Villain Arts Tattoo Festival is a mosh pit romp down the rabbit hole of how far humans are willing to go to adorn the blank canvas of a birthday suit. 

“Twelve sessions, over a hundred hours” so far, said Colorado Springs resident Robert Valencia, as tattoo artist Carlos Piedrahita prepared to return to work Saturday on the multicolored dermal tapestry scrolling Valencia’s lower limbs.

Today’s project: left thigh, continuing the arabesques that lace up and coalesce into an otherworldly siren with arachnid vibes. 

“I’ve never seen anything like it before, to be honest,” Valencia said, gazing down at the Denver tattoo artist’s original creation. “It’s been a great experience. Very painful, but worth it.”

Launched in the late 1990s originally as a niche convention for ink enthusiasts in Philadelphia, Villain Arts now hosts festivals nationwide that draw hundreds of fans and artists who set up booths and get down to showcasing their talents in front of a live audience, working on existing clients and ongoing projects as well as walk-ins.

Competition adds an extra edge to all the edginess, as artists square off in daily contests, including Saturday evening’s “Best Tattoo of the Day” as weighed by Villain Arts founder Troy Timpel and a panel of international judges.

A contender for sure: The Lord of the Rings-inspired tableau taking shape on Danny Rioux’s left arm under the steady hand of Kaylei Power, of Parker-based K-Pow Tattoos.

“The Riders of Rohan are my favorite characters in the book. They’re very important to me,” said Rioux. “I’ve got their king on my bicep area that she (Power) originally did, so now I’m doing his nephew. If I could do all of the characters from Rohan on there I would.”

The Japanese-inspired design on Anthony Stefanek’s chest will have covered his clavicle by the time artist Loco Dharma has finished his work fleshing out a multi-element tattoo that both honors a lost loved one and, with its koi fish image, invokes traditional signs of empowerment.

Sometimes, what inspires the roughly one third of Americans who have at least one tattoo to take the plunge began as a straightforward origin story before it became an indelible outfit, and lifestyle

“I just had really hairy legs to be honest, and the back of my legs, no hair grew at all so it just looked crazy and I was real self conscious about shorts and stuff like that,” Valencia said. “I told myself that if I could find somebody who could do a good job, I would just tattoo them.”

For the record, tattoos don’t stop body hair from growing. They just make it easier for Valencia to explain why he manscapes his legs.

“Now I can shave them and my legs aren’t so shiny and smooth,” he said.

Now, he has legs he wants to show off.

The tattoo festival continues Sunday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., at the Norris Penrose Event Center in Colorado Springs. Tickets are $25. Visit villainarts.com for information.