LOS ANGELES — Faith comes first for Bryan Ortega, in life and in ink.

The 29-year-old grew up in a home that eschewed tattoos, but when he decided last year that it finally was time to be tatted, he put Jesus first. Right there on his left forearm, next to a cross.

Family comes next, so Ortega followed with his parents’ initials on his hand. He then all but covered his left arm in tributes to his flesh and blood, with his late grandmother as an angel and a niece, nephew and cousin as cherubs. His girlfriend’s name is there, too.

Ortega doesn’t enter into inking lightly.

And so he’ll tell you it carries some weight that his right forearm now is covered with a tattooed tribute to the late Kobe Bryant, a portrait of the Lakers great giving an intense yell. There’s a Black Mamba — Bryant’s nick-namesake snake — draped over Kobe’s shoulders, twisting toward the back of Ortega’s hand where its head rests on his fist and its tongue extends down his middle finger.

The tattoo is a new addition, acquired just days after Bryant, his daughter Gianna and seven others were killed in a helicopter crash on Jan. 26.

“I didn’t know the guy, but man, I feel like I lost a family member,” Ortega says. “I’ve had family members pass away, people that I knew, and I wasn’t this upset. It’s weird. I know it feels wrong to say that, but it’s the truth.”

Clearly, he’s not the only one who feels that way.

All over Los Angeles — from West Hollywood to the Lakers roster — new Bryant tattoos have appeared in the days since his death at age 41. Search the hashtag #kobetattoo on Instagram and you’ll find dozens of recent posts with fresh ink from every corner of California to the boroughs of New York and even from countries as far-flung as Taiwan and Guatemala.

There are simple ones — jersey numbers and the Black Mamba logo that appeared on Bryant’s signature shoes — and there are intricate, complex portraits that require hours to design and create.

All of them have something in common.

They’re as personal as they are permanent.

“A lot of people think you get tattoos to show them off, but honestly I get them to honor someone,” says Deven Brodersen, a tattoo artist at Iron & Ink in West Hollywood. “It means a lot to people. I think they’re gonna get a tattoo based on having so much respect for one person.”

To illustrate the point, he pulls up a sleeve on his T-shirt to reveal a hidden portrait of late L.A. rapper Nipsey Hussle, who was killed in a shooting last March.

“I’ll get a Kobe one next,” says Brodersen, but for now he’s focused on giving them.

In the 10 days following Bryant’s death, Brodersen did six different Kobe tattoos, and he expects more to come.

“That’s just the connection people have to him,” Brodersen says. “Kobe Bryant is L.A.”

Cat Lynch always could relate to Bryant.

Sure, she was a 5-foot-1 guard who played on her high school basketball in Granbury, Texas, outside Dallas. And yes, she was a serious Mavericks fan.

But she always admired Bryant’s tenacity — undersized though she is, defense was her specialty — and his work ethic, which was an influence on her then and continues to be in her career as a DJ and music producer in L.A.

“I feel like he was a very big part of my life, more than just basketball,” she said from a chair at Iron & Ink. “He showed you that it’s better to work hard than to take the easier route. It’s hard to keep some sort of faith when bad things happen to someone like him.”

Lynch was shaken by his death, and she knew she wanted a tattoo salute.

Her left arm — “my spiritual side,” she calls it — is covered in a full sleeve, part of it featuring a gypsy staring into a crystal ball with a snake beneath. She calls her right arm, more sparsely inked, her “gangster side.” That’s where she was getting a Bryant tattoo on a cool Wednesday afternoon.

Deven Brodersen puts a Kobe-themed tattoo on Cat Lynch. (Brett Dawson / The Athletic)

For Lynch, that doesn’t mean a portrait or a jersey number. She opted for Lola Bunny, the animated character from “Space Jam,” holding a basketball and sporting a No. 24 jersey. The words “Mamba Mentality” stretch out over Lola’s head.

Deven Brodersen puts a Kobe-themed tattoo on Cat Lynch. (Brett Dawson / The Athletic)

As he etches the design into the back of Lynch’s right forearm, Brodersen notes that he’s not charging for Bryant tattoos. It feels wrong to capitalize on the tragedy, he says. Bryant meant too much to him growing up.

Brodersen started going to Lakers games “as a newborn,” he says. His father, Matt Brodersen, is a diehard fan who evoked Kobe’s name at every turn — when his son wrestled, when he did schoolwork and when they rode their skateboards together.

“There would be times where I’d hurt my knee and I couldn’t go to skate, and my dad would be like, ‘Kobe had a messed-up Achilles and went back in the game,’” Brodersen says. “It was always something. If I’m feeling a little ill and I’m like, ‘I think I’m gonna call in,’ he’s like ‘Did you know Kobe played with the flu?’”

Those connections are common when it comes to Bryant.

And for those inclined to tattoos, a permanent tribute feels natural. Fredda Wasserman, special projects director at Our House Grief Support Center, says tattoos can be about “processing, memorializing, displaying how much you really care.”

More than that, they can serve as a reminder of the way Bryant lived his life.

“He had the odds against him when he started (in the NBA),” Brodersen says. “He was 17. Especially with Kobe Bryant, the Mamba Mentality, it’s something to look at and remind yourself, stick through it no matter what.”

A similar message connected with Darius Ratchford.

A 23-year-old recent transplant from Atlanta, he grew up a Phoenix Suns fan but rooted for Bryant despite the Lakers guard having “terrorized” his favorite team. Bryant bounced the Suns from the playoffs twice; they did the same to him in 2006 and 2007.

Again, it was the work ethic. The intensity. In Bryant, Ratchford saw a blueprint for approaching not just basketball, but life. He moved to L.A. in June for his career as a freelance videographer and editor, and he was leveled by the news of Bryant’s death.

He spent much of the day it happened crying and watching Bryant highlights on YouTube.

The next day, he went to the Honorable Society Tattoo Parlour and Lounge and left with a pair of simple Bryant tribute tattoos: on his chest the date of Bryant’s death in Roman numerals — X.XXVI.MMXX — and on his forearm Bryant’s autograph — just the “Kobe,” no last name — from a picture he found online.

Darius Ratchford shows off his Kobe signature tattoo. (Brett Dawson / The Athletic)

“Getting this tattoo for me is a way to honor him, but also to remind myself that not every day is promised, not to take anything for granted,” Ratchford says. “And then it reminds me to give it my all every day, that Mamba Mentality.”

That desire for a reminder in ink links Bryant fans from all over the world to a pair of Lakers who had personal connections to the L.A. legend.

On Anthony Davis’ right shoulder and bicep, there’s a tattoo of his late grandfather, Lamont Eberhardt. He’s smiling, encircled by the words “Rest Up Champ.” On the back side of that arm, a script “Chicago” is a nod to Davis’ hometown.

“All my tats are something special,” Davis says. “I don’t have any meaningless tats, so knowing how much Kobe meant to me, I felt like for me, the impact that he had on my life and my basketball career, I felt like it was only right for me to get a tattoo to remember him.”

Davis and teammate LeBron James each got Bryant tattoos. They opted for different designs in similar locations on their legs. Both were applied by the same artist, Vanessa Aurelia.

For Davis, Aurelia’s design features a snake coiled around Bryant’s shoe logo.

James’ tattoo also features a coiled snake, wrapping around flowers and the numbers 24 and 8, the two jersey numbers Bryant wore during his Lakers career.

“Every time I look at my tattoos, it puts me back in the perspective of time, or the inspiration behind it,” James says. “So that’s all part of the journey.”

In that way, the Lakers’ All-Stars aren’t so different than the tattooed fans who rooted from Bryant from afar.

They weren’t ready to let go, so they got something permanent they could hold onto.

Ortega is a committed bodybuilder. In his Instagram profile picture he’s flexing bulging biceps in a gold No. 24 Bryant jersey. And though he connects first and foremost to Bryant’s love of family, he says, part of the reason he wanted a tattoo after Bryant’s death was so that he could look at his forearm on the days when the weight is a struggle and “see that it’s Kobe basically telling me, ‘You better not fuck around. Push through it.'”

That’s partly why he pushed through the 21-hour process — nine hours the first day, 12 on the second — to have his Bryant portrait tattoo completed. He compared the pain to a scratch on a bad sunburn, a feeling he’s come to know well.

It was worth it, he said, to have Bryant memorialized on his skin, just as Davis and James and so many fans in Los Angeles and elsewhere have. Some of Ortega’s friends have suggested he’ll second-guess the decision. But he hasn’t regretted a tattoo yet. He doesn’t expect that to change.

“It’s amazing that people want to put Kobe on their bodies,” Ortega says. “But tattoos are forever, and Kobe’s gonna be with us forever.”

(Top Photo of Bryan Ortega’s Kobe Bryant tattoo: Brett Dawson / The Athletic)