Tattoo Styles A-Z

In order to express ideas, abstract art concentrates on the shapes, colours, and textures that make up reality rather than necessarily trying to depict the world around us. By including more aesthetically pleasing images, such as haphazard shapes, blobs of colour, and various line styles, abstract tattoos adhere to the same concepts. These designs frequently place more emphasis on aesthetics than meaning, and artists frequently create their own styles based on their preferences and experiences.

Abstract tattoos adhere to such narrow notions that the tattoo itself turns into a piece of art and often serves as the artist’s signature, much like the signature on a painting. When looking at abstract tattoos, it’s crucial to select a skilled tattoo artist whose work you enjoy to make sure it matches your style and what you envision for your ink.

If you appreciate human body components, like muscles, bones, hearts and more, anatomical tattoo designs could be right for you. Although you don’t have to be a doctor or dentist to appreciate them, anatomical tattoos are the most accurate depictions of human anatomy there are.

In reality, a lot of people obtain anatomical tattoos to commemorate their fractured bones from various incidents, including vehicle accidents, mountain biking, and sports-related injuries. They have a wide range of potential meanings. Even a physical set of lungs might represent someone who has survived lung cancer.

If you like gears, robots or the Terminator movie franchise, tattoos with a biomechanical theme might be for you! Biomechanical Tattoos consist of components that are linked under the skin’s surface and are represented in 3D.

Maybe you’ve always wanted an electronic robot arm or leg but haven’t been able to afford it, now is your chance to upgrade!

A blackout tattoo is one in which the majority of the space is filled with solid black ink. The term “blackout” refers to the practice of covering unwanted tattoos or poorly executed tattoos with new ones without resorting to laser removal. However, blackouts may also be used to create interesting negative space patterns and white ink tattoos.

Have a fading tattoo? Got a tattoo you’d rather throw to the wind? Blast-over tattooing is when you take an existing tattoo and add another design on top of it.

Although officially a cover-up tattoo design, blast-over ink was created by people who have too much body art but just want more. Blast-over tattoos are a terrific technique to add more artwork to a skin canvas that is already covered in ink when space is at a premium.

The Brutal Black Project, which attempts to resurrect the traditional and ceremonial components of tattooing to protect it from what its creators regard as the soulless commodification of the art, is responsible for making the Brutal tattoo style prominent. Brutal Black practices the purposeful infliction of suffering in order to achieve transcendence by covering vast expanses of skin in nothing but thick, gloomy black.

The style of the cartoon tattoo is modelled from your favourite vintage Saturday morning cartoons. These tattoos may be true cartoon characters or just about anything reinterpreted in the cartoon tattoo style, and they both look awesome. The Simpsons, DragonballZ, Looney Tunes, The Flinstones, Rick and Morty, Scooby-Doo, and South Park are a few popular cartoon tattoos.

The Chicano style has had such a strong cultural impact that it has also influenced other styles. rich in historical references to the Pachuco culture, the Mexican Revolution, and Los Angeles low-riders. The style was created by inmates who used the limited resources at their disposal to skilfully depict the things they adored and missed about life outside of prison walls. This kind of tattooing, which is often done in thin lines, black and grey, and is influenced by Chicano culture, is utterly captivating.

Dotworking, which should not be confused with Hand Poking, is a tattoo technique that employs just black and grey ink and may be applied by hand or using an electric tattooing machine as little dots to create shading and gradients. This 90s-era fashion was influenced by Pointillism and other post-impressionist methods.

Symmetric patterns, 3D effects, and the use of negative space created by a lack of dots are among this style’s most prevalent characteristics. 

Fine-line tattoos, as a tattooing aesthetic, are noticeably more delicate. Additionally, since they are less difficult to conceal, the fine-line tattoo style has gained appeal among individuals wishing to get their first tattoo. Also, there are many who deliberately seek out delicate tattoos because they think of them to be highly appealing. In spite of their seeming ease, fine-line tattoos are complex in practice and require the skill of a trained artist to guarantee they heal properly and look good for a long time.

Without using stencils or pre-made pictures, a freehand tattoo is sketched on the client and then tattooed. Instead of using a stencil, freehand artists will draw directly on the skin with markers. With the use of this technique, you may design a tattoo that exactly suits your body’s natural flow and structure while yet being incredibly original.

All Pictures shown here are by artist Aaron Norton, an incredible Freehand Artist.

This particular aesthetic has distorted visuals that resemble waves or “tv static” to warp and disfigure subject matters.  It takes designs from more conventional forms, such as blackwork, and distorts them to produce unique pieces.

One needle, one simple design. Both professional tattoo artists and do-it-yourselfers use the stick-and-poke technique. A skilled tattoo artist only needs one needle to take a simple design to great artistic heights. Tattoos that are hand-poked feel nearly primordial in nature due to the lack of any machines in the process, pure silence!

To create a stick-and-poke tattoo, a tattoo needle is fastened to the end of a rod such as a pencil or chopstick, but these days you can buy professional hand poking equipment, so let’s leave the chopsticks for dinner!

Once tattoo machines advanced from their traditional roots to medical-grade technologies, photorealistic and hyper detailed tattoos began to appear. As time goes on, the level in which these artists create continues to expand, making hyper realism pro’s stand out from the rest.

An expert hyper realism / photo realism tattoo artist will painstakingly recreate your design pieice by piece on your skin, just like a photograph, paying close attention to every last detail.

Your tattoo will be brought to life by your artist using precise lines, contrast, shading, and 3D effects, as well as various needle sizes and groupings.

A large variety of work can be called Illustrative, and that is because there are so many techniques and art movements that inspired it! From etching and engraving, to abstract expressionism, and even fine line calligraphy, this tattoo style is extremely versatile.

Many artists who work in this style will blend their own aesthetic with it to create a whole new style of their own…but as long as their tattoos look like they could belong on a piece of paper or a canvas hanging up in gallery, you know it’s Illustrative!

The traditional Japanese style of tattooing was estimated to have begun during the Edo period (1603-1868). At this period, Ukiyo-e woodblock prints were at the height of their popularity.

Tattoos of Suikoden heroes and other mythological entities like dragons, kirins, and phoenixes are a few examples of the motifs taken from the country’s rich history and applied in this ancient type of body art.

In other words, every tattoo created with this technique tells a tale about the colourful history of Japan. This is what gives Horimono works’ their dramatic smoke and wave-filled appearance in addition to their incredible emotional impact.

One of the most common approaches to tattoo design, this style focuses on the literary elements of the tattoo and can take several shapes. This style is distinguished by the delivery of written meaning, whether it is done using Latin characters, the Arabic, Cyrillic, or Kanji alphabets. As a result, you may witness a wide variety of numbers, phrases, and symbols created using almost every font type.

Mandalas have been used for thousands of years in the Hindu, Buddhist, and Christian religions as both a form of art and a method of meditation. Ancient monks drew elaborate mandalas on the ground in temples, and Hindus employed mandalas in their meditation spaces to aid with concentration.

The name “mandala” really means “circle” in Sanskrit, yet there are also lotus- and oval-shaped mandala tattoos.

By getting a mandala tattooed on your body, you may bring more awareness, calm, and love into your life. Mandala tattoos are a stunning and sophisticated geometrical fine-line design made up of shapes and symbols that radiate from the centre outward.

These tattoos are usually single pieces that have been broken down into their most fundamental parts. Numerous minimalist tattoos may be seen in strange locations on the body, like the inner lip, in between the fingers, and within the ear. Simple tattoos often feature the silhouettes of animals, geometric patterns, and other elements of nature.

In this design approach, a pattern’s blank spaces are used to create a design. The “negative area” will have blackwork surrounding it to bring attention to “what isn’t there.” This method is typically used for larger blackout and blackwork initiatives.

The new school looks to graffiti and cartoon art, as well as hip-hop and pop art for inspiration. Due to their vivid colours, degradês, irreverent themes, and purposeful disproportions, the tattoos are instantly identifiable. In general, there is a cartoonish appearance, lots of customizing options, and a wild and imaginative concept.

Tattoos with ornamental patterns typically centre on spiritual images like mandalas and incorporate additional elements like flowers and crystals around them. These patterns are typically extremely delicate and seem like exquisite jewellery. But don’t assume that means they should only be observed! These patterns frequently have profoundly spiritual connotations.

While the visual quality of computer games is getting better, nostalgia for older 8-bit graphics is growing. Pixel art tattoos bring back memories of our first video game experiences.

Although pixelation has mostly been connected to the digital sphere, it is steadily finding its way into the tattoo industry. Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong come to mind when thinking about pixelated old video game tattoos, but more lately, this style is being combined with different tattoo designs.

Indigenous body art, such as tribal tattoos, has been practised for thousands of years. This style encompasses several distinct tattooing traditions used by indigenous peoples from all over the world.

Tribal is often used as a catchall term for a wide range of stunningly varied artistic expressions, but a trained eye will immediately recognize that Polynesian body art is distinct from Marquesan or Maori tattoos, or that the tattoos on the faces of Inupiaq matriarchs are distinct from those on Berber women. Each of these trends is distinctive in its own way, but they all have one thing in common: they are virtually always executed in black and include complex patterns.

Famous figures from the worlds of pop culture (from the 1980s onward) serve as inspiration for a wide variety of tattoo designs. Despite them being a specific tattooing style, “Pop Culture” refers to a topic that incorporates elements of Anime, Realism, Hyperrealism, and Black and Grey. Toy Story, Crash Bandicoot, Marvel/The Avengers, Batman, etc. are all popular choices for Pop Culture tattoos.

The practice of getting tattooed while incarcerated is known as prison tattooing. Some inmates use their artwork to declare their gang affiliation, while others select drawings that represent their time behind bars. A tattoo can also serve as a symbol or code for someone to publicly confess to their misdeeds.

Inmates cannot get the necessary supplies or equipment since tattooing is illegal in US jails. Using the resources at hand, such as paper clips, staples, mechanical pencils, ballpoint pens, and other miscellaneous spare components, they create new techniques and tools. Additionally, they innovate their ink by using it in pens or creating it themselves using items like melted Styrofoam, plastic, rubber, soot, and shampoo.

As Stick and poke tattooing gains momentum, the look of “Prison style” tattoos created outside of prison walls is becoming more popular.

Although classic realism has been a feature of great art since the Renaissance, it was not until the second half of the 20th century that it began to appear in tattoos. In the years following, this innovative tattoo concept flourished and became wildly popular.

Currently, you can discover stunning colour or black and grey realism tattoos of just about every celebrity you can think of, as well as realistic images of nature and just about anything else you can imagine.

The pe’a, a tattoo often seen on men from the waist to the knees, and the malu, a more elaborate pattern typically found on women from the knees to the upper shoulder, are both parts of the Samoan culture.

Modern samoan tattoos are often featured on the chest, arm/sleeve and bicep.

For Samoans, they are symbols of reverence, honour, rank, communal pride, position, and authority.

The artist uses what appears to be one continuous motion to tattoo a form’s outermost outline and any dramatic alterations inside it in the continuous line tattoo style. A tattoo with a continuous line pattern resembles an “outline drawing” without any colouring, and it seems as though the tattoo machine is never lifted from the skin.

Bold outlines with solid colour infills mimic a stained glass aesthetic that is typically found in antique and medieval structures, just as it sounds. Religious themes or artistic representations of churches are frequently seen in stained glass tattoos.

Torn skin tattoos are organic handmade optical illusions made to look like genuine tears or rips in the skin to show bone or mechanical pieces, much as anatomic and biomechanical tattoos. Although it takes some time to complete, the final image is stunning. We advise chatting with a Biomechanical or Realism tattoo artist if you’re searching for this kind of tattoo.

Germany’s Buena Vista Tattoo Club invented Realistic Trash Polka. It was made by Simone Plaff and Volko Merschky and is immediately identifiable for its detailed collage-like design and sampling from printed materials including photographs, torn paper, handwriting, paint splatters, and typewriting as well as the use of halftone gradients.

The Vikings were medieval Scandinavian warriors known for their brutal maritime raids and body art. The majority of the designs worn by real Vikings were probably made up of geometric patterns, knotted formations, and runic symbols. While similar styles are still in demand today, the fashion also incorporates unconventional motifs influenced by Norse mythology and figures like Odin and Thor.

White ink tattoos require a skilled and experienced tattoo artist. Make sure the artist you hire is knowledgeable on how to correctly apply white ink for your particular skin tone. White ink will appear differently on different skin types, appearing brighter on darker skin and much more subdued on light skin.

White ink tattoos have become very popular among Blackout tattoo fans, by using the white ink over the top of their completely black saturated tattoos.