Glossary
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Traditional (Old School)
Traditional, also called American Traditional or old school, is a classic style with thick outlines, a limited colour palette and iconic subjects such as roses, anchors and daggers. It stems from the early twentieth-century flash tradition.
Neo-Traditional
Neo-traditional takes the foundations of traditional (defined outlines, iconic subjects) and extends them with a richer palette, gradients and more decorative detail. The boundaries with other illustrative styles are not sharp.
New School
New school is a style born in the 1980s-90s, inspired by comics, cartoons and graffiti, with exaggerated proportions, highly saturated colours and bold outlines.
Realism
Realism is the style that reproduces subjects with a high degree of visual fidelity through gradients, contrast and detail. It divides into black-and-grey and colour realism, with subjects ranging from portraits to nature.
Black and Grey
Black and grey uses only black and shades of grey, generally obtained by diluting black, with no colours. It is widely used in realism, portraits and religious or urban subjects, and has its origin in Chicano culture.
Color Realism
Colour realism reproduces subjects realistically using a wide range of colours, with soft tonal transitions and attention to light and shadow. It requires a good variety of pigments and blendable shades.
Portrait
A portrait is a tattoo that reproduces a person's face, real or depicted in an artwork. It is usually done in a realistic style, in black and grey or colour, though illustrative interpretations also exist.
Fine Line
Fine line is a style based on thin, precise lines, often with little or no shading, used for delicate, botanical or symbolic subjects. It requires needles with a gauge and configuration suited to thin lines.
Micro Realism
Micro realism brings realism to a very small format, with minute detail, thin lines and delicate gradients. The term is recent and has no precise boundaries with fine line.
Minimalist
Minimalist reduces the subject to a few essential elements: simple lines, clean shapes, little detail and often a single colour, usually black. The term describes an approach rather than a technique.
Linework
Linework is an approach in which the design is built mostly from lines, with few or no gradients and fills. It can be fine, thick, geometric or illustrative.
Illustrative
The illustrative style brings the language of illustration onto the skin: a recognisable stroke, a drawn composition, sometimes with textures and hatching. It includes very different approaches, from clean to sketch-like.