Types of Tattoos

 

American Traditional

This type of tattoo was made popular by tattooist Norman Collins in the 1930s. He became known as 'Sailor Jerry' due to his sailor inspired tattoos. This style uses bold black lines and the colours used are generally primary colours. Traditional imagery consists of sailor inspired images as well as daggers, skulls and roses. Below is a picture of 'Sailor Jeryy'.

en.wikipedia.org

 

Traditional Japanese (Irezumi)

This traditional Japanese style was popularised by the Japanese criminal underworld. Like American Traditional it is based on bold black lines. Common imagery used in these tattoos are lotus flowers, koi fish and waves.

 

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Realism

This is a style that tries to recreate images as close to what they would look like in real life. This style lacks bold outline but consists of shading and colour contrasts.

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Black and Grey

Black and grey tattoos are very similar to realism tattoos they just don't have any colour. Black ink and watered down black inks are used instead of coloured inks. White ink is also used for highlights.



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 Portraiture

Portraiture is generally done in realism in which a portrait on someone is recreated as a tattoo. A stencil is usually used for this type of tattoo so that is turns out as precise as possible.

Illustrative

Illustrative combines realism and old school tattoos. They have bold outlines with a lot of colour. The aim is to make them look like an illustration rather than a tattoo.

New School

New school is an animated type of tattoo, Its illustrative that is exaggerated. Tattoos done in the style usually have cartoon characters.

Biomechanical

These tattoos are done free hand and move with the flow of the persons body. They usually have a supernatural theme or mechanical theme to them.

Lettering

This is simply a tattoos that involves letters and words.