Traditional & old school tattoo Styles (American traditional)

Those tattoos are truly old style. Those are the ones sailors and soldiers would get in the 1900s. The design is pretty unmistakable, thanks to its unique way of picturing the object. Characteristic for old school tattoos are bright colours and bold black lines. 

Neo Traditional Tattoo Style 

The Neo Traditional style is inspirited by the old tattoo style, but modified to be lighter. Also, the objects are slightly more life like. This style usually has thinner black lines and more variation of colors and shades. 

Fine Line Tattoo Style 

The fine line tattoo style is very elegant, delicate and aesthetically pleasing. The lines are really fine and the design usually relatively simple and clean. This tattoo style is a commonly used style for people looking to get their first tattoo.

Tribal Tattoo Style 

Tribal tattoos are one of the oldest tattoo styles around since Polynesians, Native Americans and more have been doing them for thousands of years. Tribal tattoos are said to be about 5,000 years old. They usually have thick black lines and meaningful patterns. 

Watercolor tattoo Style

The watercolor Tattoo Style has gained a lot of popularity throughout the last years. They have minimal to no outline and are very delicate and simple with beautiful soft colors. This style of tattooing is more modern than the orders and it’s dated back around 2010. 

Blackwork tattoo style 

Like the name already might have given out, the black work tattoo style consents in all black tattoos with big “all black” areas, the complexity of the tattoo however can still variate. These tattoos are full of shadows and are very dark looking and noticeable. 

Realism tattoo style 

The realism tattoo style is a realistic way of tattooing, as the name might already explain. Usually portraits of people or animals are being drawn with this art style.  

Japanese tattoo style

This specific tattoo style might be known to a lot of people, this art style is hundreds of years old. Those tattoos are known for telling stories or legends and for being very symbolic. Originally these are known for being bright and colourful with some strong black contrast or background underneath.

Trash Polka tattoo style

This is a very easy to recognise tattoo style. It is a collage type of tattoo style, combining realistic object to other object in other styles. This in a beautiful way, chaotic style is usually fund in the colours black and red, though it can still variate depending on individual likings.

Geometric tattoo style 

This tattoo art style is one of the lighter ones since its very clean looking and focuses on clean mostly thin lines and geometric patterns. This art style is perfect for smaller tattoos and can easily be hidden.

Ignorant tattoo style

This tattoo style is a relatively new way of tattooing. It looks more childish or child made and most of the designs have an either funny or completely random meaning.  It mostly consists of only outlines with no particular or complex shape or shadows. 

Anime style tattoo

This Tattoo style has gained a lot of popularity and it’s also pretty new. It is inspired by Animes, comics (Mangas) or other shows. But there is no limit to this style, since you can draw pretty much everything or everyone in anime style, you just need a tattoo artist that’s creative enough.

Abstract Tattoo style 

The abstract style is really modern and like abstract art it could have a meaning that is not represented by real designs.  You can try and give a mysterious twist to your own tattoo trying to design it in an abstract way. 

3D Tattoo style 

3D Tattoos are not really common, the 3D shadow placements is, those should not be confused. 3D tattoos consist in blue and red lines slightly distant from each other, so that if you put on 3D glasses it becomes three dimensional.  The 3D shading on the other hand is shading that is put in a certain position, usually behind the tattoo to make it seem as if it’s elevating from the skin. 

Continuous Line Tattoo style 

The line continuous line style is one of our more elegant styles. The continuous line that ends up forming a design of an object or a person makes everything look very soft and elegant. These kinds of tattoos don’t usually have any shading only outlines.

Sketch tattoo style

The sketch tattoo style is a very rough and not to clean but beautiful looking way of designing tattoos. They are usually drawn in all black but can also be colourful depending on the taste 

Patchwork 

The patchwork tattoo placement style is a combination of many little to medium sized individual tattoos. The Tattoo art style commonly used in patchwork tattoos are old school tattoos or blackwork.

The beautiful thing for this placement type is that you can put more single tattoos with individual meanings so that you don’t have to “waste place” for only one tattoo.

This is perfect for people that are planing to get a lot of Tattoos and like experimenting with new designs and art styles. 

Full limb tattoos 

These Tattoos are bigger designs that usually take half or the whole Limb. Styles that are usually used for this placement style are Trash Polka, Tribal and Japanese tattoo designs. These designs are usually made bigger because more detailed. 

Full Body

It might seem crazy but full body tattoos are not only a consequence of getting individual big tattoos. There are people that actually plan a full body tattoo all at once and get it in multiple sessions throughout weeks or even months. Once you get a full body there is no going back. Usual full Body tattoos are Tribal or Japanese tattoos.

Of course you can end up having a full body even with patchwork tattoos. So still, you should really think about the amount of tattoos you want and whether or not you want to show them off or not.