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As tempting as it is to say tattoos are the new trend, I would have to point out that tattoos are as old as the existence of mankind. Over centuries, men and women have etched symbols, diagrams, and writings on their skins to express their personalities or to provoke constant remembrance of things they hold dear. Others have engraved drawings on themselves purely for aesthetic purposes, to just feel good and confident in and about themselves.
Regardless of the reason, the fact remains that different types of tattoos hold different levels of significance for various people, and have transcended time and evolution to remain relevant even today. I am going to show you five significant types of tattoos and you just might see something you like!
BLACKWORK TATTOO STYLE
Talking about age-long trends, black-work art is one of the oldest and most timeless tattoo styles. Black-work tattoo compasses to a large extent, any design that involves the use of solely bold outlines of black ink. Usually, black-work tattoos make use of intentional un-inked spaces on the skin to create a contrast with the black hue. This creates the amazing effect that the black-work tattoo style aims to achieve.
Blackwork tattoos are very significant because they date back to mankind’s ancestry and are closely related to people’s beliefs, origins, and divine connections, even though evolution and creativity can ascribe more modern meanings to them. This style requires the engraving of graphic art, dark art, and letterings made exclusively with only black ink, on just about any part of the body.
JAPANESE TATTOO STYLE
If you happen to find yourself in Japan and are considering getting a tattoo there, it is only fair you know what you’re getting. Japanese tattoo styles are usually quite attractive because they often make use of lots of bright and contrasting hues, inter-wining to create mesmerizing pieces of body art. Japanese tattoo styles make use of symbols and characters like dragons, samurais, and even masks, that resonate deeply with Japanese origin. Most of the time, the Japanese tattoo style involves a lot of intricate detailing in images like tigers and koi fishes using colors ranging from blue, red, and orange, to yellow, pink, purple, and green. To get the best of Japanese tattoos, large areas on the body are needed to explicitly express the necessary details of a Japanese tattoo and this tattoo style can be displayed on body parts like the forearms, calves, back, neck, and chest.
TRADITIONAL TATTOO STYLE
Life is a sea and you’re the captain of your ship. Feeling sailorly? This tattoo style might just be yours to try. Strongly influenced by sailors and seamen, traditional tattoo styles often include motifs like anchors, ships, swallows, hearts, snakes, daggers, and mermaids, highlighted with a limited spectrum of red, green, black, and yellow colors. These tattoos provoke certain connotations that match with the wearers’ perceptions of themselves and their circumstances. Sailors spent the better parts of their lives traveling and voyaging across seas and sometimes drew hearts to remind themselves of someone they cherished or skulls to intimate themselves with the idea of death as a way of conquering fear. Other times they tattooed anchors to indicate stability and snakes as an expression of new beginnings and rebirth (seeing as snakes do shed their skins). You just might want to sport traditional tattoos or old school tattoos as they are mostly called, if you feel drawn to wanderlust or you’re setting sail figuratively, on a globe-trotting voyage. Aye, Aye Captain!
TRIBAL TATTOO STYLE
Generally, tribal tattoos are as diverse as rituals and cultures are and it is understood that this style of tattoos holds deep and reverent meanings for the people who have them drawn. Often drawn with black bold lines, tribal tattoos started out as means of identification for different groups of people and in some instances, often conferred some level of immunity or status amongst and within different tribes, with each stroke, dot and line carrying its own meaning. Popular tribal tattoos include Sarawak, Polynesian, Hawaiian and Native American Tribal tattoos. Nowadays these tribal tattoos have come to be appreciated by even people outside of the cultural and tribal scope. Nevertheless, if you are looking to get a tribal tattoo, it should be seriously considered and motivated by great personal conviction as to why you would want to get one. Also, it is advisable to tweak it a little according to your preference, so it is more original and not an illegitimate appropriation of someone else’s identity. A number of great places to inscribe tribal tattoos are the calves, fore-arms, back and across either of your breasts.
REALISM TATTOO STYLE
If you’re a lover of realistic paintings, photographs and sci-fi illustrations, it is only fair that you indulge yourself in the realism tattoo style. Realism tattoo style is sometimes interchanged with photorealism and is branched into hyper-realism, micro-realism and surrealism, all of which can be done with either contrasting areas of black and grey tattooing or a wide range of just about any mix of hues to make the tattoos absolutely realistic. Realism tattoo style is quite significant because there are no limits to what can be inked on your body. Anything that can be thought up, no matter how abstract or surreal, can be tattooed by realism tattoo experts and this goes beyond the scope of portraits that you’d want to recreate inclusive of landscapes, animals or paintings. Realism tattoos are an upgrade to Pop Art and have become more infinite over the years, developing to catchy and more mesmerizing artworks.
It doesn’t matter your reason for wanting to get a tattoo, the fact remains that a lot of consideration has to go into what you intend to engrave (or not). Nevertheless, you have amazing categories to pick from and an even wider range of tattoo motifs and images to select from. The good part is you can always customize whatever image or letterings you choose to inscribe on whatever parts of your body, and make it as personal as it can get.
