By now there are thousands of tattoo styles and artists create new ones every day. Many of these designs stem from historically popular tattoo styles, many of which have been around for decades, sometimes even centuries.
Here we’ve collected classic and different tattoo styles that you should definitely know before you get into tattoo design.
If you’re a beginner tattoo artist and looking for the perfect tattoo style, you may not know the exact term for what you’re looking for, but chances are you already have one of these styles in mind.
If it’s hard to figure out what your perfect tattooing style should be, we hope the styles shown below will help you narrow it down further.
American traditional tattoo
This is the type of tattoo you probably think of first, as it’s one of the most popular tattoos styles; an old-school style characterised by bold outlines, a small colour palette, and similar motifs. They are closely linked to maritime symbolism and images of pin-up girls, wild predators or a combination of hearts, roses and daggers.
Blackwork Tattoo Style
Generally, tattoos are called Blackwork if the artist has used only black ink. This can result in a wide variety of designs, which in turn are stylistically very diverse. This is why you can find almost anything under Blackwork, from ornaments and geometric designs to very finely detailed illustrations.
Neo-traditional tattoo
Neo-traditional is a kind of new edition or further development of the traditional tattoo style. Neo-traditional tattoos are characterised by clear lines and rich colours. Unlike traditional tattoos, the colour palette in Neo-traditional is very broad.
Realism or Realistic Tattoo Style
Realism is a tattoo style in which the tattoo should be as close as possible to reality. In this type of tattoo, a photo is usually reproduced faithfully and three-dimensionally on the skin. The tattoo motifs can be in colour or black and grey – more or less like a colour photo or a black and white photograph.
Traditional Tattoo Style
Traditional tattoos are, as the name suggests, deeply rooted in the history of tattooing. Big names in the tattoo scene such as Sailor Jerry, Lyle Tuttle or Ed Hardy also belong to the Traditional or Old School style. Furthermore, these traditional tattoos are particularly rooted in seafaring, which is why they are often called “Sailor Tattoos”.
Tribal Tattoo Style
Tribals are usually silhouette-like symbols or ornaments that are almost always tattooed in black.
There is evidence that both body painting and tattooing were practised by the prehistoric Indians, the Vikings or in Asia and Africa. Tribal motifs, however, originated in the Polynesian region in the form we tattoo today.
New School Tattoo Style
New School established itself as a tattoo style in the early 70s and gained popularity in the 80s and 90s. Although you can still recognise old school influences in this style, the differences are enormous.
Sketchy tattoos
Sketchy is the name given to tattoos that resemble a typical pencil sketch. Lines can also be imperfect and unfinished or not coincide exactly. A sketchy motif can still contain orientation lines as a stylistic device, for example, or be hatched in some areas. In addition, regular colour areas or thick outlines are rather unusual for this style.