Understanding Tattoo Styles - Sin On Skin

At Sin on Skin we believe a true artist should be comfortable and skilled in many styles of tattooing. ALL the pictures of tattoos below have been carried out at Sin on Skin.

Abstract
This is a modern style of art and usually doesn’t have any type of outline. It breaks away from the traditional representation of animals, people, and the world around us.

Fine Line
Fine Line Tattooing is one of the newer styles you’ll find in tattoo shops and has been achievable because of the improvements made with tattoo machines, inks, and needles. Artists today are able to add more detail and special effects to their artwork. Fine line is often used in portrait tattoos.

Haida
Haida tattoos have bold blacks and sharp, defined reds and are a signature hallmark. They are based on the designs common to this North American “First Nations” tribe. All of these tattoos have a design crest and an animal that represents something important and meaningful about the wearer.  We always recommend researching your choice to ensure its meaning is right for you, every symbol/design has a meaning.

Memorial
Memorial tattoos can be images representing a person’s life in some way. It may be a religious image, crosses, banners, praying hands, poems, flowers, or sometimes a portrait. Most want to incorporate items that had meaning or significance to the deceased and or their family. Often this type of tattoo is accompanied by lettering with the person’s name and dates of their birth and their death.

Stonework Style
This style of tattooing is using shades of black and greys, colours can be used as well, to produce the cracked stone-like quality throughout the tattoo. These tattoos tend to be more detailed and can really give a tattoo a very old and rustic feel. Stonework is usually produced with a finer line to really show off every little crack and chip in the tattoo

Portraits
A tattoo artist has to be extremely skilled in his field to be able to convey a person’s likeness onto another person skin. Some are meant to show love, admiration, loss or birth. Portraits are often created using fine line tattoo style. Choose your artist carefully, a photo realistic tattoo takes a high level of skill and talent you won't find an artist to do one at just any studio.  

Surrealist / Horror
This style covers everything from Salvador Dali to Fantasy monsters and incoherent nightmares. Full of symbolic scenes, strange dream-like scenarios, humour (sometimes the humour is gleeful, impish or sometimes it can have a sarcastic or cruel twist). Using bizarre creatures and people to create continuity between the images, some are single images used to shock or catch your attention. It can also be known as "Lowbrow art" or "Pop Surrealism."

Asian / Oriental / Yakuza
Asian themed tattoos frequently use Koi fish, cherry blossoms, Buddha, lotus, dragons, war dogs, samurai’s or geisha’s.  Many of these are used in combination to tell a story as well as create a piece of timeless art. This type of tattoo is usually very detailed. This is basically a tattoo that will cover the whole body. The work is carefully planned out ahead of time before the work on any part of the body begins.

Celtic
These designs are made up of intricate knots. Celtic comes in many forms; knots, crosses spirals, trinity knots, tree of life, and animal forms. This style of art represents the people from Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton folklore.

Religious Tattoos
The link between tattooing in religion goes back to the Egyptians. They would tattoo the dead so that they would have relative information when they passed to the other side. The Christians would tattoo a cross under the hand or the wrist to identify them to be devout Christian and a true believer as opposed to Roman spies.

Tribal Tattoos
This type of work was handed down from multiple cultures including Native American, Micronesia, and Polynesian. In ancient times, they would represent one as an accessory to a certain tribe, also express puberty, a milestone in life or marriage. American Indians form of tribal tattoo was meant to represent culture, ritual beliefs, spirits or nature.  Hawaiian tribes carried tattoos as a form of identification, protection or mourning expressions. Many tribes used tattoos to show bravery. Tribal tattoos are usually black in colour and are composed of solid geometric designs. Can also be done in a "stonework effect" or in colour but black is the most common.

Realistic
Usually represented by portraits or true to life scenes/landscapes that showcase the fine line detail of a photograph or painting.

Cartoon Tattoos
The style everyone remembers from the 90’s with its Tasmanian devil inspired tattoos that too many people had. Now the cartoon inspired tattoo is making its comeback as clients look to relive their childhood.  Hello Kitty, Auto bots, Decepticons, My Little Pony, Strawberry Shortcake, you name it we’ve done it. Bold bright colours, fun and whimsical, as a standalone piece or as part of an entire sleeve.

Polynesian, Samoan, Maori, & Tahitian
Each Polynesian island has its own styles of tattooing making it a truly unique experience. Modern or traditional styles make up this style, using flowers, faces, figures, animals, and abstract shapes. Depending on style it may be bold, black abstract and figurative designs or fine line high detail, single needle outlines, designs that concentrates more on symbolism or overall design. Done by tattoo machine or by wooden sticks, which is a traditional hand tapped tattoo. This style is used by them to express identity, personality, one's society status, hierarchy, and sexual maturity. Polynesian tribes tattoo style symbolized traditions, legends and religious beliefs.

Black and Gray
This is when shading is heavily utilized. Black and grey work is typically used to create some type of 3-D effect without using colour.
Highlights are often added using white. White ink can also be used to smooth out sharp transitions between the different shades.

Grey Wash
This is when the black ink is diluted to lighten up the tint. Usually the black ink is diluted at different degrees to have a wide range of shading densities.

Bio-mechanical
This is a machine like form of art that sometimes combines humans with machines.  If you are familiar with HR Geiger’s artwork then you’ll be familiar with bio-mechanical artwork.

Colour
Colour tattoos can be vivid or subtle depending on the effect the tattoo artist is after.

Old School (Traditional)
Old School tattoos are usually images popular in the 1800's and are also referred to as nautical tattoos. These include mermaids, ships, anchors, pin ups, banners and sparrows.  They consisted of bold, blue-black outlines, usually filled with solid red and green with rare additions of blue, yellow, brown and purple; with little or no shading. Norman Keith Collins, also known as “Sailor Jerry" is one of the most well-known traditional tattoo artists.

New School
The New School (AKA New Skool) tattoo style began in the 1980s and refers to a tattoo style that is bold and bright. It includes contemporary and fantastical designs. Basically combining multiple styles of tattooing into one piece. It's distinct from the old school style in that it contains more elaborate blending and shading gradations with a more extensive colour palette.

Cover Up or Re-working
Using colour and technique to hide an old tattoo with a new tattoo or just having someone re line and re-colour an old tattoo so that it looks as it should.  Many make the mistake of using the wrong cover design or wrong colours to cover – causing the old piece to resurface through the new one.  Make sure you have an experienced artist do this for you.

White Ink Tattoos
White ink leaves you with a tattoo that looks more like a scar or skin discoloration.  Over time it can turn pink, yellow or beige.  It may also completely fade away within the healing phase or months after.  Many tattoo artists will advise their clients to add a pale blue, pale yellow or pale purple to add another pigment to which the white can grab hold.
White ink is great when used in small areas, like edging out a flower, highlight as an accent to the tattoo or to use for reflection points on tattoos; meant to show a representation of reflections.   When used in larger areas, they tend not to hold up well and tend to fade out completely within a year or less depending on how much the tattoo is exposed to sun light.