Enhancing your craft and refining your stylistic approach is key for tattoo artists. Learning different tattoo techniques will help you find your unique style. Tattooing is considered an art, and many people get tattoos as a means of expressing their beliefs, heritage, or emotions.

As a tattoo artist, you’re helping individuals bring their artistic expression to life, which is why it’s crucial to be knowledgeable about various tattoo techniques and styles. Learning these basics will help you understand what your clients want and guide them towards tattoo styles that suit them well.

This can also impact how you define your own tattoo style. For guidance on different types of tattoos and tattooing techniques that can help you find your footing, read about:

Traditional Tattoos:
Known for their bold lines and bright colors. They involve iconic designs like anchors, snakes, roses, skulls, and feminine faces, looking particularly great on arms, forearms, and thighs. When creating traditional American tattoos, use thick and prominent lines and stick to a limited, old-school color palette—red, yellow, green, and black.

Realism Tattoos:
The imagery in realistic tattoos looks just like they do in real life. As an artist, you will be recreating real images from nature and other life pictures on your client’s skin. Common images in realistic tattoos include portraits, sculptures, animals, plants, or skulls. Avoid hard lines when recreating realistic tattoos. If doing a portrait tattoo, using RM or CM needles is advised for softer shading and minimal skin trauma.

Watercolor Tattoos:
Watercolor tattoos are beautiful renditions of color play that use skin as a canvas. Although they are aesthetically pleasing, execution can be quite difficult. To create watercolor tattoo styles, you’ll need to practice softer lines and shading, using techniques like:

  • Color bleeds
  • Spritzing
  • Drips
  • Layering

Tribal Tattoos:
Tribal tattoos were used to mark an individual as part of a certain tribe or family. Contemporary tribal designs are inspired by ancient traditions and are characterized by large areas of solid black ink and are designed to follow the body’s musculature.
Common images typically include designs like triangles, shadowed triangles, sea turtles, geckos, and more. When recreating tribal tattoos, try modifying the design to fit your client’s needs more closely without copying someone else’s work or identity.

New School Tattoos:
With its dynamic aesthetic that emerged from popular culture in the late '80s and early '90s, New School tattooing exaggerates features to create a cartoonish appearance. Aim for a 3D “graffiti” effect and use vibrant colors when recreating a New School tattoo for your client.

Neo-Traditional Tattoos:
Neo Traditional tattoos are considered a modern iteration of traditional tattoos, often influenced by Art Nouveau and Art Deco aesthetics. While still technically precise and two-dimensional, this style uses much finer gradients, different line weights, more complex details, and additional colors.

Script/Lettering Tattoos:
One of the most common styles for tattoo artists is script tattooing. Use longer taper needles for clean lines in script tattoos, choose an appropriate font, ensure good spacing for clarity, triple-check spelling, and use “loose needle” techniques for precision.

Innovative Tattoo Techniques:
If you’re aiming to become a pro at tattooing, mastering various tattoo techniques is the best way to complete your artwork. Here are additional techniques you could learn:

  • Linework: Essential for creating boundaries in or around a design, making tattoos more legible.
  • Color Packing: Involves densely saturating color into the skin, techniques include circular motions, pressing in pigment, and peppering.
  • Layering Colors: Mixing colors in the skin to achieve a gradient effect, ensuring the colors are smoothly overlapping.
  • Shading: Draws the eye and adds depth to the imagery, making designs appear more three-dimensional.

To learn these tattooing techniques and more, consider seeking out the best tattoo academy in Canada. They offer a wide range of innovative tattoo techniques to help you complete your artwork, so reach out to them to get started.