Tattoo Galleries

When you get a tattoo, you are usually completely at the mercy of your tattooist's artistic style. Every tattoo artist has an individual style they like to do. If you ask for a specific type of drawing, such as a dragon, a tree, or whatever else, they will render it as true to your description as possible, but they will do it in a unique and personal style. That is why, if you're partial about your design and want to get just the right look, it can be helpful to look at a lot of tattoo galleries.

You see, the majority of people who come in to get tattoos don't have really specific requests. They have a general idea for a design they want on their body, but they don't specify the way the lines should be drawn. That is why tattooists have to develop their own styles. They're required to make all those sorts of decisions, down to the shading and details of the tattoo. With tattoo galleries, however, you can find the design of your choice. You can look for exactly the style you like and then have an artist do that style for you. You can even compare your design to an artist's own tattoo gallery to see if it is compatible. For example, if you want a simple tattoo done with clean, elegant lines, you probably don't want to go to a tattoo artist who uses complex shading and intricate style.

Of course you shouldn't feel limited by what you can find in tattoo galleries. Most people who do tattooing are qualified, original artists who can do pretty much anything they want. If there's a piece of fantasy art, for example, or a cartoon image that you would like to have on your body, you can probably have them do it. I even have met people who have combined multiple cartoons done in multiple styles into one single tattoo, and according to many tattoo artists, this approach is not unusual.

I have a friend who designed his own tattoos, and he also has collected hundreds of pictures of designs. I visited him the other day and took a look through his tattoo galleries, and was surprised by the variety I saw. It seems that, for every art form out there, there's a tattoo artist willing to come up with a convincing imitation. I saw tattoo galleries in manga style, galleys that mimicked old pencil drawings from children's books, and of course lots of sailor Jerry stuff and other classic tattoo designs. I saw things that I didn't even know how to categorize and some things that were so new that there probably were not names for them. It was inspiring to see so much artistry.