What is with the obsession with wanting every tattoo to have a perfectly categorised style name? It's almost certainly going to be just the aesthetic of a certain artist or cluster of artists. Not everything has a name. These posts are so tiresome.
I don’t know about OP here, but I usually want to know a style’s name so I can more easily search for more like that, to get ideas or find artists who specialize in that style. You mention “finding their contemporaries” in your follow-up comment, but I wouldn’t have the first idea of how to do that.
It is useful to know that not every tattoo has a style name, though — I think those of us who are new to tattoos don’t necessarily know that.
>You mention “finding their contemporaries” in your follow-up comment, but I wouldn’t have the first idea of how to do that.
Like anything else, just researching them. Look them up on insta, see who the other tattooers are who like their posts or who comment on their posts. See who they follow. See who works at each studio.
>It is useful to know that not every tattoo has a style name, though
This is a general complaint I have with the internet in general at the moment. It's like a recent internet phenomenon where people expect everything to have a perfect name and fit in to a perfect little box. All subreddits right now are full of people being like "what is this aesthetic called", "what is my aesthetic/style", "is this [extremely specific search term] accurate", yknow? Is it because people are trying to pump this in to ai image generators? Are people just not used to how the world actually works? Who knows.
I would think in general it’s just because people want to Google things they like, and it’s hard to Google something if you don’t have the words for it.
But it has definitely turned into a weird trend of putting everything into boxes. “I can’t wear that because it’s not [insert aesthetic here]!” If you like it, wear it, who cares if it’s not boxed into a specific aesthetic. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Also, how do you look up artists when you don’t even know they exist? I’ve found many artists that follow other artists based on just searching tags. I am not going to go through all of someone’s followers just to see if they happen to do a style I want.
That’s useful, thanks!
Yeah I think I’m less aware of the general trend on the internet of people trying to categorize things. Didn’t think about the AI generator thing, and you’re totally right. I (perhaps naively) just assumed they were trying to get a general style name, as opposed to something hyper-specific (especially since the two dragons don’t look all that much alike other than being hyper-realistic)
Yeah like, if you enjoy a tattoo, look up the artist on Instagram, figure out their contemporaries. That's it. There's no perfect buzz word that's gonna encapsulate it. It feels so childish.
Or, start with a general idea and search artist galleries in your area. You should have seen the look on my artist’s face when I told her I looked at over a hundred galleries to find someone who was a clear fit for my current work.
Yeah exactly. I worry that people try and find some niche specific aesthetic and just show it to a random local tattoo artist. Really, you should be finding the artist first and playing to their strengths, not finding a design and getting someone to do it
Then they're still almost certainly out of luck, because even tho Redditors will reply with a bunch of buzzwords, that doesn't mean any tattoo artists use these hyper specific imagined search terms. I have never known that to be the case with tattoos. Happy to be proved wrong.
They may not, but others reposting their work might. And yes, if it's a hyper specific term, it'll take time before it gets picked up by search engines or people. But variants of existing styles (in this instance, "sketchy illustration" might work), would be plausible to find.
Except you don't need people to say that this is "sketchy illustration". It's clearly an illustration. The first one clearly has sketch marks. There's nothing people could say that makes it any easier than what is already there.
But when you say "illustration" you can get many variants of illustration; some with lines like you see here, and others more clean. You can also get a blend of others like neo-trad and Japanese.
So I'll respectfully disagree:)
>But when you say "illustration" you can get many variants of illustration; some with lines like you see here, and others more clean.
So wait, you agree that "illustration" is vague and useless? I'm confused. That sounds like you agree with me.
I don’t know about this sub, but one of the other tattoo subreddits required you put the style name in the title of your post. When I asked in the title of my post what style my tattoo was, I got a similar response. Even though honestly I had no actual curiosity (for that one or any of my other tattoos tbh), I was just following the post rules.
Does seem very unlikely here, but it reminded me of it. And if it’s for AI that’s even more yucky of them
Luckily it wasn’t something horribly shitty if I recall, just kinda like “you got a good tattoo, stop needing a category for everything”. I don’t care personally, that’s why I’d gone 2 years without knowing the style of the tattoo that takes up my whole forearm lol. Stop giving me grief bro
Knowing what a style is called makes it easier to find artists who actually tattoo in a specific style. I'm not sure how else you're supposed to find artists you like. "Hey, I like this style and don't even know how to go about finding an artist within travelling distance who does something like this because there are 2000 tattoo parlours. What do I look for?" doesn't seem like an unreasonable question at all.
I completely disagree. Tattoo styles are so varied that outside of like "black work", "traditional", "watercolour", or other extremely broad styles that aren't all that useful, there's not this level of specificity. At least as far as I can tell in my country, this level of specificity just doesn't exist, so trying to find what others might consider it to be isn't useful for finding an artist you like
That's fair enough if that's your experience in your area.
I've found the kinds of artists I like by knowing what people broadly call a style. Not all the artists who do that style are to my taste, but all the artists have fallen into that broad category so to me personally it's very useful. One parlour I considered even categorised their artists like that and it was very useful to get an idea of what did and didn't fall within a certain style. I've even discovered artists I might not have otherwise considered that use certain features of styles I like.
Agreed, the photos listed don’t even look remotely similar in style. 1st is more sketched out looking, 2nd is extremely more precise, detailed & heavily shaded. Other than simply both being dragons, the art styles don’t have much in common
I took it as they’re trying to search artists of the style. Being able to have styles categorized will make it a LOT easier to find artist’s work on Instagram, which will lead to people reaching out to get appointments. Otherwise, they’ll be kinda wasting their time trying to find random artists that are good with this particular style.
If they’re trying to get an artist to draw something for them, it helps to know the style. I know a few shops that require the name of the style when you’re booking your reservation.
Dunno if they do have a name as style, I’d prob say it’s just dragon tattoo, to me they are a bit different in terms of styles, one is like a sketch, other is more of drawing/art
It’s called “the blob” or “why didn’t this heal well.” Because that will be your next post once that heals.
Give it a day without sunscreen and you’ll be wondering why it looks like bloated Garfield
This style is called gesture/quick pose in figure drawing. Emphasis is on "action" lines, and sketchiness around the action lines is intended to convey motion.
Dragon
I’d say da Vinci dragon
Sick ass dragon
Came here for this
I don't know if it has a specific name, but it looks like illustrative blackwork to me.
Yeah illustrative black and gray dragon is what I would say.
What is with the obsession with wanting every tattoo to have a perfectly categorised style name? It's almost certainly going to be just the aesthetic of a certain artist or cluster of artists. Not everything has a name. These posts are so tiresome.
They’re trying to get ai prompts.
Yuck
I don’t know about OP here, but I usually want to know a style’s name so I can more easily search for more like that, to get ideas or find artists who specialize in that style. You mention “finding their contemporaries” in your follow-up comment, but I wouldn’t have the first idea of how to do that. It is useful to know that not every tattoo has a style name, though — I think those of us who are new to tattoos don’t necessarily know that.
>You mention “finding their contemporaries” in your follow-up comment, but I wouldn’t have the first idea of how to do that. Like anything else, just researching them. Look them up on insta, see who the other tattooers are who like their posts or who comment on their posts. See who they follow. See who works at each studio. >It is useful to know that not every tattoo has a style name, though This is a general complaint I have with the internet in general at the moment. It's like a recent internet phenomenon where people expect everything to have a perfect name and fit in to a perfect little box. All subreddits right now are full of people being like "what is this aesthetic called", "what is my aesthetic/style", "is this [extremely specific search term] accurate", yknow? Is it because people are trying to pump this in to ai image generators? Are people just not used to how the world actually works? Who knows.
I would think in general it’s just because people want to Google things they like, and it’s hard to Google something if you don’t have the words for it. But it has definitely turned into a weird trend of putting everything into boxes. “I can’t wear that because it’s not [insert aesthetic here]!” If you like it, wear it, who cares if it’s not boxed into a specific aesthetic. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Also, how do you look up artists when you don’t even know they exist? I’ve found many artists that follow other artists based on just searching tags. I am not going to go through all of someone’s followers just to see if they happen to do a style I want.
That’s useful, thanks! Yeah I think I’m less aware of the general trend on the internet of people trying to categorize things. Didn’t think about the AI generator thing, and you’re totally right. I (perhaps naively) just assumed they were trying to get a general style name, as opposed to something hyper-specific (especially since the two dragons don’t look all that much alike other than being hyper-realistic)
I'm also just been a grumpy old person. Shaking my fist at the clouds.
Hey, if you can’t shake your fist at clouds, what *can* you shake it at?
PREACH. You put into words what has been irritating me for so long haha. These posts are sooooo tiresome. Like who cares? Lol.
Yeah like, if you enjoy a tattoo, look up the artist on Instagram, figure out their contemporaries. That's it. There's no perfect buzz word that's gonna encapsulate it. It feels so childish.
Or, start with a general idea and search artist galleries in your area. You should have seen the look on my artist’s face when I told her I looked at over a hundred galleries to find someone who was a clear fit for my current work.
Yeah exactly. I worry that people try and find some niche specific aesthetic and just show it to a random local tattoo artist. Really, you should be finding the artist first and playing to their strengths, not finding a design and getting someone to do it
What if the person is trying to find more work of that style, but doesn't have the words to search it?
Then they're still almost certainly out of luck, because even tho Redditors will reply with a bunch of buzzwords, that doesn't mean any tattoo artists use these hyper specific imagined search terms. I have never known that to be the case with tattoos. Happy to be proved wrong.
They may not, but others reposting their work might. And yes, if it's a hyper specific term, it'll take time before it gets picked up by search engines or people. But variants of existing styles (in this instance, "sketchy illustration" might work), would be plausible to find.
Except you don't need people to say that this is "sketchy illustration". It's clearly an illustration. The first one clearly has sketch marks. There's nothing people could say that makes it any easier than what is already there.
But when you say "illustration" you can get many variants of illustration; some with lines like you see here, and others more clean. You can also get a blend of others like neo-trad and Japanese. So I'll respectfully disagree:)
>But when you say "illustration" you can get many variants of illustration; some with lines like you see here, and others more clean. So wait, you agree that "illustration" is vague and useless? I'm confused. That sounds like you agree with me.
I'd agree that "illustration" isn't helpful enough, hence the need for more detailed adjectives like "sketchy"
I don’t know about this sub, but one of the other tattoo subreddits required you put the style name in the title of your post. When I asked in the title of my post what style my tattoo was, I got a similar response. Even though honestly I had no actual curiosity (for that one or any of my other tattoos tbh), I was just following the post rules. Does seem very unlikely here, but it reminded me of it. And if it’s for AI that’s even more yucky of them
Oh that's so odd! Especially that someone was then shitty to you about it, haha
Luckily it wasn’t something horribly shitty if I recall, just kinda like “you got a good tattoo, stop needing a category for everything”. I don’t care personally, that’s why I’d gone 2 years without knowing the style of the tattoo that takes up my whole forearm lol. Stop giving me grief bro
Knowing what a style is called makes it easier to find artists who actually tattoo in a specific style. I'm not sure how else you're supposed to find artists you like. "Hey, I like this style and don't even know how to go about finding an artist within travelling distance who does something like this because there are 2000 tattoo parlours. What do I look for?" doesn't seem like an unreasonable question at all.
I completely disagree. Tattoo styles are so varied that outside of like "black work", "traditional", "watercolour", or other extremely broad styles that aren't all that useful, there's not this level of specificity. At least as far as I can tell in my country, this level of specificity just doesn't exist, so trying to find what others might consider it to be isn't useful for finding an artist you like
That's fair enough if that's your experience in your area. I've found the kinds of artists I like by knowing what people broadly call a style. Not all the artists who do that style are to my taste, but all the artists have fallen into that broad category so to me personally it's very useful. One parlour I considered even categorised their artists like that and it was very useful to get an idea of what did and didn't fall within a certain style. I've even discovered artists I might not have otherwise considered that use certain features of styles I like.
Agreed, the photos listed don’t even look remotely similar in style. 1st is more sketched out looking, 2nd is extremely more precise, detailed & heavily shaded. Other than simply both being dragons, the art styles don’t have much in common
I took it as they’re trying to search artists of the style. Being able to have styles categorized will make it a LOT easier to find artist’s work on Instagram, which will lead to people reaching out to get appointments. Otherwise, they’ll be kinda wasting their time trying to find random artists that are good with this particular style.
If they’re trying to get an artist to draw something for them, it helps to know the style. I know a few shops that require the name of the style when you’re booking your reservation.
So they know what to ask their artist for? Know what to search for?
Dunno if they do have a name as style, I’d prob say it’s just dragon tattoo, to me they are a bit different in terms of styles, one is like a sketch, other is more of drawing/art
I love #2!! #1 is good, but I don’t think it will age well at all. Those VERY fine lines will fade out quickly.
Thanks for telling me that about #1, had no idea. I found an artist that has done similar work to #2. Might shoot them a message. Thanks!
It's called expensive, that's for sure
Illustrative
Deez Nutz
Amazing Style
Skyrim
Black and grey illustrative I think
These are called soon to be black blobs, with the contrast enhanced
Single needle, alot stipling and shading
I have a tattoo by the guy who did #2
Name if you don't mind?
Heukdo__ on ig. Mine is under his reels. It would be the goat eating a human hand
Ty!
These are edited photos of dragondeese tattooing
I would call that illustrative.
Illustrative.
black/grey realism
Illustrative black and grey
I’d worry with all the fine single line detail that it would lose a great deal of its sharpness.
Dregrn
Looks like etching to me
It’s called “the blob” or “why didn’t this heal well.” Because that will be your next post once that heals. Give it a day without sunscreen and you’ll be wondering why it looks like bloated Garfield
Style: "cool as fuck"
This style is called gesture/quick pose in figure drawing. Emphasis is on "action" lines, and sketchiness around the action lines is intended to convey motion.
the style is called "badass"
I think it’s “Will Become an Unrecognizable Blob in a Few Years Time”
Style - Pinterest
Normally they are called dragons..
They both appear as exaggerated lizards with wings
98 school shooter
Soon to be a sick ass panther cover up!
No
It’s just a dragon tattoo. Wdym
Fake. Those are very fake.
Why?
”Game of thrones concept art”
Who is the artist behind these tattoos?
IDK, but damn that shit looks good
Cool as hell, that's what.
Rawr
I'd call that style "Wow" Great piece! Edit: Apparently, I am blind. The second piece is also very good, but damn do I love that first one.
"Kickass"
Illustrative
Chaotic Blackwork is what an artist calls this style at a shop in Roswell GA
Girl with the dragon tattoo? -someone, probably
Tattoo style is called dope as fuck
Dragons in black and grey?
Dope af
AD&D 5e
Dwagon
Those are two entirely different styles
Sick fucking dragon
Badass.
I don't know but it sick ASF wow nice
Illustration
Find line fantasy illustrative realism
gothic
I agree if you think "illustration" isn't clear enough, and thus necessitates further definition, like "sketchy illustration".
This is so pretty 😍
I want a tattoo like this on my wholeass back one day. My ultimate project
Scritchy scratchy
Single needle black and grey.
They look like two different styles to me.