Bold & Bright Ink: 5 Popular Styles for Colored Tattoos
When choosing a tattoo, especially one featuring bright and bold colors, it’s essential to consider a few factors that might make the process a bit easier. Exploring the meaning and symbolism behind why you want a tattoo is where most people start. What follows is deciding on what colors or combination of colors works best with your skin tone and the area you are looking to get tattooed. Lastly, making sure a skilled artist has the quality materials to bring your exact vision to life.
Knowing the initial steps to get a tattooed is a must and it allows you focus more on deciding which styles best express your visions. With so many styles to choose from and a wide variety of colors to use it can be a lengthy process, that’s why we have curated a list of the 5 most popular styles for bright and bold ink.
1) American Traditional
Not only is American traditional tattoos the most popular black and white tattoo style it is also the most popular for color pieces as well. The common colors used for American traditional tattoos are red, yellow, green, and blue. The usage of color for these tattoos is simplistic and bold, making it a great choice for longevity and vibrancy. American Traditional tattoos were historically sailor tattoos and were made to be easily identifiable; They work best with simple designs like anchors, hearts, roses, animals, skulls, and pin-up girls.
2) Neo Traditional
Among the most popular tattoo styles in general, neo traditional is a solid choice for pieces with similar but a wider spectrum of colors than American traditional. The colors used for these tattoos are vibrant tones of deep red, vibrant blue, earthy greens, and warm yellows and oranges, as well as softer pastel colors like pink, lavender, and mint green. While still utilizing the bold outlines characteristic of the classic traditional American tattoo, neo-traditional often incorporates more intricate linework, shading, and detail. This style is best for various animals, floral motifs, fantasy themes, nautical, and custom pieces
3) Illustrative
For dynamic designs like our “Alien Attack” piece, an illustrative tattoo will certainly work best. Illustrative tattoos are often a very common choice for colorful tattoos, mainly due to the intricate linework, fine details, and composition style that’s reminiscent of art found illustration books and graphic novels. No color is off limits when designing an illustrative tattoo, but skillfully combining the right hues can truly make your visions come to life. This tattoo style is great for custom portraits of people and animals, fantasy characters, flowers, and whimsical ideas.
4) Realism
If you are seeking a tattoo that depicts exactly what is shown in a meaningful photo for yours, realism is the right option. Realism is a tattooing style done with percisce linework and advanced shading techniques to make the most accurate depiction of a real-life subject. The usage of neutral hues, skin tones, earth tones, vibrant accents, and subtle colors for blending capture all aspects of the subject creating a stunningly accurate tattoo. This realistic tattooing style is made for meaningful portraits of family, friends, and pets, landscapes, still life objects ( fruits, flowers, skulls), and scenes from your favorite movie, show, sports events.
5) Surrealism
The captivating designs of surrealism tattoos blend reality with imagination. This style was inspired by the surrealism artistic movement formed in the early 20th century and utilizes the same principles of dreamlike imagery to create designs that invoke wonder and mystery. Surrealism tattoos use bold and bright hues, soft tones, unconventional color combinations for a stark contrast, and neon or fluorescent colors for fusurtistic and surreal elements. This is a great style for surreal portraits, dreamscapes, metamorphasyzing figures, absurd/ humours characters, psychedelic and comic images, dystopian and apocalyptic creatures and the list goes on.
