Tattoo art

Tattoo art

This week I decided to look at some art that comes in a different form. I chose to take a look at tattoos because I think they can be highly underrated pieces of artwork.

The first artist whose work I decided to look at is the New York artist Ruben Barahona
Ruben Barahona ⋆ Villain ArtsMuerte tattoo by Ruben Barahona | Chicano, Návrhy tetování, Tetování

These pieces above portray excellent use of saturation and shading. I stylistically prefer darker tattoos with lots of pigment because the way they wear over the years keeps them looking sharp for a longer time. Tattoos have a tendency to fade and blur over time but with this kind of saturation they will last for a long time. Another reason I like Barahona's artwork so much is that he uses realism. Making a flat image appear on a non-flat surface such as an arm or thigh or wherever always creates a challenge. When designing a realistic tattoo special attention has to be payed attention to making sure that the shape of the body does not distort the image.

Lydia Madrid
Meet Spain's Queen of Lady Heads: Lydia Madrid - Tattoo Ideas ...

Lydia Madrid's work is a lot more stylized and her focus is mostly female faces in black and white. These designs are always particularly inspiring to me because of how simple but striking they are. I love how these designs give off an almost comic book look due to how smooth the shading looks. The line work on these is also very impressive, for example, look at the stray hairs in all of them. These tiny lines are so clean and add so much detail.

Anastasia Anapova
Chicana girl tattoo by Anastasia Agapova | Girl tattoos, Sleeve ...
And lastly the marriage between stylized and realistic tattoos is seen here in this piece by Russian artist Anastasia Anapova. Something that is again great about this piece is the blurred out edges so you wouldn't have to worry about unclean lines or ones that fade with sun damage. I have seen so many of my friends that turn 18 and do very little research on an artist  or shop before going in to get something the artist may not even specialize in. I like tattoos a fair amount but I recognize that there is a definitive difference in quality between different artists and shops. I now know from my own research I prefer large black and white pieces that are very saturated. I would love to design a tattoo and thought this would be a good starting point to keep in mind for the future.

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