Tattoo styles
Twenty styles, and the difference between them stated plainly. Every piece shown was classified into its style and then checked by a person — so what you see is what the word means, not what a search engine thinks it means.
Linework
Thin, even lines. Nothing filled, nothing shaded.
6,659 pieces
Realism
Photographic depth, no outline.
5,787 pieces
Sketch
Deliberately unfinished — construction lines left in.
4,709 pieces
Ornamental
Pattern, symmetry, and shapes that follow the body.
3,538 pieces
Traditional
Bold outlines, a flat palette, and motifs that have earned their place.
2,516 pieces
Engraving
Etching and woodcut: tone made of hatched line.
2,193 pieces
Blackwork
Solid black as the subject, not the outline.
1,662 pieces
Japanese
Irezumi — subject, background and body read as one composition.
1,561 pieces
Neo-traditional
Traditional's backbone with a deeper palette and real dimension.
1,291 pieces
Watercolour
Washes, bleeds and splatter, with little or no containing line.
1,125 pieces
Lettering
The letterform is the tattoo.
1,109 pieces
Dotwork
Tone built from stippling rather than solid fill.
828 pieces
Biomechanical
Machinery under the skin, torn open to show it.
498 pieces
Anime
Cel-shaded characters straight out of the frame.
400 pieces
New school
Cartoon and comic work — exaggerated, saturated, in motion.
206 pieces
Trash polka
Black and red, photographic fragments against graphic chaos.
179 pieces
Microrealism
Realism at a scale you can cover with a thumb.
87 pieces
Cyber sigilism
Sharp, spined, biomechanical-adjacent glyphs.
74 pieces
Chicano
Fine black-and-grey, soft gradients, and a distinct iconography.
21 pieces
Ignorant
Crude on purpose — naive line, no polish.
13 pieces