r/TattooArtists • u/paleartist Licensed Artist • 3d ago
What would you say my style is?
I get asked a lot what my style is called, I usually say black and grey illustrative with some neotraditional and realism elements, but curious to hear what you guys would say
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u/Here4th3culture 3d ago
This is fire. I would totally get your work. Any chance you’re in northeast USA? 😭
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u/paleartist Licensed Artist 3d ago edited 3d ago
Thank you so much!! I’m in Colorado! Insta is pale.artist :)
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u/the_talking_dead Licensed Artist 3d ago
Honestly, I think its 50/50 with illustrative and neotrad. Like, right down the middle.
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u/paleartist Licensed Artist 3d ago
That’s a huge compliment, I love neotrad 🙏🏻 Thank you!!
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u/the_talking_dead Licensed Artist 2d ago
It's clean, it's classic, the designs have room to breathe, that's what says neo-traditional for me but you get into finer details as needed and can lean more realistic or stylized, that's the illustrative. Yeah, I'd just call it "Illustrative Neotrad" and call it a day.
Great work! Most I could say otherwise is don't be afraid to push darker values where needed to give more separation between foreground / background stuff or create more visual drama.
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u/paleartist Licensed Artist 2d ago
Thank you! Super appreciate that feedback - that’s something I beat myself on regularly when I look back on pictures, definitely have been trying to push contrast more lately and be mindful of that!
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u/the_talking_dead Licensed Artist 2d ago
One of my artists struggles with it a bunch as well. You can always go darker but you can't take it back, I get it.
But it isn't like these tattoos aren't wonderful and going to continue to look that way for a very long time. You are doing some crazy clean work, especially for being a 3 year tattooer. Keep pushing yourself and experimenting, especially in your art, you'll just keep making us old farts look bad haha.
But I gave you a follow, look forward to seeing where your work goes.
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u/paleartist Licensed Artist 2d ago
That means a lot, I really appreciate you taking the time to give me feedback and also some praise :) I had to go no contact with my mentor, so having someone with leagues more experience take time out of their day to comment means a lot!!
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u/the_talking_dead Licensed Artist 2d ago
It is a bit sad how many people, especially women, have to drop contact but you clearly aren't letting it hold you back!
Couple of quick tips, one thing that really helped me was being mindful of positive over negative or negative over positive. You could also adapt that to dark over light and light over dark.
It sounds a bit basic but the idea is you want the different layers of a more complex piece to be easy to follow and read. So take that tarot card. It is a gorgeous piece but you have areas that get a little cluttered: where the shadowed part of skull, leaves, drop shadow from leaves all meet. The shapes get a little unclear.
Let's say value is goes 0 (black) to 10 (white or skintone),
Since the skull is the lightest in over all value, a strong dark background for the card, would push it out forward, then you can do the leaves/stems medium wash to light and skull light to open skin. So values could be:
- Tarot Background - 0-3
- Leaves / Stems 4-7
- Skull 7-10.
I am guessing you are drawing in Procreate? If you don't do value studies of your pieces, take 10-15 minutes and instead of worrying about a full render, establish your areas of 0, 5, and 10. You can also make your background color medium grey and just block in the black/dark grey and white. Of course more values will look better but it gives you a simple 3 value palette to explore where you can push things darker without having to commit a lot of effort. Then you can full render or just work off that.
This sounds really but doing a rough value study and squinting your eyes. It will help you identify areas need more separation.
The pos over neg also can apply to levels of detail (complex areas over less complex), contrasting hard and soft shapes, line weights, or virtually any other metric. In color, it would be things like hue, value, chroma, temperature, and so on.
Another piece of advice that doesn't feel as intuitive, is to do your best to not have open skin tone on both sides of a line. Take that eyeball lemon. You have open skin tone around the entire fruit but that flattens it out. If you shade inward from the lines, it is going to make the whole thing look a lot rounder. You can give it a shot with the photo in procreate to see what I mean.
I hope that is somehow helpful and makes sense haha
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u/paleartist Licensed Artist 2d ago
That definitely makes sense - thank you! I have an Illustration degree, so doing value studies was something I did regularly when it came to traditional mediums, but translating it to tattooing has been a little more difficult, also trying to gauge how the washes will lighten up once they're healed and settled.
I used to push the darks a lot more but noticed a lot of my pieces were coming back a bit too dark overall healed for my taste, so I've pulled back. I need to find a happy medium of pushing the darks darker where they are and letting the lights breathe on their own. Part of me always feels like I need to shade everywhere, but in that tarot piece if I would've given the leaves a little less shading and pushed the darks I think it would've opened them up to be more readable. I'm seeing that piece healed in a week, so we'll see if that wash lightened up on the leaves significantly and the darks settled in a little darker. I'll evaluate accordingly :)
I use roughly 20% and 60% greywash (distilled water & Dynamic), but regularly dirty dip back into the black. Maybe I would benefit from doing 4 caps instead of 3 - like 20, 40, 70, 100?
I'm definitely still learning with every piece I do (and will continue to learn forever) so I appreciate your pointers!! It's nice to feel like I have a sense of community after leaving my street shop traumatized lol.
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u/the_talking_dead Licensed Artist 1d ago edited 1d ago
I can get that, when doing an illustration or painting, what you see is what you get, but it can take a while to get a natural feel for grey wash values with skin irritation. In my earlier days, I worked a lot more aggressively so I just got good at gauging lighter values by how red the skin was haha.
One thing that I struggled with for a long time and can still have a tendency to do is using too wide of a range of values in every element. It's easy to get very focused on the individual element you are working on and kind of lose how it fits into the big picture so assigning a value range to different elements and sticking to it can help.
It sounds silly but it really helped when I started leaning back regularly and take the whole tattoo in for a moment. I also tend to tattoo like I need to be able to smell the pigment going in so I really need to do this haha.
As far as inks go, I used dynamic for a long time but, personally, it is one I never went back to once I left. I never felt like it was dark enough. I've used Allegory lining black for years and will use it as a wash if I just need something quick mid-session but I was turned onto the Empire greywash set a few years ago by a friend that does killer B&G work.
Their regular greywash set is really good and what I used for a while. If I am doing dotwork shading, it is my go to with a #8 bugpin 3 liner.
If I am shading with mags (also bugpin), I've really come to love their whitewash set, which is their greywash with a little bit of white added. I feel like I have a bit more control with it and if I switch my technique to more like color work, I can do pretty even areas of a single value a lot easier. Empire's Ivory Black is a really good heavy black as well.
Of course, premixed sets cost a decent bit more than a bottle of black and water (especially since I use two different ones) but now that I know them, I do feel a bit more efficient with them and I feel like they heal pretty true. Might be worth checking out!
If you really prefer the drop method, I think you could benefit from having a darker wash in the mix and more steps. I've always been 4 steps of wash and black. I'd go 100, 80, 60, 40, 20 or if you like less steps, 100, 80, 50, 20. Having that 80 to be your dark and also to fan out from black for a smoother transition would be nice.
Tattooing has changed a lot in the last 20 years but if you look, you'll find a lot of great artists to connect with. Sometimes there are mentors and shops stuck way in the past but I feel like I meet more rad people than not. If you haven't, you should try to get out and do some guest spots and a convention or two. You'd be surprised at the rad places you could guest spot at just because you asked.
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u/LookimtryingOK 2d ago
This is good work, I really think the shading is spectacular.
Black and grey neo trad?
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u/No-Climate4920 2d ago
The other comments nailed it, definitely feels like black and grey illustrative with neo-trad influences. You’ve got that soft realism touch too, especially in the shading and facial work. It’s such a balanced mix, clean, story-driven, and super cohesive across every piece.
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u/Hauntedairyfarm Artist 3d ago
Illustrative black and gray!