New School Tattoos

New School tattooing wasn’t developed. It hit the tattoo world in the late 1980s like a brick, kicking American Traditional tattoo in the teeth. The tattoos of Marcus Pacheco, Jesse Smith, and Joe Capobianco featured bright, bold neon colors, distorted figures with cartoon-esque proportions that borrowed heavily from graffiti, comic books, and hip hop culture. Although New School tattooing can be funny, doing it well takes a serious tattoo artist.

Think of something that looks as much like graffiti as it does a tattoo. Something ridiculously bold and funny. That's New School. This article will tell you everything you need to know about New School tattoo styles and what to expect from the artwork, what parts of your body can best handle New School tattoos, and how long your New School tattoo will last before you need to get a new one.

What Defines a New School Tattoo

Exaggeration is all there is to it. The outlines are thick and assertive, usually more so than a traditional piece of art, so you can take a look at a drawing across a room and have it grab your attention. It's very colorful, but not naturalistic; we're talking about bright blues, hot pinks, electric greens, dark purples, with gradients so you have this three-dimensional kind of airbrushing feel. It also has weird proportions, with oversized heads, bulging eyes, large breasts, curvy waists, and exaggerated body movements and poses.

Forget realism. New School is essentially cartoon-based, drawing inspiration from graffiti lettering, skateboard designs of the 90s and underground comix art. Bold blacks are used to counterbalance vivid areas of colour wash, and there is never any free space: the whole image is crammed with details and decorative elements. As it is a very personal style, each artist has a distinct look that distinguishes it from the other.

Popular New School Tattoo Subjects

Any piece of merchandise that possesses personality. The most common motif is the “animal,” grinning sharks, owl with big eyes, snarling wolves, playful foxes are all portrayed as having human facial expressions and colors not seen in the real world. Pop-culture characters from video games, cartoons or anime are a perfect fit, as are unique character designs that could easily be drawn in comic books. Bones, dice, playing cards and various forms of gambling are also common, and they have all become the subject of countless reinventions. Skulls wearing headphones. The Sugar Skulls are a popular variation. Whatever the theme, you can find it here.

Even food isn’t left out; think of ice cream cones dripping with expressive faces, coffee cups flinging gang signs like they’re at a street corner showdown, or pizzas that somehow have their own personality. You’ll find floral and fungal subjects rendered in a riotous psychedelic spectrum that’s sure to leave any botanist tearing up pages of their field guide. The common denominator that runs throughout every piece is personality, humor, sentiment. The kind of artwork that can make someone chuckle from ten paces away is considered New School.

Best Placements for New School Tattoos

New School needs space. The thick lines and high saturation of this style can look cramped, which is why it works best with a larger surface. The arm’s cylindrical form serves as the ideal surface for these character tattoos, providing enough surface for the style’s intricate details. This style also works great on full sleeves, which let the artist stitch together several characters or elements to build a larger picture.

So too do thighs and calves offer plenty of room, particularly when working with individual characters or complex scenes. The chest can handle symmetry or expansive landscapes. Can you go smaller? Yes, individual character heads, a stylised animal, a small symbol to be put on the forearm or shoulder, but the detail gets simplified fast. Avoid behind the ear, fingers and the like, or the tiny spots on the wrists, unless you are keeping it very minimal. Cramming New School into a postage stamp kills everything that makes the style fun.

How New School Tattoos Age and Hold Up

Fortunately, the heavy black lines aren’t just a stylistic flourish to frame the images; they also act as barriers that stop the colors from bleeding into each other over the years, a method employed in Traditional tattoos. Well-colored fills will stand up much better to the aging process than washes found in watercolor tattoos, or fine work in particular-line. When done correctly, you can still see the full design from ten years on with its New School tattoo, but the piece retains its power.

Here’s the catch: Light hues fade faster than darker ones. The brighter shades, yellows, light greens, and pastels, will soften before deep blues, reds, and blacks even blink. No matter the design, sun is the main culprit of fading and color degradation. Use SPF 50+ or higher after your ink fully heals to slow down the process as much as possible, and keep your tattoos out of the sun as much as you can. To prevent fading, I recommend refreshing a tattoo’s color within every 8 to 12 years if it’s placed on a body part that tends to receive regular sun exposure, like the forearms and shins. It’s the same with any machine or appliance; just keep up with a bit of regular maintenance on a tattoo that means something to you!

Choosing the Right New School Tattoo Artist

New School, which is a specific, fairly demanding art style, isn’t a type of tattoo I’d trust to a generalist, as the smooth blending of those vibrant colors is difficult to pull off consistently. As you browse portfolios, you want to look for strong, sharp black lines that don’t wobble or blow out, color transitions that are seamless, and a distinct art style. Finally, always look at healed photos. Fresh New School is flashy; healing shows how well it’s truly done.

Search for New School experts. Hashtags on Instagram such as #newschooltattoo, #newschoolart, and #cartoonrealism can easily locate them. Conventions are a great chance to meet artists in person and look at their work first hand: it is impossible to get a true idea of someone's work from a photo alone. New School experts can charge from €150 up to €200 an hour: it is worth it to spend that extra money on them because they have such unique skills. Book in an appointment with 2 to 3 of the best New School artists and come prepared with reference images that show the vibe and the colour palette you want to go for, and try to leave enough creative room for the artist too: the best New School art is when they have more creative freedom.