Many people that are just beginning to learn about tattoos don’t understand the difference between (American) Traditional tattoos and Neo Traditional tattoos. It is in our best interest as pro FX Tattoo artists to know these things. Also, it’s how the categories on our website are set up. If you know your tattoo styles, it’s much easier to understand how to mix and match our designs in the various collections by style.
Basically, the difference between a Traditional Tattoo and a Neo Traditional one is in the imagery, subject matter and the color palette used to color it. We have written a full article about this here, but to briefly explain, Traditional tattoos where collected by soldiers (mostly sailors) right around and after World War 2. The imagery was usually patriotic or symbolic like flags, nautical stars, pinups, black cats, pigs, roosters, roses and anchors. The colors were muted (blue, brown, green, yellow, and red) and the lines were usually bold with little shading.
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Neo Traditional tattoos are similar in that they pay homage to the Traditional tattoo style with similar bold lines, minimal shading, and saturated colors. The subjects are often throwbacks of the traditional subjects like this design, or totally modern and off the wall – imagine Darth Vader with a caption the reads “No Hope”, made in a Traditional style. They are simply rendered similarly. Besides that, for Neo Traditional tattoos the stylistic sky is the limit. Not so with Traditional tattoos. They stay strictly within the “Classic” tattoo format.
Knowledge about tattoos is key and will empower your imagination, allowing for a free flow of creativity. The motifs
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depicted in the Neo Traditional and Traditional collections from FTS, are created from original flash that we created as real tattoos and offer the makeup artist the ultimate tools to work without constraint. Laying authentic looking tattoo lines is the first step to creating a realistic FX tattoo. The ergonomically shaped stencil allows for the ability to lay over the contour of the body- just like the old time acetate tattoo stencils that were invented in the 19940s. Our cutting edge stencils were designed by our artist and FTS Founder Gwen Davis, to leave all the delicate details and curves in the lines as if rendered by a master tattoo artist.
To learn more about tattoos, tattoo history and lore, be sure check out this book- It’s like a text book for FX tattoo artists!
