Many of our visitors want to get certain kinds of age-old symbols or characters imprinted on their skin.
This type of tattoo art is as old as time itself. Some of these symbols are among the fundamental representations of what people have used for centuries to describe the world around them.
Some people get Eastern symbolism, some get Western symbolism, and others get more obscure. Some people get characters of particular alphabets, and some get those recognizable symbols associated with a world religion or spirituality.
Some common designs are the five-pointed star, the half-moon, the shield of David, the sun, the eye of Horus, and the triangle. So are each of the 12 zodiac signs that people use to represent the eras of their birth!
So let's talk briefly about how we deliver this fine art to our clients…
Superimposition
One way to orient symbols in a tattoo design is to superimpose them within a greater design. You may see, for example, one or more of these symbols sitting in a shaded portion with a circular or rectangular edge or border. That's the kind of design style that some of our artists call superimposition, and they’re good at layering and shading in a way that facilitates this.
Encapsulation
Ultimately, you can have one or more symbols inside a given container. You'll see some of this in our gallery, where people have chosen to have smaller designs contained within a larger one on a particular area of the skin.
Adjacent Tattoo Work
This is a different kind of integration where you're presenting more than one bit of a tattoo, either in a line or in some other adjacent pattern. You might see somebody getting a larger tattoo near the waistline, with smaller ones moving in a certain direction from there, or you might see designs moving up or down the arm or leg. It may or may not be a “sleeve,” per se. That’s a fine distinction but one that makes sense for some designs.
Going Solo
This is one of the most popular ways to integrate a new tattoo symbol on the skin.
Many people like to pop in a new piece of tattoo art in a brand-new space, where it can be shown off by itself. This is where you start to get to the ‘tattooed man’ idea popularized by Ray Bradbury's fiction and people with enormous sleeves all over their limbs or elsewhere.
Over time, you get more and more of these tattoos, and more of your body is inked.
Some people enjoy this and return to us for consistent quality and attention to detail.
Read the rest of the blog to learn more about how we treat tattooing as fine art. We are among the best in the Tucson area and ready to put our equipment to work for you.