Despite its name, the New School style tattoo in the art of tattooing appeared almost forty years ago. In the eighties, when the rave culture, with its acid-bright colors, aggressive light music and the religion of conspicuousness, actually seized the minds of young people (and creative youth as well) in the developed states of the USA, something like this could not but appear. The younger generation needed a tattoo not as a single symbol, but as a story and a subject bright, cartoonish and on the verge of insanity. However, it is worth saying more about this.
Versions of appearance
In fact, there is more than one version of the appearance of this style. According to the first of them such tattoos really first appeared in California, when young and being in search of development of their creativity artists, tattoo-masters, began to search for new forms, new meanings, began to think about the unrealized possibilities of their equipment, about the possibility of introducing a new color palette.
It is considered that it happened in the 70th, but it is necessary to understand that often the origin of a new style is not a year or two, but a long process. However, there is an opinion that the style emerged immediately and in its finalized form in the 80s and was invented by a specific person - Marcus Pacheco.
In any case, the style emerged and even developed, despite some retrograde masters of the old school, who believed that the treatment of the tattoo as a bright decoration it will depreciate. Fortunately, there were always enough young and daring people who did not recognize authority.
To understand what the essence of the new school in tattooing and how it looks, let's highlight the features external, technical and features of the idea.
Blog about tattoos and tattoo culture
New skool style tattoos are very popular today. Bright and juicy color combinations, eye-catching characters, rounded shapes and cartoon concepts make New Skool tattoos incredibly lively and eye-catching.
Master Kelly Doty.
Master Josh Herman.
Based on American traditional and non-traditional styles, as well as anime, manga, video games and comic books, New skool tattoos are known for pushing the usual boundaries of images and showing familiar objects in completely unusual forms.
For people who want to add a little color to their skin and their lives, attract attention or stand out from the crowd, you can't think of a better style than New Cheekbones.
Master Sam Fiorino.
Master Sam Fiorino.
In this article we will tell you more about the features and subjects of this style, tell you about its stylistic influence, introduce you to the masters and show you some works in the style of New skool.
History of the style
It is quite difficult to say exactly when the New skool style appeared. Some argue that it originated back in the late 1970s and early 1980s. While others consider the 1990s to be the true manifestation of the style aesthetic as we know it now. The accuracy of the data is debatable because of the closed and exclusive atmosphere of the tattoo community.
Master pink.madzilla, Warsaw, Poland.
Master Marco Knox.
One of the few things people don't notice about New Skool tattoos is how its foundations were established within the Old Skool (or American traditional tattoo) style. It was the traditional artists who established many of the rules that help the tattoo transform over the years in a clear and distinct way.
Bold black lines help prevent color from spreading, large shapes and designs help create easy-to-read tattoos; these are all things that are close to New Cheekbone. But this style was also a way for masters to to experiment with bolder outlines, brighter colors and popular cartoon images.
Master Sasanelli Tattooer.
Master Andrea Lanzi.
Thanks to technological advances in ink pigments, tattoo artists can use bright colors, from fluorescent to neon. Given where new skool draws ideas for tattoo plots from, these shades help portray the cartoonish aspects of the style to the fullest.
It should be noted that during the '90s, there was certainly a resurgence of real interest in pop culture.. Among the tattoos of that era, we can see many cartoon and Disney motifs, as well as graffiti compositions and more. Betty Boop, The Simpsons, Pokemon, and Zelda are some of the most iconic New Skool tattoos of the '90s.
Master Scotty Munster.
Master Jamie Ris.
And, although the question of the exact appearance of the New skool is still not closed, we can not fail to note that the 1990's played an important role in the formation of the style, as we see it today.
Varieties of New Skool Style
New skool style tattoos have many different directions and varieties, the most famous among them are Acid, Ecstasy, Cyberpank, New Tradition. Of all these types, the Cyberpank style trend has recently become popular. Below we will look at each of them in a little more detail:
Acid and Ecstasy. These are images that use the brightest and most acidic colors. The plot of such a tattoo can be as a portrait of a beautiful girl, and fantasy creatures.
Master Andrea Lanzi.
Master Felice Bucca.
Cyberpunk. Imitation of a mechanism that is built into your body. These can be gears, microcircuits, wires, as if protruding from under your skin. Also in this style are very popular scenes from the games, mutant monsters and various sci-fi creatures.
New Tradition. This is exactly what the classic New skool is all about. This style uses images of popular comic book and cartoon characters. Other subjects and characters may also be involved, but must be presented in cartoon form.
Master Jamie Ris.
Master Jamie Ris.
Distinguishing Features
Based on the example of Old Skool style tattoos, masters use clear contour lines and large images when creating New Skool style tattoos. But, in addition to the obvious similarities, these two styles have many differences. What are the features of New Skool style tattoos and how to distinguish them from others?
Color Palette.
A very important difference. Compared to other popular tattoo styles, New skool tattoos Especially appreciate the color palette.. Few tattoo styles use as many bold and bright colors, acidic hues and contrasting combinations as New School. So you need to make sure that the color scheme you choose is what works for you.
Master Ruslan Turtle.
Master Scotty Munster.
Work with your tattoo artist to choose the perfect colors for your tattoo design. Keep in mind that New Skool style tattoos are known for their brightness, boldness, and appeal.
Image.
The stylistics and technique of New Skool style tattoos have stepped far ahead in terms of ingenuity and have become more vibrant, unorthodox and daring. In addition to thick contours, subtle ones were used, color stretching and dynamics in composition appeared.
Master Marco Knox.
Master Jamie Ris.
The images take on a greater volume. They don't look any more two dimensional, like Old School style tattoos, but it's hard to call them realistic either. They look as "cartoonish" as possible.
Complete freedom of imagination and creativity when creating a sketch. There are no limits to the images and plots. Humorous and unusual images of familiar things are welcome.
Subjects.
New skool style, as opposed to Old Skool, is excellent develops the storyline tattoos. The main subject matter of a New skool style tattoo is characters The master is a master of the famous cartoons or comic book, anime or manga plots.
Master Brando Chiesa.
Master Cayo Kun.
Less frequently depicted are hearts, crosses, flowers, fire, skulls, etc. Rather, these elements are additional and help to reveal the character depicted on the tattoo. Here are some popular examples of New Skool style tattoos.
Video Games. As mentioned, pop culture is a huge source of inspiration for New skool. So if you consider yourself a gamer and want to show off your love for a certain franchise, this kind of work on your skin inspired by your favorite video game is perfect for you.
Popular video game characters are great subjects for this style and can be brought to life in unique and creative ways.
Anime.Anime is an art form in itself, and the Japanese animation style is a perfect match for the New Skool style tattoo. Choose a character from your favorite anime or manga and work with your master to create a cool sketch!
Master Che-Wei Bullpen.
Master hornet.eds.
Anime tattoos depicted in the New Skool style are hugely popular, and you will only need one look at these exceptional works to understand why.
Animals. Also a very popular subject for the New Skool style, as, indeed, for many other styles. By making your favorite animal the center of your new tattoo, you have the opportunity to display all of the qualities that you love about it.
Master Sasanelli Tattooer.
Master hornet.eds.
Some of the most popular animals represented by New cheekbone tattoos are owls, rabbits and fish, as these animals give you more options for bold color choices.
Where to get a tattoo?
One of the most important decisions to make before getting a tattoo is to choose a location on the body for the new work. The more space you allocate to the new tattoo, the easier it will be to fully convey the whole plot and details.
Sketch of a New Cheekbone tattoo by the master pink.madzilla.
New skool tattoo sketch by master Jamie Ris.
Sketch of New skool tattoo master pink.madzilla.
Sketch of New cheekbone tattoo master Jamie Ris.
It is better to choose an area that will give the master an unlimited field for creativity, and for you will be the most comfortable in terms of pain and care. New cheekbones are quite popular in the form of A quarter, half, or even a whole sleeve.
The back, chest and abdomen aren't far behind either. Larger plots will look great on these areas. But these places are more problematic. Colorfulness and brightness can be a disadvantage, because not every place on your body is able to keep the original appearance of the tattoo for a long time.
Master Rino, Dirty Roses Tattoo.
Tattoo on the leg master jotapaint.
You should not place New Cheekbone style tattoos on the neck, face or hands, as due to the skin features in these areas, the image can quite quickly lose color.
Note that prolonged exposure to the sun and constant tanning, can also negatively affect the appearance of colored tattoos.
Live bright!
The main point of the New Cheekbones style is to Go beyond the familiar.. The more interesting and unusual you play with the familiar, the cooler your tattoo will look.
Master delay_dzen.
Master Isnard Barbosa.
If you are a creative person and want to express this through your tattoos, feel free to choose the New Cheekbones style. It's improvisation in its purest formWith the help of which you can realize your most unexpected fantasies.
So throw away all the shyness and doubts, it's time to decorate your body with unique fantastic images of characters from your favorite cartoons or comic books!
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New ideas and traditions
Let's start on the idea side. The fact is that the old-school tradition has a history from the 19th century and in many ways retained a past-century entourage. There was a certain set of symbols: an anchor and a naked port woman to a sailor, a four-leaf clover to a gambler and so on.
It had its own meaning and its own aesthetics, not for nothing that old-school tattoos never went out of fashion. But we wanted new meanings, not common symbols but personal mythology that can be put on the body and demonstrated. In addition, the film, cartoon and comic book industry was developing - artists couldn't help but notice that this is a treasure trove of ideas for tattoos.
Familiar characters in strange and unusual scenery, the essence of which is understood sometimes by the owner of the tattoo and his master, the blurring of meanings, values, but at the same time and their expansion - this is the aesthetics of the new skull.
History of the style
In the 19th century in America and Europe, the ancestor of this style - old school - flourished in splendid colors. It was based on nautical motifs, a desire for freedom. Fans of the "old school" stuffed anchors, roses, mermaids, weapons, ships, the sea. However, people's values began to change, which is why romanticism and the spirit of adventure gradually went out of fashion at that time. And to replace them in the 80s of the last century came rebelliousness, an acute desire to depart from familiar traditions.
It is believed that the new skool style tattoos were originally symbols of rave devotees. "Signature" distinctive signs of this movement, developed by designer E. Harley, were even officially registered in 2004. However, the new skool is also associated with an increase in the number of fans of comics and computer games, which came to the tattoo parlors with a request to score the image of a favorite character.
Today, the new skool is the style of the bold and young who despise boredom.
The change in tattoo technique
In terms of technique, the changes were radical. First, the abandonment of the bold black outline. Not in the sense that it was no longer used, but in the sense that it did not frame the picture. Secondly, the introduction of new colors. If old skool had only a few colors and therefore the symbolism of color was very developed, the new skool introduces all possible colors into the tattoo. Third is volume. The old-school picture could be quite realistic but it had almost no volume. The newskul picture had volume, almost to the effect of 3D, three-dimensional photography.
Distinctive features.
- Bright, almost pretentious colors and their combinations, "acidic" shades.
- A thick black outline.
- Large, eye-catching tattoos.
- Voids, which often take up most of the picture.
- Abstraction, piling details, humor.
- A complete departure from realism.
New skool has several trends. One of them is cyberpunk, that is, tattoos of gamers. They are printed on the arms, back, legs, and the main subjects - the heroes and monsters from computer games. The second direction is wild new school, for which elements of graffiti in the drawing, inscriptions are mandatory. The third is new tradition (neo-traditional). This is a "classic" new skool, which is dominated by cartoon characters or other subjects, but made in animation technique. The craziest trends are Acid and Ecstasy. These are drawings whose ideas could only be born under the influence of the same name drugs, which, incidentally, often happened in the early days of new skool.
Typical designs and subjects
Plots can be anything: primitive or detailed, funny or philosophical. This style implies freedom of imagination, ingenuity. The most popular drawings are:
- characters from comic books, cartoons;
- flowers;
- portraits-caricatures;
- hearts;
- fire;
- birds;
- clock faces.
Tattoos in the cyberpunk substyle are usually scenes from games, their characters, mutant monsters, creatures in the spirit of science fiction.
Whatever the plot or pattern, the main thing is to play with it in an original and imaginative way. There is always room for experimentation in the new skool.
Varieties of currents
In addition, in the new-school, there are several currents with their own inherent only tattoo theme and style
1) "Wild" new skool. If you see a mishmash of scraps of text and graffiti-style images that bizarrely make some sense on closer inspection, then this is the "wild" trend of the new school.
2) "Cyberpunk" is a trend that has taken over all forms of art. This consideration could not pass new skool tattoo, because they were very much in tune with each other from the beginning. The bright and abstract new skool is perfect for depicting game reality and game characters.
3) "Ecstasy" is a style on the edge of narcotic and esoteric. Bright colors, bizarre shapes, lack of plot and logic, but a kind of surrealist aesthetic.
4) "Neotraditional" - a style close to animation, that is, the original version of the new school. Sounds like new skool in the '70s and '80s.
Examples of new-school tattoos
New Skool tattoos, whose designs resemble the bright and colorful outfits at nightclubs of the time, are transitional between Old Skool and Neo Tradition styles. In fact, almost all New School tattoos are charged with energy, and one can discern in them a thirst to experiment, and a manifestation of activity. They differ from the old school with a lack of nostalgia, realism and mostly gloomy colors in the sketch.
New School is distinguished by the presence of elements of ecstasy, trance, drum & bass and hardcore.
- Quite often inscriptions are used in the drawings of New School. Typical for the used script graffiti bubble (bubbles) are round and inflated letters. The shape of their writing in tattoos is associated with good-naturedness and openness.
- The messiahstule font, sometimes used in New School style tattoos, looks like a jumble of different elements written on different sheets and overlaid chaotically on top of each other. Such text can be seen from a distance, but in general looks like a picture because of the unreadability of the written word.
- The font and pattern of the category is a lot of elements, slanted at different angles, in different directions.
- The New School style sometimes uses a dynamic font, which used to be written on railroad cars, so that when the train moves you can read where it goes. Also in this font used to write on the uniforms of athletes.
- In New School tattoos, which do not use different fonts, but there is a story, the main emphasis is on the shape of the image and its border.
- Objects placed on the tattoo at a slant almost always symbolize movement.
- The roundedness of the objects in the drawing speaks to the cyclical nature of what is happening.
- All images of objects in the New School style are taken from the modern environment and are interpreted in a straight line:
- Images of an airplane or helicopter are symbols of the sky or free flight.
- A car can be interpreted as a fast moving object that meets everyone's personal preferences.
- The same interpretation of the tattoo can depict completely different cars: a race car, a retro car or a classic business car.
- The image of the cityscape in the style of New School can mean the conditional closed structure, to be an indicator of orderliness or to represent the consequences of the urban apocalypse.
New School tattoo (the sketches are beyond realism) has a name that translates into Russian means "new school.
The philosophy and fundamentals of the new school are expressed by modern objects or technological inventions. Unchanged relative to the old school is the portrayal of feelings and love, which are usually expressed by a bouquet of roses. In the New School interpretation, the rose flower is depicted in acidic and poisonous colors.
New School style tattoos are usually made to order. There is an opportunity to apply to a professional salon, where the master will create a sketch on an individual request, taking into account the requirements of the client.
Small
For the originality of the image, it is not necessary at all to stuff a large drawing. You can create a unique acid sketch of a small size that will meet all the requirements of the New School style and can turn out funny.
New School small tattoo sketches
When choosing a tattoo parlor, you should settle on experienced master professionals working specifically in the New School style. When making a tattoo, there are certain nuances that should be respected. Bright colored tattoos require a certain care, which should tell a professional master.
Large
Large images in the New School style will draw attention to the person. The drawing will stand out through the use of acid colors and a cartoonish funny image.
Unlike black paint, colored images fade quite quickly in the sun. In order for large drawings, printed on the exposed parts of the body, for a long time kept their color, you should regularly use sunscreens.
Men's designs
New Skool tattoo designs for men can look aggressive and menacing.
- A grotesque skull design or an image of a predatory sea animal is usually preferred.
- Characters from creepy books, popular comic books, or well-known pop cultures may be used.
- Rather often used in drawings are symbols of the United States, objects on the theme of astronautics.
- The images may express a naïve plot, inspired by children's drawings that have no meaning. They are usually executed as flat paintings, in bright and acidic colors.
- Less often than others, an aggressive and scary genre is used, in which sketches evoke disgust or aggression. Such drawings may use grotesque elements, conveying harsh associations with rudeness and horror. Patterns of skeletons, skulls, mummies or dead men in blood can be a sample of such images.
Women's sketches
Tattoo in the stylistics of the New School quite often strike the representatives of the weaker sex.
They have slight differences from the male and necessarily contain feminine elements.
- The most popular are the drawings of Disney princesses, stuffed in a distorted unreal image.
- Sketches of singing beauties have turned into a certain tattoo trend, which is quite often used on various parts of the body.
- The most popular among girls is the designed group of drawings created by a New York artist named Mela Stewart.
- The image of fairy tale creatures is considered to be no less in demand theme. They are bright and colorful drawings with elements of joy and happiness.
- The mischievousness in the image, as a rule, causes a smile to others and seems childishly naive. A striking example of such an image is the drawing of the baby Alien from the famous movie, who walks around with balloons and a glass of Coke. Also, you can note the tattoo of a crying princess with a scalpel in her hands.
Many girls prefer to decorate their bodies with beautiful graphics of plant or animal directions. In this case, the works are performed in rich acid shades and have a completely flat image.
You can choose a ready-made drawing for a tattoo in any tattoo parlor. It is possible to order an individual sketch, which will be distinguished by specificity and personal wishes. New Skool style is varied and allows for many variations, but it must match the distinctive features and characteristics that are unique to it.
Author: Olga Zhanskaya
Popular characters and places of application
Most often in the tattoo style new skool are used funny cartoon animals, just bright animals, cartoon characters, comic book characters, psychedelic patterns, graffiti, stylized paintings of surrealists.
New skool style tattoos are applied to any part of the body, there is no thematic reference, but there is a purely technical point. A new skool style tattoo is almost hundred percent likely to be very large. That's why you don't do it on your wrist or behind your ear. If a person chooses to get a tattoo in this style, he or she usually scores a large area of skin with the tattoo. For example, on the stomach, on the back, or on the upper part of the thighs. This is why, by the way, tattoo sleeves in the new cheekbone style are very popular. This style needs a large area to expand.
Features of the new skool style tattoo
- The use of bright colors and sometimes poisonous screaming colors.
- Execution in the technique of graffiti, when the image has an outline, but its boundaries are not designated and colors are often mixed, contrasting with each other.
- The predominance of comic book and cartoon characters as the main image.
- The sketches look more three-dimensional, which, along with the toxic colors, is particularly eye-catching.
- Freedom for creativity. You can draw anything you want in any way you want. The main thing is that the image should be fantasy and humorous. No boring realism!
- The outline of the objects may be jagged or distorted, but the outline of the entire drawing should be readable from a long distance.
- There may be unpainted areas in the image. It is they who carry additional semantic meaning.
Features of the style
The direction of the new school in the field of tattooing is not characterized by modesty and delicacy. The images are performed bright and catchy. An important emphasis is placed on the high quality and beauty of the image. It is peculiar to the clear contours, within which the lighter and brighter ink is applied. On the photo of the Newscool tattoo it is well seen that the drawings in this style are perfectly visible from any distance.
The choice in favor of this direction is usually made by optimists, nihilists and other individuals who oppose themselves to society. As a rule, the adherents of this culture are young people who do not agree with many events that take place in society. This disagreement is expressed in the defiant execution of tattoos, which carry a certain philosophical meaning.
Masters of Tattoo Newschool, in turn, too, must have a certain warehouse of character and a corresponding outlook on the world. As a rule, these are the people possessing good sense of humor, imagination and complete freedom from all sorts of prejudices, rigid rules and regulations. Only such a master can understand a similar client and embody in a tattoo on his body the desired image.
