Tattoo styles
Most style guides describe how something looks fresh. The more useful question is what it looks like in a decade, so each page covers that alongside what to ask an artist.
Fine line
Fine line work is done with a very small needle grouping, producing thin, precise lines and a light, drawn look. It suits small, detailed designs and script. Because the lines are thin and often lightly packed, it is the style most sensitive to placement, skin type and the artist's hand.
Blackwork
Blackwork uses solid black ink with no colour and often no shading, covering styles from bold ornamental patterning to large areas of solid fill. It is among the most durable approaches to a tattoo, because heavy saturated black holds its edge far longer than thin lines or light colour.
Traditional
Traditional tattooing — sometimes called American traditional or old school — uses bold black outlines, a restricted palette, and simple solid shading. Every one of those constraints exists because it is what survives in skin. It is the style most likely to still read clearly in forty years.
Realism
Realism reproduces a subject as it appears photographically, using gradients rather than outlines. It is the most technically demanding style and the least forgiving: without an outline holding the shape, the piece depends entirely on the artist's control of contrast, and on it being big enough to carry the detail.
Japanese
Japanese tattooing, or irezumi, is a tradition with its own grammar: established subjects, conventional pairings of subject and season, and background work that ties a piece to the body. It is usually planned at large scale — a sleeve, a back — rather than as isolated images.
Tā moko and kirituhi
Tā moko is the customary tattoo of Māori, carrying whakapapa, identity and the right to wear particular marks. It is not a style to select from a menu. Kirituhi is the term for Māori-informed design worn by people without that whakapapa — visually related, but explicitly not carrying the same standing.