New school tattoos featured many of the same outlines as traditional ink but introduced new influences, an expanded color palette, and subject matter never before seen in the art form. While old-school designs never disappeared (and later came back with a vengeance), new-school tattoos offered a fresh perspective that quickly caught on. The origins of new school tattooing can be traced back to the 1970s when old-school designs and techniques fell out of favor with an adventurous new generation of tattoo enthusiasts. We’ll see that it’s more than just a departure from American traditional or neo-traditional tattoos and remains a deeply respected style in the tattooing community. In this article, we’re getting to the core of the new school tattooart form and listing some of our favorite tattoo designs in this category. While the mediums of ink and skin are the same, new school tattoo designs and techniques flipped the script in many other ways. Many tattooists draw a definitive line between old-school and new-school styles, using these broad categories to make sense of an ever-expanding tattoo culture.īut the new school style of tattooing is a distinctive and original style that separates itself from American traditional in more than name only.
